May 29, 2009

Becoming More Hopeful By the Moment

After posting my last blog, I continued to experiment with HTML and downloaded Kompozer, a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) HTML and CSS editor. I was immediately able to make some progress, but I know that if I'm really going to learn this, I need to continue the lesson, so today I studied up on the basics (meta data, title, header), lists and forms. The lists were a challenge at first, but I did figure out how to use both bulleted and numbered lists, with nesting - for creating an outline.

I moved on to forms, feeling pretty certain about my new skills, and I was completely wowed by the details and new tags, so I circled back to some of the basics that I'd accidentally skipped earlier.

I don't feel as though I made much progress today, but this will come, one step at a time.

May 26, 2009

Summer 2009: A Time for New Projects

With this summer free from coursework, I decided to endeavor out onto the internet and teach myself web programming. Based on several helpful links from Lifehacker and a few Google searches, I've discovered 2 really great free, online tutorials.

Over the past few weeks, I created a bare bones index file and today I experimented with:
Markups including strong, emphasis, italics, bold, paragraphs and line breaks
Links including external, internal, global and e-mail hyperlinks

All of this loveliness is confined to my little lappy for now, as I haven't invested in a domain name. Once I have a concept and some skills, a friend is going to give me a piece of his currently dormant domain, so I'm really excited to make that reality. Also, if I progress quickly enough, I'll purchase a domain to create the "wed page" for my wedding in September 2010.

Based on my experimenting with tutorials, I am really appreciating the sites that provide challenges, so that I can do and then compare. It really helps me make sure that my concepts can be fleshed out on the page.

Thus far, my two favorite sites are:
Web Design - Wikiversity
HTML Dog