Digital Writing

Week 7 Post

Christina Truong’s videos on LinkedIn Learning teach us lessons on how to create an .html file. For someone who is unaware of what markup is, this would probably be extremely confusing. Truong makes it easy to understand for those who do know and want to learn more about HTML. Last week’s videos and this week’s videos touched up on different subjects.

Chapters 4,5,6, and 8 discussed several topics on HTML. These chapters talked about navigation links, images, media and audio files, and accessibility websites. All of these are useful in making how to make your .html file. Navigation links are used for different things, like “click here” or downloads. Images include picture elements, which are used to provide multiple image sources for different screen sizes, resolutions, and page designs, while source elements work with the picture element to specify media conditions and provide a list of image files. MP4, WebM, and OGG are different video formats that can be used with the video element. There are different syntax to embed these into the .html file. An accessibility website is a website that is usable to as many people as possible. W3C helps make websites accessible by focusing on four major areas: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.

It looks like a lot to take it, right? If you are like me and do not have a lot of practice with coding, learning this can be a bit difficult, especially without practice. I know that it was hard for me to take all of this in when I had no idea what Truong, the host and narrator, was talking about. It helped me to look at Visual Studio Code, the app that I used for my project, as well as to practice. After the how-to project, I also got a better visual idea of her explanations. It is still new to me though, and thankfully Visual Studio Code helps finish a lot of the inputs entered (this is not an advertisement for VS Code). Practice makes perfect though, and she explains it very well.

I thought it was interesting that she brought up accessibility because this is something I never really considered until she talked about it. I also think it is great there are websites like W3C that help guide people on making websites accessible. I have checked the website, and they have strong values for sharing the web with everyone. There should definitely be more websites like W3C and it needs to get the recognition it deserves.

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4 responses to “Week 7 Post”

  1. li_05 Avatar
    li_05

    I really do appreciate the accessibility with HTML. The steps and tools that surround learning HTML are all very readily easy to access. Every lesson about HTML seems liek the teacher or proctor is really wanting to share this. It’s such a great tool and skill to have so it’s very understandable why there is such a push to bring new people to the fold! Visual Studio Code (not sponsored) seems like such a great tool for that as well. Kind of shortcutting the process of learning, by autofilling some of those closing tags, so that you can focus on the main content of what you’re working with. It’s really awesome.

  2. ipadbaby22 Avatar
    ipadbaby22

    I agree that Troung’s videos were very beginner friendly and really helped me to expand my .html knowledge. Your summary of the chapters helped me to recall some of those topics the videos covered, especially the four major areas of accessibility. I am writing these comments while working on the Digital Culture project so it’s nice to have a reminder of what we learned and the resources we have. I have some experience with coding, but not too much with .html so Truong’s VS Code tutorials helped a lot. Now that I have used the software more I have really appreciated the beginner friendly aspects like the code plug-ins. The customization options are really fun too.

  3. goosefeet22 Avatar
    goosefeet22

    I also appreciated Troung’s videos as a beginner, like you. I think there is a lot to keep in mind with HTML and it can get overwhelming quite fast. Like you, being able to see it was very helpful. I tried to follow along where I could in CodePen, and it was really amazing to see the output! It reminds me a lot of Kahn Academy coding when that was super popular (about ten years ago when I was in elementary and middle school). Accessibility is definitely something that should be talked about more! In real life there are already so many things that are inaccessible, so why is that also the case for some websites. Like you mention, there are sources to fix this problem like w3c, that definitely need to be utilized, because everyone deserves a chance to doom scroll or go down a rabbit hole every once in a while!

  4. LKSOC1004 Avatar
    LKSOC1004

    HTML is quite the rollercoaster. In the beginning, it seems really intimidating. Learning all of the tags and figuring out the formatting on pictures feels like information overload. Then, you get your first HTML doc working. You set up some headings and paragraphs and feel accomplished. You then realize that you missed a couple things in the header. Easily fixed.

    You put in some images. You put in some hyperlinks. Then, you open up the document in a viewer to see your creation. To your dismay, it looks horrible. This is the point where you realize that all the work you’ve done thus far is only half the battle. Suddenly, you feel eyes on the back of your head and a slight caress of breath on your neck. You realize that CSS is looming over you. Watching. Waiting. Plotting.

    Within a few weeks, though, you get your bearings. You start being able to change colors and fonts, lay things out how you want (with a LOT of trial and error). Then, you start having ideas about menus, popups, animations etc. You then begin the cycle of struggle again to learn how to do these things. And what do you find? The same feeling of eyes, breath, and horror. You’re being hunted and the hunter is known only as “JavaScript”.

    Despite all the struggles to figure out HTML, the farther you go and the more you experiment pays dividends. It is just so freeing. While the HTML journey is still very young for me, it is an exciting one. Not because of everything I can do, but because of everything I haven’t yet struggled to learn.

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