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Click the buttons right next to headings in order to listen to the separate sections.
Week 1
We were introduced to the course. We were introduced to the time management skills too so that we would be able to pass this course. We were also introduced to Turnitin, which we can use to check our future coursework. The time management problem is a very important thing to consider as I am attending a university. There have been no deadlines released yet, but I think that checking out the various time management techniques might come in handy. That is why I visited all the sites provided by our lecturer, where I could see many solutions to such problem.
Week 2
This week we started to use VMs (Virtual Machines). It took me a while to get used to operate it, as all of it was totally new to me. We also interacted with new text editors like Atom, Notepad++, Brackets... I personally really like the Atom, so I tried to write some simple html code in it already. It looks perfect. We also looked at the website awards, which could later help me to distinguish between a good and a bad website, as developing one is one of our courseworks.
Week 3
This week we learnt about web security. A lot of data about me may be stored by any company, while I would not even notice. It is happening on a daily basis: when we are buying something over the internet, or setting a new account at some social media. I have learnt that we need to be actually paranoid and expect that everyone wants some data about me so that we can secure ourselves.
Week 4
The literature review is my first coursework, so I will need to think about it in advance. We were introduced to Google Scholar and the University of Portsmouth Discover, which both are great in finding what we will need for our reviews. The references must be reliable and thanks to these search engines, we can find what we need much quicker. I also have learnt to firstly use a mind map before starting the actual writing of a review.
Week 5
We were given much more details on the literature review and how it should be written. I found it really helpful, as I had almost no idea about it. It is a formal academic writing, which means that it should be logical, structural, thoughtful and evidence based. The referencing is a little complicated too. And we should definitely avoid subjective writing. Later on I found some good examples of literature reviews on the internet and understood most of the points made during the lectures.
Week 6
We were finally officially introduced to HTML. A website cannot be created without using HTML, therefore it is an enormously important language, when it comes to developing a website (which is the next coursework after literature review). I also created my second page during the practicals, as I already tried it sooner. Now I also used the anchor tag, which can be used to navigate between various pages.
Week 7
This was a reading week, meaning that the first draft of literature review was due in. After that, we will have to review each others' works and we will get feedback from ourselves. That way we can improve our work enormously. While reviewing the work of others, we will also need to be aware of the marking criteria, which is another huge benefit, resulting in even better final work.
Week 8
This week we were introduced to CSS as an instrument for styling a website. The best way to create a website is to separate content from the form. So that the content stays in HTML file, which will be linked to a CSS file, determining the form of the page. CSS - Cascading Style Sheet - is very powerful, as it was shown in the lecture, one can do almost impossible stuff with it. The look of a website can be unbelievably changed. We have also learnt about class selectors and id selectors and I took some time to understand the difference appropriately.
Week 9
It is all about efficiency. We have learnt how to develop a website the most efficiently possible. We were also told, how we can customize our editors so that the efficiency will be higher. Also we saw many plugins that we can install to Atom, for example. I instantly downloaded the plugin, which checks the HTML document for any syntax errors.
Week 10
This week was about the perfect design. We have learnt that the way in which we design the website is VERY important. Bad designs tend to cause human errors when using the application and that can lead to horrible consequences. The understanding of the user is always the crucial aspect in creating the application.
Week 11
This week we were introduced to the proper way to insert images into a webpage. We should use the picture tag instead of using only the img tag. In the picture element we can put more images and the browser can display one of those according to various conditions that we make. For example, when the screen gets wider, the image changes to a bigger image.
Just like this image. When you try to resize the window, the photo will change:
Week 12
We were given much more information about the second coursework this week (a website of our own). I tried to use more complicated CSS selectors in my website, so that when the screen is crushed to only 600px wide, it will still look nice. This could be accomplished by using the @media tag, in which one can change the style of any elements according to the size of the screen for example.
I also used it in this website. If you would like to see it, just make the screen 600px or less wide and you will see that the navigation bar will behave differently. It enlarges to the whole screen, so that it will be much more user-friendly on mobile devices too.
Week 13
This week the Marking Scheme was released. This way, we were finally confirmed about the details that we should or should not include in our websites. For example, there should be the W3C validation links everywhere, which would automatically validate the webpage.
As you can see, I included it in my webpage as part of my navigation bar, so that it can be visible from any website.
Week 14
This week the lecturer talked about addressing on the web. There are multiple ways to navigate through a website. I already decided to have multiple HTML files, which are all connected by anchors in the navigation bar included in each of the pages. That way, when you click for example here, you will be redirected to one of my other pages. But there are also other possible ways to achieve this, for example by setting up only one HTML page and the navigation would only send you to an exact part of the page, which would be related to what the user is looking for.
Week 15
This week we talked about accessibility. That is a very important topic, as the website should be accessible to the most people possible. One of the best ways to achieve this is not setting the font-size to a specific value. I should let the user decide how big would the font be. Also, for users, who cannot use mouse for example, they can navigate through the site using the TAB key, just like in my website. On top of that, I included the Responsive Voice into my website, so that the text could be read to the user using javascript.
Week 16
The week 16 was about SVG pictures. Their most interesting feature is that they are ALWAYS in the best quality. Because it is not just a photo made of pixels, its quality is never degraded. It only has the instructions like line from here to here, and circle right there, etc. That means that one can zoom infinitely into the picture and it still will have perfect quality.