Evaluation of first half semester

The assignments that we have been working on in the first half semester have been A9 Box Clever and A11 On the Job. Along with this we have also been working on our Personal Development Profile’s (PDP) for assignment A10 iMe.

The assignment A9 Box Clever involved creating a standards-compliant CSS webpage (CSS Beauty). I really enjoyed creating the webpage as I felt that it allowed me to experiment with different methods and techniques using CSS. I was then able to build the page using the method that I preferred the most. This also helped as I was able to find solutions to problems that I was facing much easier as I had a better understanding of where I was going wrong.

The project also proved to be incredibly frustrating at times especially when it came to make the page render in all specified browsers. When I had completed the website and began to test it even though it was standards compliant it only rendered properly in IE7 and Firefox 2. This was quite worrying at first but after researching further into this and consulting the book Web Standards Solutions I decided to use a hack. This was something that I had never heard of before but I found it to be an extremely important tool. After using the hack in my page I was quite happy that the page now rendered well in the majority of browsers. If I were to do the project again I would definitely use a hack again. I would however try to use an alternative hack so that it doesn’t have to be applied to a large amount of the code which would make it much more efficient.

The other assignment that we have been working on is A11 On the Job. This has involved working as a team on a professional project. We didn’t get off to the best start in this assignment as we failed to win any of the 2 projects that were on offer. After discussing this in our team we decided that restructuring the team may be beneficial. Shortly after doing this we were able to find 2 suitable clients who needed a website doing so things started to move forward. I took on the role of Designer in the team but although we have our set roles everybody is helping each other with their tasks. I feel has brought the team much closer and everything seems to be going well so far.

Along with the other two assignments we have also been writing our PDP’s as part of assignment A10 iMe. The online journals have changed quite a lot from the reflective entries of last year because now we are given more direction on what we should be writing. This has been beneficial however as we have been doing activities such as locating and applying for an Interactive Media position. By doing entries such as this we are able to have more of an insight onto what to expect after leaving the course. One area that I have definitely let slip so far is commenting on other peoples entries. This is something that I am determined to improve on however and I plan to dedicate myself an hour each week to reading my peers entries and posting suitable comments.