During the past week, I learned many new concepts and languages in a short amount of time. After learning Javascript, my class jumped to learning HTML. Along with this, we learned CSS to complement HTML and improve the presentation of our webpages. And finally, we learned Semantic UI, an UI framework that provides several tools to make it easier to set up pages using HTML. With the combination of all three, our class practiced creating webpages with similiar, but honestly not as complete, qualities common among website pages.
Starting this week, this was my first time creating webpages and even using HTML and CSS. The only experience I had that helped me was my knowledge of another markup language called XML. But other than that, I was on my own. Learning the basic syntax and how HTML and CSS is implemented was pretty easy. However, the difficult part was to get the webpage how I wanted. I learned through my practice of creating webpages that the elements in HTML were perhaps finicky. Perhaps I wanted to have three pictures and their complementary paragraphs be set up in three columns adjacent to one another. Then I have to fiddle with HTML and CSS until it is perfect. As I add more and more to my code, new problems may arise where I have backtrack and figure out what is causing this mess on my webpage. Perhaps I used the wrong property or I shouldn’t have used that property at all. After enough times of going back and forth between looking at my code and my reuslting webpage, it becomes a frustrating endeavor to have everything how I liked it.
With Semantic UI added to my toolbelt, it provides many ways to create more higher quality webpages with smaller work needed. WIth every new tool you gain, one has to learn how to use it. There is some time needed to learn a tool. But the costs to learn said tool is outweighed by its benefits. Semantic UI provides things like menus, grids, containers, and the like to create decent quality webpages. Yes, the things that can be done using Semantic UI can be done with just HTML and CSS alone. However, unless I have specific needs in mind, I definitely don’t want to go through the trouble of creating a menu from scratch when I have frameworks to do it for me. I just have to plop down a set of classes in one of my elements to have these massive changes to my webpage.
However, some issues arise when you arn’t too familiar or in depth with the framework. WIth Semantic UI, I find myself struggling to get the webpage how I wanted. Now, not only I have to deal with HTML, but now I have to fiddle with Semantic UI classes to get that one menu to properly to span the width of the webpage. I often find that I was just missing one more Semantic UI class or needed to set up one more property. But that doesn’t make the journey to fix the problem any easier. It’s like a puzzle, where you figure out all aspects except for one key component to complete it.
Perhaps with enough time using HTML and this UI framework, I’ll probably have a less frustrating experience when I come across a new problem. But as of right now, I feel more convinced that I prefer using object oriented languages like C++ and playing around in other fields like graphics. Though, having the ability to create basic webpages can maybe come in handy one day.