My thoughts around HTML are as complicated as HTML. I find it interesting, confusing, frustrating, and exciting. To be clear, HTML is not a programming language, but rather a markup for the content of a webpage or site. Okay, i get it, but that somehow doesn’t lessen my frustration over the need for exactness within a sequence of strange characters.
HTML is not intuitive, for me at least. But, I find that eventually the sequence and structure of characters become a bit more familiar. I find it peculiar that its sequence of letters and symbols actually have meaning, but i suppose the same can be said of any language.
What I find exciting is that at the completion of a series of seemingly unrelated characters and symbols, there is meaning, and something that makes little sense, results in something that does. Go figure!
The most challenging and rewarding assignment, for me, was the Contest book assignment. I used TextEdit, as instructed, but I found that although I followed instruction to the last character, when looking in the browser, strange characters appeared. I tried multiple times to eliminate the cause of these erronious characters, but to no avail. I was concerned about including the additional segments of the assignment, so I saved each segment separately. Some of the segments were fine, but a couple of them were not. Finally, I had to copy and paste them together, and it worked…almost entirely. I spent far too much time on this assignment.
Overall, I have a basic understanding of HTML, its purpose, function, structure, and capabilities. I haven’t memorized codes, but i know how they’re used, and more importantly, I can identify resources.
CSS is about the style, or look, of a webpage’s content. I find this to be more complicated than HTML. I understand the usefulness and effectiveness of a separate style sheet, but the simple fact that it is not embedded in the HTML content, requires understanding of the symbiotic relationship between HTML and CSS.
So much is happening in CSS, that I find that it can be overwhelming. The page formatting, color, font, images, are all contained here, so the coding can get complicated.
CSS is not without its challenges. Like HTML, it is not intuitive, and requires familiarity with its sequencing and structure. It is further complicated by the need to determine formatting. How the page will appear, and for which type of device, is determined in CSS. I find that there’s a lot of trail and error involved, in order to achieve the right look, but after a while the element names, and the numbers you attach to them, become more familiar.
What’s great about CSS, is the ability to apply it to a series of pages, as well as effect all pages by making changes to only the style sheet. Brilliant!
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