The Portfolio Exam

This website taught me all I ever needed to know about HTML, and introduced me to the possibilities of web design.

There exists a place on the Internet called “Neopets.com”, in which every child’s grader’s dreams are realized, in which one can live in a virtual world, much like Second Life, but for children. This is where I spent the majority of my youth, taking care of “pets” and attempting to earn money dubbed “neopoints”. It was at this website that I first learned HTML, whilst trying to add moving text and colored fonts to my shop.

The instructions on the website referred to the use of a website maker, such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage, but I have always had difficulty using such programs. I actually tried using iWeb, but to my disappointment, it was confusing and impossible for me to understand. Thus, using the method of “forging ahead and muddling through”, I decided to use HTML to make the website. I actually prefer diving straight into the backbone of what makes a webpage look the way it does, for it is much easier for me to rearrange and redesign when I can see the problem firsthand. While HTML seems complicated to a beginner, all it takes is a good tutorial site and ten minutes to understand the structure of the language.

Even within these two companies, there exist hundreds of different operating systems.

I disagree with the statement that “mindlessness has replaced mindfulness.” I am confident that every single student in our class read and reread the instructions for the website portfolio, and went even further to question previous students. However, computers are never a “sure thing”, and with scores of different operating systems, interfaces, and browsers floating about, just one pure set of instructions aimed at only two operating systems is bound to cause confusion.

“Though they were highly verbal, like other college students they seemed to prefer someone showing them what to do, an instant fix, rather than “reading,” detailed directions." While I do agree that the act of reading instructions, especially with something one already knows how to accomplish, can be cursory, I do not think the quoted sentiment applies to our assignment. I believe that everyone, even me, would have appreciated and followed, to a T, a detailed list of instructions, especially with something as new and confusing as website technology. Not many students have been asked to deal with the creation of a website before, at least not in the scale and amount of categorizing asked of us, and even though the instructions on the website were helpful, they certainly did not address every problem that one could have encountered along the way.