Lab 12 Reflection


     Lab 12 was a rapid research lab about a file format. The first thing we did was choose from a list of file formats to research about. In this lab I choose to research ZIP files. Once we choose our format we needed to research an overview of what it was, a history of its development, a method of compression it uses, and the pros/cons of the format. The research was done online with important facts and sources being written on a handout. Once we gathered all our facts we drafted 4 paragraphs, each paragraph focusing on a category we researched.

     Once our 4 paragraphs were drafted we needed to make a web page about our file format, with the contents being the paragraphs we drafted. This was the simple part of the lab as once we set up the HTML page all we needed to do was create headings for each category using the heading tags and copy and paste our paragraphs in between <p></p> tags, making sure the paragraph is underneath the correct heading. Our page was bare, however, as it lacked any style. To give it a style I linked it to an external stylesheet like I did in Lab 10. In between the <head> tags I set up the <link> tag. The rel attribute of the <link> tag was stylesheet and type attribute was text/css. The stylesheet I used was the stylesheet I used to style my entire website, or DD portfolio. This stylesheet was not in the Lab 12 folder so to link to it my href was "../../main.css". This is a relative path which basically tells the site to step back from the Lab 12 folder into the Labs folder, step back again from the Labs folder into the DD folder, and search for a CSS file named main.css to link to. The result of this linking was my web page having a style, which made it look less boring, and looking similar to other lab pages I styled using the same style sheet, creating a sense of unity within my portfolio.
     These skills are important for a web designer since a web designer must be able to navigate through directories correctly. I couldn't make this web page have a unique style since it needed to look like other webpages on my site. To to this I needed to link it to the site's main stylesheet which was not in the same folder as the web page for the lab. While I could just make a copy of the main stylesheet and put it in the lab folder to link it I will be making the file size of my website's directory larger than it needs to be. It's also an inefficient process to just make a copy of the main stylesheet every time you create a new web page. Knowing how to navigate a directory, however, eliminates the need to make copies of the same stylesheet and makes the process on introducing new web pages more efficient. It allows a web designer to reach files they need in a web page from anywhere in their directory, allowing a more efficient work flow and eliminating unnecessary bulk that comes with constantly copying assets.
   

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Favicons

Image
     Favicons are small square graphics, ranging from 17 x 17 px to 28 x 28 px in preferred size, that give a graphical representation of the site the user is visiting. The favicon appear in the address bar on the left. The main reason websites use favicons is to improve their user's experience. Favicons, by giving a graphical representation of their site, make it easy for the user to recognize the site they're on while they might be switching tabs or scrolling through a list of bookmarks. A favicon adds to a website's uniqueness by making it stand out and different from other sites through use of graphics.      To create a favicon you need a favicon generator, a software where you can design your favicon. Sites may be owned by businesses that have logos to represent themselves but when it comes to favicons simply converting the image file for the logo into a .ico (file format that favicons use) may not be optimal. Favicons have a limited size, biggest size being 28 x 28 p
Read more

Favorite Teacher Project Reflection

Image
     The second project for DD this year was about creating a website in appreciation of your favorite teacher. This project was a lot like the our first project except it revolved around a teacher and not movies, otherwise, it required all the same skills we learned in the first project. Just like in the first project, the beginning steps were not in the computer, rather, they were on paper. After deciding which teacher to make the site about (Ms. Sakhno), I begun by creating wireframes both of the website itself and how the folders for the project would be organized. My website wireframe consisted of 4 pages all with relative links that took the user to all the other pages from any single page. There was a home page, which explained the purpose of the site and why the teacher I chose was my favorite, a biography page, which described the teacher's life up until now, a subject page, which discussed the subject the teacher taught, a trivia page, which displayed an infographic abo
Read more

Lab 20 Reflection

Image
     Lab 20 incorporated many of the things we learned from Lab 18, with the functionality holding many similarities. In Lab 20 we were to create a webpage that compares 2 numbers, x and y. The user is supposed to be able to see if x is greater than y, y is greater than x, x and y are equal, etc. The interface is similar to Lab 18; there is an area to input two values, there is an area with many buttons that lead to a specific outcome, and there is an area to view what the outcome is. Unlike Lab 18, the buttons don't perform an arithmetic operation on the 2 values but check if a certain comparison between the 2 values is true or false. The result area, instead of displaying the result of an arithmetic operation done on 2 numbers, displays if a certain comparison between 2 values is true or false, essentially displaying the result of clicking the now comparison buttons.      I started Lab 20 just like I started Lab 19, by duplicating the code for Lab 18. There was not much to chan
Read more