CSS - HTML 5 Nav Tag

Playing with the <nav> tag

Apologies for the lack of a post yesterday - I simply didn't have enough time. However, that's not to say I haven't been doing some learning.

This weekend I've been looking into some of the tags that were introduced with HTML 5, specifically the <nav> tag, as well as some flat design ideas and CSS transitions.

I made a very simple navigation menu using the nav tag and the usual list of links, and then styled it with some ideas I had floating around in m head to do with flat design. Then I applied CSS transitions to give the links a nice gradual fade from one colour to a slightly darker shade on hover. I was please that everything worked completely first time - something that usually doesn't happen.

My shiny HTML 5 <nav> menu.

Javascript - Learning Loops Part 2

Learning Loops Part 2

Yesterday I was totally confused by loops and I hoped that after giving my brain a night to digest the concept, I'd have a better understanding today.

I'm pleased to say that's been the case. I've written a nice little script today that uses a for loop as well as a while loop to essentially achieve the same outcome. Basically to increase the value my variable holds by an amount (I've been multiplying by two or three), writing the new value and then looping until a certain number is reached.

I'm feeling super positive now because I've broken both a mental as well as a knowledge barrier with reagrds to learning javascript.

Tomorrow I'm going to continue with loops and if I get the time maybe some debugging.

Javascript - Learning Loops Part 1

Learning Loops Part 1

As I said in yesterday's post, I delved into the world of loops this evening (for, while etc.). As I expected, I'm very confused. I do semi-understand the principle mechanics behind it, but there's still a lot for me to digest. I haven't actually written any code this evening as I spent the time reading about the idea (remember I can only do 30-60 mins a day).

Hopefully my brain will digest the information I learned today and I'll have a clearer picture of it all tomorrow. This is exactly the point where I've given up before and I refuse to do so again.

In other areas, I'm slowly building up a good selection of reference web pages which are helping me tremendously if I run into something I've not encountered or an unexplained part of a tutorial or article.

Javascript - Testing a Condition to Determine the Output (Cont.)

 Testing a Condition to Determine the Output (Cont.)

Yesterday I didn't quite finish the whole exercise - I'm taking it all very slowly and making sure each small chunk is digested properly by my brain. One of my main problems is trying to do too much and becoming overwhelmed. Not a good idea for learning a programming language, or anything really for that matter.

Today I continued to learn about testing conditions. I'm confident with very basic if statements (if, else, if else) now and have today delved into using 'switch'. I've seen this used before but never really understood what's going on but I think I have a basic grasp now.

Next up is learning about basic loops. Now we are getting into territory I've not explored (told you I had a very basic knowledge!) so I am excited to be getting my teeth into something that will challenge my brain a bit.

The other plus to all this is that I'm slowly being able to type without looking at the keyboard which is a useful skill to have anyway...

Javascript - Testing a Condition to Determine the Output

Testing a Condition to Determine the Output

I'd write a welcome post, but it'd only get lost in the sea of eventual posts that will be coming and so I'll jump right in as if I've been doing this for years.

Today I started to learn about conditional testing in JS. This is a concept I'm familiar with but as I'm learning from scratch I want to refresh myself.

The road ahead seems quite daunting at the moment as I'm already having to constantly refer back to the Mozilla JS reference (a very handy resource, by the way). Having said that, I'm determined to plough ahead and become a great programmer and no longer be that guy who only knows enough code to get by without really understanding any of it.