I am currently taking this class for fun! I am also taking the New Media Design class this summer. If I can work it into my schedule, I will consider the graduate certificate. :)
I've already learned a lot with just this lesson, but I am hoping to gain these fundamental skills so that I can create my own personal website to share research and other exciting news.
For Project One, I learned literally all the skills I had to use. I had no prior coding knowledge at all (unless you count tweaking Myspace layouts back in the day). Specifically, I learned how to link webpages together, organize a webpage, include pictures and videos, and style webpages using CSS. I got frustrated for a while trying to change the font color on the second page (Why Rampage Ollie). I'm still not 100% sure that I coded it correctly, but it works now!
I'm proud of the color palette and fonts for my project one webpages. I think they look nice and are accessible to readers. I learned how to include emojis on my webpages and style the font in different ways. I initially had the file paths a little wrong, and I'm happy that I was able to stare at the screen for a little bit then figure it out. I put a YouTube video on my second page that actually works, so that's nice. Finally, I made a list for my third page which seemed appropriate. In the future, I would like to get better at tables. I tried for a minute last night to make one, but it just wasn't intuitive for me. I think I'll come back to it later. I also want to play around with the location of my nav links so that maybe they're at the top in a banner situation.
I learned more skills with CSS, but had several frustrating moments. Media queries are definitely trickier than I anticipated, but I had fun playing around with it. The biggest thing I learned with this project is how to use the "Inspect" tool to my benefit. Especially with the HTML, I feel more comfortable looking for things that need updated/fixed with "Inspect" then changing it in my own code. CSS is still throwing me for a loop, but I think that once I finish more FCC lessons, it'll get better. Again, I liked the fonts and colors I chose. I feel like they are aesthetically pleasing especially with the photos I chose and the overall theme. I linked external websites at the bottom which was a fun way to plug my favorite local places (even if some of them are Facebook pages). I want to get more comfortable with formatting containers and understanding how responsiveness works in different situations.
Project three was a challenge. It might have been because I didn't sit down all at once to work through starting the store and working on the project, but I felt like I missed some important concepts that would have helped. Overall I was introduced to WordPress and WooCommerce which was exciting to play with. I faced some challenges, but I am also proud of some of the elements I included.
I feel like I never really got the hang of customizing the pages to be my own. I don't think I utilized the "Additional CSS" well. I added in some elements that did not work, and I never really figured out why. For example, I could not figure out how to make all the fonts to change- like the "Home" at the top of the homepage. I tried to add background colors that didn't work. There were just some parts of the theme that I know could have been customized, but every time I tried, nothing happened. I think I may have put the elements in the wrong order (or maybe I just wasn't adding them to the html). Lastly, I just don't feel like I am creative enough to visualize a page from scratch.
There were some aspects I was proud of! I used the Storefront theme. The homepage, to me, looked like a real website that I would trust buying products from. I added the "MailPoet" plugin and even customized an email that would be sent to anyone who subscribed to my store. I added a footer widget to link back to all the pages. I also added an "About Us" page that used a couple different block features.
I would really like to understand CSS better. I feel like I need to go back to that. Also, I am a little confused about my folder setup now. I don't have anything on my local drive's "project-three" folder except for the imgages I used for the store website. Should I have something equivalent to an "index" file in my project-three folder, or is it just supposed to be in the cPanel? I'm confused.
Project Four was probably the most enjoyable project so far! I learned more (or at least felt comfortable with) using CSS and I got to apply skills from the FCC JavaScript lessons. The JavaScript challenges were fun and pretty straightforward. Between the FCC lessons and JavaScript30 challenges, I learned how to manipulate webpages to carry out more complex tasks to make my pages more interesting. When I was going through the FCC lessons, it all seemed so abstract. I literally had no idea what I was doing. I was just plugging away. The JavaScript30 guy was very helpful in showing how things happened in real time, and I liked that he made mistakes so that we can catch those things too.
The main struggle I faced was still a CSS issue. The margins or borders or something on my "Activity Two" webpage are off. Specifically, they're too big. I played around with some numbers and settings, but couldn't figure out how to make my canvas small enough to fit the screen properly. Even as I was typing this reflection, I thought of another thing to try but it didn't work either. :( Other than that, I really didn't face too many issues. Honestly, my biggest struggle was trying to be creative. As you can tell, it's not my strong suit. If I could go back again and restart the project, I would make it more fun by having better ideas, but as incorporating more into the CSS for each page. Speaking of CSS stylesheets, I have a stylesheet for each webpage which might be unnecessary, but it made the most sense to me. I always feel like I'm using the same "class" or "id" for things which makes things get changed when I don't want them to. Lastly, I should have put more energy into making sure my webpages were responsive. I will work on that in the future.
I tried out a few things with this project. I changed the fonts to Chivo and Overpass on all webpages, and kept the color scheme consistent. I added images into the header sections of each page too. I completed the "Sticky Nav" challenge and incorporated it onto each webpage. For the homepage, I used some of the html from the "Sticky Nav" challenge. I changed the images and made them links to the activities. For Activity One, I changed the colors of the "drum kit" activity (and changed the noises to animal sounds). I also added a multiple choice question to answer the challenge prompt. I had to try a few different codes before I got the question to work properly, but I think it's a nice touch. For Activity Two, I played with the canvas function code some. I changed the lineJoin and lineCap settings, but ultimately decided to leave them round. I opted for one consisent width because I thought it would be easier to draw things that way. I used "lighten" for the global composite operation because I liked the way it looked. I added a table to the page to list animal options for people to draw.
I am finally getting a better understanding of margins, padding, borders, etc., but I still want to get better at the overall layout and design of my webpages. I want to learn more about the different possibilities with JavaScript too, especially just learning how to better utilize functions.