PROCESS & METHODS
When I was first assigned to this assignment, I was excited as this is going to be my first time creating a web page & also anxious as I am a first timer. Within minutes, I was partnered up with my course mate Khalid aka Koroma. We simply clicked & started contacting each other with regards to our assignment. We composed our very own short essays (self introduction) & got together to discuss & settle the assignment. Yet beforehand, we had each did some research on certain HTML codes that we were bound to insert to our web page. As we are both boy & girl (Mars & Venus), we had our own different point of views with regards to the colours, style & such in the web page. Yet, we are committed to complete the assignment as presentable as ever & so, we compromised without struggling too much which is brilliant. And somehow our work of art turns out to be fine. I simply had a hunch that we are going to be swell all together throughout this assignment.
Throughout the assignment, I used Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer (IE) & Google Chrome to surf the net for information & also to test drive whether the web page created works smoothly on these web browsers. I found that both IE & Firefox works well with the web page. However, the web page created is not compatible in Google Chrome. The music inserted in the web page could not be played. Instead each time you open the web page, a dialog box will pop out asking you whether you want to download the song or not. However, after a little debugging in the HTML music code, the web page is able to run smoothly without music. The advantage of using Google Chrome is that there is an Inspect Element tab whereby it shows all the HTML codes used in the web page directly in a dialog box. When you click on any of the HTML codes shown in the panel, it will highlight the part of the web page that the codes had created.
Nevertheless, I also learned how to search for desired information using specific words (keywords) & by using the advanced option efficiently in the web browsers mentioned above. The advantage of search engines is their capability to display your required information from worldwide. You need not flick through piles of books to gather your information. The disadvantages will be that the information searched will be all listed out regardless whether it is the one you required or not. You just might need to click through all of it in order to get your desired information.
freewebs.com was selected as our web hosting server and some HTML Guide books plus other resourceful HTML websites were our guideline in creating the website. I learned how to publish a web page to the internet through this web hosting server and to upload HTML files to the web host. The advantages of web hosting server are it is complimentary (in some ways) and it has guidelines on how to publish your desired web page. As for the disadvantages is that it only has limited space for you to store your uploaded files and display it online. Another thing is that once you registered to the web hosting server website, it will send you annoying newsletters or ads asking you to upgrade your account for bigger spaces & more features with some $$$ (as usual).
Most of the HTML typing was done using Notepad whereby I save it as .html. I am able to view my designed web page without internet connection hassle which is awesome. I learned how to link a web page to another with a click of mouse. This actually enables the viewers to check out the connected web page within minutes. However, when the wrong linking address was inserted, it will be utterly troublesome. I never knew the real purpose of Notepad right until now though.
I also used MS Office Picture Manager for editing purpose as in resizing and changing the colour, brightness and contrast of the photos, the background images & other pictures. The graphical items that we uploaded were modified in order for it to be clearer & feasible for viewing purpose. The effect is perfect with some clicks here & there.
MS Word was also used to find out the font types available, font size effects & for some other typing purpose. However, if you were to type out your blog in MS Word & then, copy & paste it to blogger, an error will occur. The blog post will not be displayed in your blog until the HTML codes from MS Word are deleted.
Blogger.com was selected as the spot for my blog report.
EXPERIENCES
Coding using HTML is an amazing experience as I never knew how much such little codes could produce. In this assignment, my partner & I used a lot of HTML codes ranging from the basic ones that was taught in class to the ones that we discovered through the internet & also some from our passed experiences. I even looked up some books related to HTML (Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML by O'Reilly) which are real helpful. Some of the codes required quite a lot of debugging as it does not work well. For instance, the embed code for inserting some background music to our web page. This code is tricky as it requires a lot of work in order for it to run smoothly. For example, we need to verify the type of music (mp3, midi, wav) & the file size of the music that is able to be uploaded onto the web hosting server.
As for the non-independent HTML codes, once you forgotten to insert the closing tag, the product displayed might be faulty. For example, the marquee code, its behaviour need to be specified in order for it to move smoothly & the closing tag is a must. Otherwise, everything will go distorted (blank). Another code which is rather tough is the body background code. The picture for the background needs to be compatible with the size of the opened window so that it will not be in tiles form. We can always untile it using other codes. But then again, it will looked far too stretched & the effect will not be desirable.
The HTML codes that I fancied using is the HTML font colour, font face & font size codes. This is because it really puts on the colour & makes the whole web page looks lively. The colour codes that I got are from here & are simply splendour: computerhope.com/htmcolor.htm.
Searching for a web hosting server is easy as all I have to do is google (Google even has its own Geocities - closing down though) it. But then a whole long list came out. I had to click on one by one to check it out. Furthermore, I had no idea what is (the purpose of) a web hosting server until I looked up for its definition.
At first, my partner & I tested out the bravehost.com web hosting server. We even uploaded all the required files to the net through it. But the result was not as expected. We cannot change the URL of our website, the colour is not very attractive & worst of all the files that was uploaded were kind of missing. It requires a lot of reading/researching beforehand. & so we switched our web hosting server to freewebs.com which is excellent. The layout is far more eye-catching and the HTML can be modified without hassle at all. I even switched it to be able to read HTML codes only while creating the web page, in order for it to read our very own created HTML codes. Moreover, the uploaded files are all well organized.
Uploading files are rather difficult as it all depends on the file size & the speed of the connection. And somehow my internet connection speed is utterly dreadful even when I am on broadband. Some files that are larger such as the music files & pictures take up a mass amount of my time when uploading. Therefore, in order to have a quicker upload, I resized the files first beforehand. & this actually eased the hard time of uploading (a little). Using freewebs.com to upload files is simpler as it is well organized. Once the files are uploaded, I can manage them easily at the site manager and easily check out the files’ links. Nevertheless, when these files are resized, the wait for the website to load will not be too long for the viewers as well.
Blogging is a stranger to me. I am a newbie in this. My first hand experience in blogging is actually in blogging out this report. When I first started to do some typing on this report, I have no idea how or where to begin with. I search the net for some hints on blogging & I found out that most of the bloggers use blogs (web logs) as an online diary to tell the world about what they are/had been up to/about to do (past-present-future). & this gives me an idea or sort on how to blog. I search throughout the net for blog service providers (wordpress.org, livejournal.com, Friendster blog) & finally selected the blogger.com (blogspot) which is linked to Gmail. This is somehow easier as I do have a Gmail & also blogger seems to be the most prominent one in the current cyber world.
To make my blog much more interesting, I actually changed the layout of the page & even inserted some of my own HTML codes in order to make it much more vivid.
CONCLUSION
All in all, the creation of a web page using HTML is magnificent. It will definitely come in handy next time. & blogging will be real memorable as this is the first one & will be the lasting one. One thing that I will like to do differently next round is to insert much more effects into the web page. Maybe by including some CSS codes. Yet for now, I will say that this assignment is to uncover the hidden trails of HTML. Through this assignment, I tend to familiarize myself to both HTML & blogging a lot. The whole process of this assignment is a whole lot of progression and it is worthwhile. This assignment is definitely cheers for both me & my partner.
You must learn day by day, year by year, to broaden your horizon. The more things you love, the more you are interested in, the more you enjoy, the more you are indignant about, the more you have left when anything happens
-Ethel Barrymore-
By,
Chan Yuet Ai
-1000922541-
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