DanLepore

Tuesday, July 20, 2021

UVA Web Design Week - 4

This week we explored images and the element attributes available when working with images. The most notable information was the common graphic types and their associated properties. The following chart was very helpful and explained why some images could have transparent backgrounds while others could not.

I will keep this chart handy when determining the best file format when adding images to web pages.

Sunday, June 6, 2021

UVA Web Design - Week 3

Photo by Pankaj Patel on Unsplash

Week 3

This week we dove into Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). CSS is the backbone of presenting web content in a readable, attractive format that invites page visitors to use and interact with the page.

Cascading Style Sheets are named so because you can set style values in different ways and the order of preference determines which styles take effect for any given element.

The hierarchy is as follows:

Brower Default - if no style is given - the browser default is applied
External Style Sheets - Style values defined in external sheets are applied next. External sheets are great for applying styles to multiple pages. This is a huge time saver when trying to style an entire website with a similar look and feel because the CSS page can be linked to each webpage.
Embedded Styles - Apply third, and override an external style sheet. This gives you some flexibility when trying to style certain aspects of a page differently than the external style sheet, and embedded styles can be used without a linked CSS file. Embedded styles can be great when creating a small, minimally styled web page. Embedded styles are placed inside the <head><style> STYLES GO HERE</style></head>
Inline styles - these override any other defined style for the element for which they are defined. For example: <p style="color: #FF0000"> styles the text of this paragraph element red. Another embedded style, external style sheet, or browser defaults would apply to all other elements on the page.

When working with styles inside of nested elements, inline styles can be used on inner elements to override values applied to outer elements.

CSS hierarchy is something I struggled with in the past and this week's text and practice exercise really helped me understand the topic.

Well, my A/C broke so it is now 88 degrees in the house. Signing off to go search for ice cubes!

Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@susan_wilkinson?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Susan Wilkinson</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/ice-cube?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a>

Photo by Susan Wilkinson on Unsplash

UVA Web Design - Week 2

Photo by Pankaj Patel on Unsplash

Week two we began diving into the basics including how a web page is structured. We read about several tags and elements, and discovered a basic web page template:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

The blockquote element was new to me and it displays a block of text that is intended from both left and right margins.

A few classmates shared some HTML tutorials in this week's discussion and I thought these two were particularly helpful:

https://www.tutorialrepublic.com/html-tutorial/
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/html5/index.htm

Saturday, May 29, 2021

Web Design at UVA - Week 1

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

I enrolled in a Web Design course at UVA this semester, and I will be blogging a little each week about what I am learning. We are using the ninth edition of Web Development & Design Foundations with HTML5 textbook. So far, the book seems easy to read and organized well. The first chapter covered a basic overview of the internet and web. This chapter provided a good summary of the foundation technology needed for the world wide web to operate, most of which I was already familiar with. Still, I did learn about Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), the standard for creating a markup language. Tim Berners-Lee used SGML when creating the HTML specification.

This week's class discussion brought me to https://w3.org the World Wide Web Consortium (WC3). I was unaware of how well-established and active the group is at developing standards and best practices. Reading through some of the standards, I see editors from many big-name technology companies, including Cisco, Apple, and Google. Not only do these organizations have top talent, but they must also be using this Consortium to drive compatible product development.

Ok, that's it for now, more next week. Until then, happy coding :D