Last week’s lab was a bit challenging even though the directions were to create a “simple” web site, I spent a good amount of time after class to complete it. The lecture last week centred on CSS and I believe this week we will be adding CSS to the web pages we created last week.
I’ve done a lot of reading this week on CSS and because none of this really comes naturally to me, CSS feels to be even more complex than HTML. I think I’ll generally stick to the basics of CSS although the options seem unlimited as to how many bells and whistles you can add to style your website.
I’m attempting to learn how to write CSS using the recommended way -by creating an external style sheet. Like HTML tags, CSS comes with a long list of properties to use, as well as lists to indicate values and units of measure. I’m sure people who actually code and style websites for a living can quickly recall the necessary elements or properties to include In their HTML and CSS documents. However as a beginner to web development, this is not the case for me so I rely heavily on resources (and there many of them) on the web. Taking a website into inspector and practicing altering the various CSS properties has also helped to instantly compare the CSS changes to how it looks on a web page.
Another interesting part of CSS we began to discuss in the last lecture and explored in subsequent readings this week is around fonts and typography. “Canva’s Ultimate Guide to Font Pairing” is a good read especially for those who do not come from a graphic design background. There are many techniques to consider when creating font pairings for your design, so Canva offers recommendations for most every type of project. Because the web is 90% text, fonts and font styles are of utmost importance. Font stacking was a new concept for me. The idea that the viewer of the website must have the font on their system to view it on the web and so offering alternative fonts In the order for the site to default to, is a very critical part of your CSS style sheet.