Leah Urbank

Reading

The reading was what I really needed to get started putting things together on the website. The chapter was entirely dedicated to pictures and the many forms in which they can appear on a website. My newly designed slides are pretty image heavy, so it’s nice to find ways to make them function and work. I had taken a shot on my own, but to little to no avail. I seriously see myself either printing out this entire chapter for easy, on hand reference, as it does cover quite a lot.

All admit that it was quite a lot, especially the breakdown of gradients (which I hope no one uses gradient stripes like they did in the book because they were just horrendous), but I found them to be very interesting. I just don’t know how much of it all I’m going to be able retain. It would be great if we did all the different tutorials in class.

Reading

Once again, another reading packed full of info. Although, I admit that the part near the beginning about the difference between padding, margins, borders, was very handy to have. I have recreated the chart of the layering of the spacing in my notes, as that’s something that I have been really confused about as we were doing the workshops.

Another thing that was clarified that I had actually asked my neighbors about was the four measurements that was included in the CSS margin tag (margin: 0 10px 10px 20px). I was quite frankly frustrated that I couldn’t figure out on my own what all of the different measurements were, and so it was nice to finally be told what that means, as well as a good way to remember it (TRouBLe). I want answers pretty much instantaneously, so it’s nice to finally get around to that.

The Website

I was disappointed with the results in the critique, so I scrapped everything I had done and started over again. I retained a somewhat darker color palette, because that’s what I prefer when I’m reading on websites. It assaults my eyes less.

The one thing I struggle with is the main body type. Is it preferred that serif typefaces are used, or does it really effect reading in a negative way if you got the route of sans-serif? I personally prefer sans-serif, but I’m most certainly not everyone, and I wouldn’t consider myself a professional.

Reading

This was a very dense reading, and I now have really come to appreciate the CSS cheatsheet that has become available to us. Also, I am very happy that I have been working at Codecademy.com to work on html. That really helps comprehension.

Side note, it’s really interesting how the times have changed. The book’s go-to seems to be Internet Explorer, but these days its all about Google Chrome. It’s gotten to the point where Windows is only up keeping it for the businesses that continue to use it.

For the section on web fonts, it’s cool to see the @font-face directive and how it works for the different browsers, as well as the issues that come with it. It especially caught my attention when the difference was the name at the top for the older things (font-family: ‘PTSansItalic’;), versus the bottom for the newer things (font-style: italic; font-weight: normal;). It definitely makes it more difficult to code for the older things, but do we need to code for the older Internet Explores anymore? They don’t seem very prevalent these days.

The text shadow element also caught my attention. I can’t say that I’ve seen a lot of text shadows that look good in my time. It’s nice that the measurements work similar in other programs that I’ve worked with before. So, if the shadow was at text-shadow: -4px 4px 3px #666, it goes in the order of x-axis, y-axis, blurriness, and then the color of the shadow.

Reading

As I was reading, it was nice to finally discover why code monkeys actually prefer the class the the specific ID selectors. “Web designers these days avoid ID selectors in favor of classes. One reason: ID selectors are very powerful, and, therefore, require more power to override,” is what they said, and it’s really cool to see this all feed back into itself. It’s really important for me to know why, so it’s nice to finally have that answered.

Tutorial

The tutorial itself wasn’t that difficult, but these are really good for hammering home what these cascading effects are and how they actually work. I learn by doing, so I love the opportunity to get to try it within a tightly controlled space like this. I wish we could really sink into the basics a couple more times before I’m thrown into this next project.

Coding!

As I was reading the required book, the sheer amount of what I’m going to have to learn is quite intimidating. Although it is nice to be alive in this time rather than others, because major problems and kinks have already been worked out of the system. I don’t have to unlearn bad habits because I don’t know anything to begin with!

The coding itself is interesting, but it seems like it will be tricky to always get right. There’s a lot of very specific typing, and while I have always been able to type fast, I have a hard time not making mistakes. I really want to like coding, though, so we’ll see what happens. I know that this is worth learning, so I’ll do my best. I honestly wish I had the textbook in paper form, though. There would be a lot of highlighting going on.