First looking at the content I had to go through, I already had a feeling I would DNF my first attempt at Browser History 1. Though most of the steps involved rudementary structuring of a website and a lot of copy-and-pasting, each part took me a painful amount of time. I did not want to accidentally copy and paste something wrong, so I slowly moved through each step. My advice for others struggling with this aspect of the WODs is simply gaining familiarity with the instructions and goals. I am the type of learner who needs lots of experience with a task in order to do it more efficiently in the future, so don’t worry if you also have to go through a lot of trial and error.
I also had trouble starting my server on several half-attempts. I had to restart my recording because I wasn’t able to complete step one, but ended up figuring out it was becuase I had not de-activated it from a different directory from another class assignemnt. Because I had completed the Lab on webpages prior to compelting this WOD, a lot of the code I had remembered so it was fairly straightforward. Still, I struggled with time and DNF’d at around 23 minutes, but I hope to revisit the WOD to better my time.
I was happy to find that just off being more familiar with the formatting of WOD instructions, as well as BrowserHistory2 being shorter in general than BrowserHistory 1, I was able to go through this WOD much faster than the first. I still did run into issues, however.
When creating a font-family for headings to be Oswald, I was not sure if we were allowed to look at a website with links to fonts during the WODs or had to memorize the link by memory. For my first run, I could not remember the family by heart so I referenced a website which may not actually be allowed. This also created another issue that may prove the consequences to copying links from websites: not copying the entire line of code. I had copied the url link for the font, but not the “type = text/css” or “href=”, leaving me confused as to why my website had not changed. I eventually realized I was missing pieces of the line, but I reccommend not relying solely on copy&pasting, as there could be unnoticed from the source and your side as well. I ended my first attempt with Av at around 11 minutes, but knowing the crucial error I made I could definitely go back and do better.
I could not even find a good footing from the very first step of Browser History 3. It was way more advanced than the methods we had learned prior and really cranked it difficulty up a level. Feeling completely lost, I referenced the screencast right away and observed what the instructor did to alter the positions of the webpage’s elements. Since much of the actions being done were around positioning, I learned that there are many different ways to write code that will achieve similar results. You could do positioning through centering or margins with specific pixel distances or floating. Though I mostly followed the Proffersor’s methods for my Av 13mintues 30 seconds attempt, I would say it is helpful to try all the different methods to see what you like best and for overall practice as there may be times you can use one but not the other due to restrictions on the page.