My storyboard will be a look into an afternoon at the "dog beach" with my goldendoodle, Leo.
When assigned the task of coding my own website, I was almost certain I would have to drop the class. I was completely in the dark about what HTML even meant and assumed understanding it was beyond my level of comprehension. However, I am now pleased to report that I have gained a small amount of experience in the coding realm. It felt like a major accomplishment to turn a blank white web page into SOMETHING, regardless of the fact that it did not completely fulfill my initial plans.
I searched the web pretty extensively for an EXTREMELY basic HTML template. Much to my dismay, the coding language of all the pre-made HTML templates was entirely too complicated to assess for me. So, much to my surprise, the option to build a webpage from scratch was actually a more viable one for me. This way, I had complete control over every single element on the page and could keep track of what coding language did what. In hindsight I am glad I went this route because I believe I formed a better understanding of HTML basics. I started at the W3 school website (the tutorial site we visited during one of the first class periods in which we talked about coding). It was moderately easy to follow, though I will say that I was very overwhelmed at the beginning of my design process. Coding is a lot like baking. You have to be totally precise in order for anything to come out as planned. I knew I wanted my page to capture the look of the very early 2000’s, and I think I nailed that part. All I did was add a header and a paragraph (the latter I managed to center) and a picture from Alice in Wonderland under that. To add some extra zest, I edited the photo I found online so it would be more fitting with my color scheme which I wanted to be on the psychedelic side. I went to the google fonts page and found a font well suited for this theme and embedded it at the top of the HTML code. Out of all of my coding accomplishment, I am definitely most proud of this one. Just saying,“I embedded a font” makes me feel like a cooler human being. Something I absolutely needed for my webpage was GIFS. There is truly nothing more aesthetically pleasing than a sparkly gif. Looking for these online was a very exciting process and definitely connected me to my inner child (a girl frequently exposed to sparkly gifs whether she knew it or not). Sadly, I couldn’t figure out how to keep the gifs animating. They animate for a second when you pull up the page but they soon die. The images are beautiful one their own, but I would much prefer them to remain sparkly. Something else I couldn’t quite figure out what adding an image as the page’s background. I looked up tutorials on youtube and read online forums but nothing seemed to work! This was utterly frustrating, so I eventually accepted the plain color background for what it was. (Adding a photo as the background to a webpage is something I would like to learn how to do in the future though.) Turning photos/icons into links was surprisingly simple. All of the photos on my page lead the reader to two of my favorite songs and one of my favorite movie scenes. The sparkly donut leads to “Here Comes a Thought” from the Cartoon Network show Steven Universe. (Donuts play a pretty large role in Steven Universe and this correlation happened organically.) The rainbow monarch leads to a song called “In it’s Infacy” by My Morning Jacket. The visuals of this video ties perfectly with the general theme of the webpage which is tastefully trippy I think. Finally, the photo from Alice in Wonderland leads to the scene from the movie that the photo is taken from! How appropriate. Overall, I am very proud of my webpage. I realize it is extremely elementary but that doesn’t mean it always will be! I certainly planning on adding more to it in the future and I am excited to do so. I’m glad I opened myself up to the world of coding instead of convincing myself I could not possibly do such a thing.
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