Portfolio Website Evaluation
Over the past few weeks I have designed, developed and published my portfolio website for my unit in Web Design. Not only will this website further my grade to a higher level but also aid me in personal professional development and my career overall.
Researching the tools to create my portfolio website has been integral to the success of my grade in this unit. Not only have I learnt the code which structures content on the internet (HTML) but also learnt a good amount of code that stylises that content (CSS) and makes it presentable. Over the past few weeks I've taken time into learning all of the key features that builds a website such as the different type of link relations (stylesheets, scripts, licence, etc) and how certain web design companies structure out their content with sections and divs. Within CSS, not only have I learnt the basic stylisation of elements, but gone above and beyond to learn selectors, properties, pseudo, inheritence, specificity, etc. With knowing both a good amount of HTML/CSS, I am pretty confident I am able to pick up any coding program such as Dreamweaver or Notepad++ and create a website off of the tip of my fingers pretty easily.
But with also knowing the tools to creating a website, researching how to use them is most important as well. With the usage of pre-made dimensions such as the 960 Grid System and how to utilise positioning elements with resources such as the "F" shape pattern, I've done quite a lot of research which has helped me create my Final Product. Without these resources, I wouldn't have been able to know what content is best suited for a portfolio website and how to make my website attractive with having it perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. As well as knowing what makes a good website, knowing what makes a bad website has helped me learn some of the web design issues I must avoid. Issues such as consistency within aesthetics (fonts, backgrounds, colours, etc) and navigational methods have been integral to learn in creating my Final Product.
The main aim of this unit was to introduce me to designing websites and building them using a coding program such as Adobe Dreamweaver or Notepad++. At the end of the unit, I was to produce my own personal portfolio based on a detailed design brief. Overall, the point of designing and developing a portfolio website was to understand certain web design issues and produce an effective web solution to the initial brief.
During the whole process of creating my website I've felt that learning the tools of what makes a website was most fundamental to the success of this unit. Without doing the initial exercises over codecademy.com and looking into various resources/tutorials, I wouldn't have had the confidence I needed to successfully create a sophisticated and comprehensive website. For a Web Designer/Developer, it is important to learn the very basics of CSS positioning and styling. Without the knowledge of floating/margins/padding/positions, etc, I personally would've found it very hard to structure my website layout successfully. This personal research was especially important to my success as I felt that the tutorials provided for creating a web template weren't suited to learning the basics needed with HTML/CSS.
If I was to comment on an element that didn't go to plan during the whole unit I would say time. The amount of time needed for this unit has been quite a lot especially for someone who is looking towards a higher grade. Personally, if I was to ever do a similar subject in the future I would love to have some guidance on web development tools as I do see a lot of students struggling even though they took the recommended tutorial for a web template. Time isn't a factor that can always go sparing, doing a unit at the same time as 2 or 3 other ones and organising time for attention on a specific one can always be hard to handle. I felt the side the research side of web technologies and issues was more than enough to go on but the support in knowing the tools was quite an independant study personally.
To conclude, I feel like addressing these weaknesses both in the Unit and myself will help me improve on my future work with web development and the basic semantics of other creative units. By recognising my problems and experiencing the accomplishment of fixing them I feel that utilising the tools I've learnt is important to learning the fundamentals to Web Design/Development. This Unit has been an interesting and productive road to take within Interactive Media and it's a skill that won't disperse from my mindset anytime soon.
During the whole process of creating my website I've felt that learning the tools of what makes a website was most fundamental to the success of this unit. Without doing the initial exercises over codecademy.com and looking into various resources/tutorials, I wouldn't have had the confidence I needed to successfully create a sophisticated and comprehensive website. For a Web Designer/Developer, it is important to learn the very basics of CSS positioning and styling. Without the knowledge of floating/margins/padding/positions, etc, I personally would've found it very hard to structure my website layout successfully. This personal research was especially important to my success as I felt that the tutorials provided for creating a web template weren't suited to learning the basics needed with HTML/CSS.
If I was to comment on an element that didn't go to plan during the whole unit I would say time. The amount of time needed for this unit has been quite a lot especially for someone who is looking towards a higher grade. Personally, if I was to ever do a similar subject in the future I would love to have some guidance on web development tools as I do see a lot of students struggling even though they took the recommended tutorial for a web template. Time isn't a factor that can always go sparing, doing a unit at the same time as 2 or 3 other ones and organising time for attention on a specific one can always be hard to handle. I felt the side the research side of web technologies and issues was more than enough to go on but the support in knowing the tools was quite an independant study personally.
To conclude, I feel like addressing these weaknesses both in the Unit and myself will help me improve on my future work with web development and the basic semantics of other creative units. By recognising my problems and experiencing the accomplishment of fixing them I feel that utilising the tools I've learnt is important to learning the fundamentals to Web Design/Development. This Unit has been an interesting and productive road to take within Interactive Media and it's a skill that won't disperse from my mindset anytime soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment