Now You’re Speaking My Languages: HTML and CSS

While we’ve been learning Markdown–and it’s useful, no doubt–understanding how to build websites and documents truly from the ground up requires knowledge in new territory: HTML and CSS. We had two readings that touched on these topics, “File Not Found” by Monica Chin and “The Lo-Fi Manifesto” by Karl Stolley. We also discussed our how-to guides as we work on revising them.

In “File Not Found,” Chin discussed the way new generations approach and are being taught file management. For a lot of today’s students, it seems like the classic “filing cabinet” metaphor doesn’t quite translate mentally. Instead, some students see file management like they see a laundry hamper: “[Y]ou have everything kind of together, and you’re just kind of pulling out what you need at any given time.”

Unfortunately, I’m definitely in the laundry hamper camp. I was never formally taught file management. My computer files are a mess. I don’t know what exists where, and only a couple folders actually contain sorted content (of which almost none are recently updated). I think my issue with this is that I don’t often go into my files, so I don’t think about them. I can pull my downloaded things (what I use the most) from other places, so there’s no need to sort what’s going on in the Files app itself. However, this makes it difficult on the rare occasion when I need to go into the files of an app or project and tinker with something. I’m at a complete loss most of the time.

This can hinder progress if you’re creating in HTML and CSS, as both languages require a pretty exact method of organization. For instance, HTML won’t be able to find any stylesheets or images if you don’t tell the code exactly where to look for them … which is a problem if you don’t even know where to look for them. So, as we progress in class working with these computer languages, that’s something I’m learning I’ll have to improve. I’ll need to be in control of my files and create a management system if I want this process to be easier and functional.

Stolley’s “The Lo-Fi Manifesto” intrigued me. It was full of technical words and ideas, but I think the general gist was that people need to be more mindful of how they create in a digital format. If you use “lo-fi” tech, like simple text documents, Markdown, and other non-huge-company-branded technology, your work will be more widely supported, more easily read, and more quickly accessed on more kinds of devices.

Something Stolley said that caught my attention was to “[d]esign first for the most constrained users and devices.” It’s an accessibility issue when someone’s website needs the latest version of Windows or a huge amount of data to download. It relegates that information’s availability to the kinds of people who can afford to keep up with the myriad of technological changes happening constantly–and I don’t know about you, but I’m not one of those people.

This idea should be kept in mind as we learn more computer languages. HTML especially has features that make your content accessible and efficient to download, so knowing those and utilizing them is key to creating work that many people can access and understand.

Looking into HTML this week was fascinating! It was like a puzzle to figure out how to translate some Markdown features into their HTML equivalents. It seems like HTML has more variability and a bit more power when it comes to creation over Markdown, so it’ll be exciting to do more with it in the future. CSS lost me a bit though, if only because the syntax seems so different than either language we had explored before. I understand its concept and function, though, so I’m excited to understand how to use it, too!