So, it begins! Week three began to see more of a lean towards experimentation and curiosity driven independent research compared to the initial two weeks – no ‘tutorial hell’ for me thank you!
Having said that, I did spend a lot of my practical application time working through the ‘Responsive Web Design’ module on freeCodeCamp, in particular the end projects (three completed). It was really useful to work on these, taking them as far as I could on my own, and then when I reached my limit examine their code and work through with the Chrome Dev tools to see how and why I couldn’t get something to work. This highlighted that whilst HTML and CSS are straightforward, remembering how to do specific things and putting it into practice requires.. practice!
JavaScript. Can’t wait to get stuck into this programming language and breath some real interactivity into the equation. I watched a few tutorial videos, a basic introduction and how it relates to the Document Object Model, and functions;
I think JavaScript is what I will need to complete my ‘HTML Tags’ page; a dynamic ‘cheat sheet’ that contains all the tags and all the information, as on W3Schools, but all collected on one static page instead of across many (none of the resources seem convenient enough for my taste).
Another part of the equation will be JSON. I figured out how to store the first two HTML tags worth of information inside a JSON file, and will use the JSON file to hold all of the information required for the page. But after writing out two of the entries I realized I don’t want to spend an entire week copying and filing all the information from W3Schools manually! Why should I, when I know automation could solve this.
Automation will be the final part of the equation. When I get stuck into Python I’ll create a simple web scrapper to pull out all of the necessary information from W3Schools and file it into my JSON. Or at least that’s what I will aim for! I assume it is possible, unless the website blocks such methods perhaps?
Part of the week I spent digging into side-tracks relating to CSS. For example,
- Beizer curves; the mathematics behind how the values are calculated, visually, was very insightful.
- Linear gradients; how these can be modified, and even used as masks on text to create a nice header title effect.
- Psuedo-elements; adding extra shapes to objects, tool-tips, extra form elements.
- Accessibility; with CSS putting content off the screen but still ‘there’. Genius!
I’m loving how much there is to know and the ability to be instantly creative, create instant problems, then problem solve instantly!
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