DEV Community: Alex Pareja

FCC: Portfolio Project

Alex Pareja — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 00:21:50 +0000

After completing Free Code Camp's front end course, there are a few things I took away from the experience.

I have more questions about web development than before I started. Which means;
I got better at googling questions about issues I had. Some issues are hard to explain. It feels like google searching is a skill in itself.
This one is important. I put ~300 hours worth of really putting my heart into learning something new.

I proved to myself that I can "grasp it", even just a little. What was once an intimidating soup of colorful letters is now familiar and readable.

Moving onward, I will be humbling myself with FCC's Javascript courses. This is next level stuff for me, so I'm not trying to rush it.

Slow and steady wins the race.

FCC: Technical Documentation Page

Alex Pareja — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 03:04:24 +0000

Once again, drawing inspiration from Elite Dangerous, I turned FCCs tech doc about Javascript into a cockpit interface manual. Biggest take away here is that I really need to get better at understanding media queries. I bit off more than I can chew with the menu. I kinda copped-out with the responsiveness there, and FCCs example code did not work for my particular build.

I need to find a way, using HTML and CSS only, to hide and toggle the menu, or place it in a way that is still accessible to the user on a small screen, instead of just straight-up hiding the menu and forcing the end user to scroll. Perhaps the next shot I take ill try a mobile first approach.

I did, however, really enjoy laying out Elites "amber at night" color palette.

Launched my landing page.

Alex Pareja — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 22:43:13 +0000

https://notalexpareja.github.io/

I felt like I knew just enough to make myself a basic landing page. I focused on keyframes for this one because I wanted one those fancy text animations, too. Made elements fade in and the header drop in above the icons. Again referencing CSS:TDG. This book really made it easier to understand how keyframe works. Im really starting to love this book. https://meyerweb.com/eric/books/css-tdg/

Im hosting it on GitHub, and I've been getting familiar with how GitHub works, I'm not super concerned about git stuff just yet, but I'm using it because, well.. because I can.

FCC: Product Landing Page

Alex Pareja — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 23:12:01 +0000

I took inspiration from one of my favorite video games, Elite Dangerous, and created a simple landing page for one of its fictional spaceship manufactures.

This one had me diving deep into CSS flex box. Starting to get the hang of how it works, when it helps and when it does not help. Despite the projects simplicity there was a lot of head scratching here, but it was worth it as the vision in my head slowly came together. I now understand all the jokes about centering a div. Who knew?

One thing Im taking away from this project is building a button. Instead of using button element I just used an anchor tag link, tossed it in a div, and built a button around that. Creatively speaking, I found it to be more cooperative than trying to style a button element. At least until Im better at styling buttons.

I recently bought CSS: The Definitive Guide by Eric Meyer & Estelle Weyl and needless to say it helped me a bit during this project, as it goes into some core mechanics behind flex.

FCC: Survey

Alex Pareja — Wed, 17 Jun 2020 04:09:01 +0000

I drew some inspiration from the classic Robocop film for this FCC project.

Explored box-shadow, ::focus, and attempted a minimalistic feel.

Bender

Alex Pareja — Fri, 12 Jun 2020 06:22:52 +0000

My entry to Free Code Camps responsive web design project, a tribute page to one of my favorite robots.

The page is painfully simple but it felt good just typing away. I may revisit this as I get better at CSS and do my man Bender some justice.

My Journey Into Web Dev

Alex Pareja — Tue, 02 Jun 2020 01:44:56 +0000

I started in April by visiting FreeCodeCamp and got myself through all the Responsive Web Design modules. I had such a good time revisiting HTML and learning CSS that I decided to jump in head first and paid for a front end course on Udemy.

I consider myself lucky to be employed during the pandemic (I am not currently working in web dev). I was offered time off, and I used that time wisely to start learning.

Im about to dive into JavaScript. I’ve been down this road before and gave up in the past. Being armed with HTML + CSS knowledge, I feel like I can give this another round in the context of web development. You can say I am motivated by the amount of tools and resources available out there.

I plan on creating my landing page with what I know so far while going deeper into JS, as well as following my own progress by blogging here.

Im not great at blogging or even writing for that matter, but this journey is important to me.

I wish everyone health and happiness in your own journeys, see you in the comments 👍🏻