I am now two weeks into the Nanodegree program, and today, I sent in the first project for review.
I started out by pulling up the Intro to HTML and CSS class that accompanies the project, as recommended, but didn't watch the class from beginning to end. I jumped around in the class, picking topics that seemed to be newer to me, such as the @media CSS and the semantic tags portions of the class, and skipped over the beginning CSS parts. I have been creating HTML sites for work for a while now, so I figured I didn't need to go through a lot of the basics.
Well, I was wrong.
My knowledge of HTML is still stuck in what I learned ten years ago about HTML 4. I had read about HTML5, but never really paid attention to it, as it didn't seem to be relevant at that time - after all, the web pages I developed worked fine in Internet Explorer using the HTML I already knew. I had heard of <canvas> tags, and other neat ideas - but none of that worked in the environment that we used at work, so I didn't pay much attention.
So, after finishing lessons 1 and 2 in the HTML class, I realized there were concepts and lessons that I would learn, even at this starting phase of the program. I think this is a good thing, as it shows me that Udacity does have something to teach me right from the beginning. This wasn't going to be a waste of time, trying to slog through the easy stuff to get to something new to learn.
I did learn that I have fallen behind in my self-taught web skills - and this program is going to correct that little flaw.
I jumped into working on the project. I created some DIVs, laid out some CSS, and promptly realized that I wasn't going to be able to create this project as simply as I had expected. The header would not line up, no matter what I tried to do. I went back to the lessons, and decided to use the flexbox CSS for aligning my page. After some trial and error, I wasn't getting the results I thought I should. A little more research turned up my issue, which was explained in the instructor notes: since I am using a Mac for my operating system, Safari requires a little more CSS for flexbox to work properly.
I did go back to the lessons to finish watching all of them. When I start the next project, I am going to watch each lesson all the way through, even though I have experience with JSON and JavaScript. There may be some basics to learn there, just as I needed to learn for this project.
The Piazza forums have been very helpful in getting a lot of questions answered. Seeing what other students are having issues with, has made it easier for me to know what to look for, or what resources are available for learning. The Flexbox CSS guide that was posted in Piazza helped me to clean up my code and get it working the way it should.
Overall, I think I have a better understanding of how I need to approach the projects, and that should help me to get the most out of this program that I can.
Almost forgot the important part: my first project submission!
I started out by pulling up the Intro to HTML and CSS class that accompanies the project, as recommended, but didn't watch the class from beginning to end. I jumped around in the class, picking topics that seemed to be newer to me, such as the @media CSS and the semantic tags portions of the class, and skipped over the beginning CSS parts. I have been creating HTML sites for work for a while now, so I figured I didn't need to go through a lot of the basics.
Well, I was wrong.
My knowledge of HTML is still stuck in what I learned ten years ago about HTML 4. I had read about HTML5, but never really paid attention to it, as it didn't seem to be relevant at that time - after all, the web pages I developed worked fine in Internet Explorer using the HTML I already knew. I had heard of <canvas> tags, and other neat ideas - but none of that worked in the environment that we used at work, so I didn't pay much attention.
So, after finishing lessons 1 and 2 in the HTML class, I realized there were concepts and lessons that I would learn, even at this starting phase of the program. I think this is a good thing, as it shows me that Udacity does have something to teach me right from the beginning. This wasn't going to be a waste of time, trying to slog through the easy stuff to get to something new to learn.
I did learn that I have fallen behind in my self-taught web skills - and this program is going to correct that little flaw.
I jumped into working on the project. I created some DIVs, laid out some CSS, and promptly realized that I wasn't going to be able to create this project as simply as I had expected. The header would not line up, no matter what I tried to do. I went back to the lessons, and decided to use the flexbox CSS for aligning my page. After some trial and error, I wasn't getting the results I thought I should. A little more research turned up my issue, which was explained in the instructor notes: since I am using a Mac for my operating system, Safari requires a little more CSS for flexbox to work properly.
I did go back to the lessons to finish watching all of them. When I start the next project, I am going to watch each lesson all the way through, even though I have experience with JSON and JavaScript. There may be some basics to learn there, just as I needed to learn for this project.
The Piazza forums have been very helpful in getting a lot of questions answered. Seeing what other students are having issues with, has made it easier for me to know what to look for, or what resources are available for learning. The Flexbox CSS guide that was posted in Piazza helped me to clean up my code and get it working the way it should.
Overall, I think I have a better understanding of how I need to approach the projects, and that should help me to get the most out of this program that I can.
Almost forgot the important part: my first project submission!
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