When does a tool become a gimmick? (And when does a gimmick become a headache…)
The last couple of weeks have flown by a bit faster than I expected. Last week, we got to play around with Sass, which I actually had some fun with. It reminded me of my time tackling object-oriented programming a few semesters ago. Sass came more naturally to me than I thought it would. That being said, I don’t know how often I will implement Sass in my own web coding career.
I found nesting to be fun and convenient, but I quickly confused myself with the process. To compare it to Java: nesting leads to cleanliness and cleanliness leads to great coding practices. However, not everything (and I say this to myself) needs to be nested. I often found myself nesting EVERYTHING like a deranged bird trying to create the perfect abode. And what happens when you do this? CSS that doesn’t function. (Who woulda thunk?)
After doing this to myself, I, of course, took a peak at my original CSS file and saw every error I created for myself. How easy it would’ve been to fix it then and there. In the end, I ended up deleting everything in my SCSS file and restarted my coding with less nesting.
As for Bootstrap, it seemed cool and helpful in theory, but I could see just how easily it could become a crutch. Bootstrap had a lot of great examples of layout, and I think it could be used as a reference instead of an import. To bring up computer coding once again, it’s a common practice to copy the code of something else and make it your own. It’s pretty much just plagiarism, but apparently, it’s okay as long as it functions differently than the original. (And these are the people we are letting take over the web design industry?)
Aside from that, Parallax was fun. I enjoyed looking through the examples provided by the Professor. The real parallax stuff was pretty intimidating, but I had a lot of fun creating my simple little website with multiple images. This is definitely a topic that I would like to research more about in my free time.
Lastly, the final project… We’re here, we made it, we’re almost done. For the final project, I would like to turn my midterm project design into a functional microsite. On top of that, I would like to take one of the previous sites I made and spruce it up a bit. I’d like to add some more content and graphics. I think I could really make it sparkle with some of the techniques that I’ve learned so far. At the risk of copying something I’ve done in the past, I would like to add more responsive elements to the design, as well as code it for smaller screens. I am excited to begin working on the final project.