Each of the weekly assignments has been completed, and I've really enjoyed learning how to build web pages without the easy wysiwyg strategy of using Dreamweaver, Coffeecup html, or any other web creating tool. It's been hard, and a painful process - not because of the syntax, or the actual code creation - but because of the need for being creative in the content. The styling to make the page interesting and attractive.
First week was qute an introduction to coding by hand. I'd done some repair of code that was not working correctly, but never anything this deep. It's interesting to see the skeletal outline build up. I used this to launch a project I'd been considering for quite a while - an on-line record of my life to pass on to my grandchildren, and their children after them. I can't recreate my entire family tree along with my personal history in this class, but I can sure make an attempt at a start.
Second week introduced us topage structure. How to use the h1, h2, h3, etc. tags to draw attention to desired headlines. Use of the <p> tags. We were introduced to the W3C validators, and how to use them. We learned of comments - both for html and for CSS. We learned of links and anchors, the differences between the two, and differences that exist in links. We learned about how to set up e-mail addresses. We also learned a lot about color, and how to apply it to our pages, and links.
Third Week We got deeper into CSS, learning of inheritance, and how it affects the way we code the styles. We learned about text formatting, font properties, and formatting anchor tags. We learned of the types of style forms. I used this lesson to get back to my personal project, and expand it with links to some of the more important events in my life.
Fourth Week we finally got into placing images on our pages. We learned of page weight, and how to use pictures for our sites. We learned to build the img tags, and how to format them. We learned how to create a small image and use it for an hr tag. Then we learned how to incorporate images into our links. We learned of background images, and putting margins in the body. I used this opportunity to set up the images I would be using in my project showing my grand children.
Fifth Week we started learning how to build classes, divs, and spans. We also started learning the proper use of tables. This included the various attributes, how to format them, and the special tags that are very seldom used. We also learned of thumbnails, and how to use them to link to larger images, keeping the weight of our pages to a minimum. This lesson called for building a table that would be used in my project, and creating the thumbnails that would reduce the page weight to an acceptable level.
Sixth Week brought understanding of special characters, and how to insert them into a page, using the & coding method to show things like ©, < > &, and a bunch of other neat coding tricks and it sank into my feeble brain in ½ the time I thought it would! Meta tags became my next fear to conquer. I had been mystified by these from the first time I looked at some one else's page code. Now I could use them, and put them to good use. We learned of how to use sub-directories to store information in.. such as images, and other non-html files... and finally, the importance of an index page, which I've built here.
copyright ©2007 by Eugene I Humbert