Week 2 of Bootcamp -

By Keisha Shepherd

Written 10/21/2019

Wow, two weeks down 22 more to go!

In week two, the last class focused on more CSS, bootstrap and media queries. And a LOT of time was spent on the homework. Our first assignment is due this week to build a portfolio that looked like a picture. I'll go over some of the struggles I learned from that later. But what were my takeaways this week?

1. Shortcuts are Amazing
The biggest takeaway from this week are shortcuts. Shortcuts are amazing and mind-blowing when you see how much better life can be with simple shortcuts
• VS Code Shortcuts
• Comment Ctrl+K, Ctrl+C
• Move line up and down Alt + Arrow Key
• Copy and paste line up or down Alt+Shift+up/down arrow key
• Type HTML select HTML5 from the list and then tab key and a template appears for you.
• Type link then tab and the like with the href to be filled out appears ready for use
2. You may be doing things the hard way
Yes. In the first homework assignment, we had to build a website with HTML and CSS. And I did it from scratch and ran into many issues that I wish I had screenshots of...but today I learned we were tested to do it the hard way even though sites like bootstrap exist to make our lives easier.

I'm really excited to start using bootstrap for our next homework assignment.

• I needed to put the homework assignment onto my GitHub.io page but I already had a page there. Rather than looking through notes and finding a way to add a repo to GitHub.io, I just removed everything from the repo and moved the files into the folder and checked the new files into the repo. I've been doing this with all of the assignments all week. Finally, I asked. Adding code to the GitHub.io is so easy, I made a tutorial for the class in HTML using bootstrap and published it in minutes.
3. I'm ready to do more
This course goes at an easy pace for me because I can review class activities ahead of time and stay ahead. I've asked for more challenging assignments and hope that they can do that. There are so many possibilities. So I will hopefully be able to step it up.
Alright, now for the homework assignment. We were asked to create a website with an about me, portfolio, and contact me page. It seemed simple enough until you got into the weeds.
1. Background Image and Sticky Footer issues
I spent so much time trying to get my sticky Footer onto the bottom of the page and my background image in the right location. The footer was always just above the bottom causing unnecessary scrolling. I talked to the instructors and based on their advice, did the assignment from scratch all over again.
2. Image Sizing Issues
Images just don’t want to cooperate. I don’t have a trained eye for image distortion but Alex Zook took one look at my portfolio page and immediately said something about the distorted images. So it’s something I could go back and fix later.
My study group member, Tina said she would put the image in Paint, resize and crop it to the exact size she needed. Which actually seems like a much better idea. (Note: I am using it on the bootstrap homework.
3. Doing it twice
Like I said, I did the website in probably 16 hours. Then when I went to class, the TA and Instructor suggested I start over trying not to use as many positioning elements to get the sticky footer correct. I didn’t see a problem with that and started over from almost scratch. That’s when it hit me that the second time around was going to be just as hard as the first time because elements were going everywhere. But I did get the background images correct, which was good.

In the third week of class, I’ll have to remote in. So that’s going to be an interesting experience. Let’s see how it goes!