This Website

I created this website all on my own & by hand while taking a Web Programming Course in Fall 2019. As someone who has never really been artistically gifted and is new at web development of any kind, I spent about a month total working on the contents of this website.

This website contains no JavaScript, does not use a framework, and solely focuses on HTML and CSS. The goal was for me to hone these skills in a practical environment, while simultaneously expressing my understanding of UI/UX design (that I have learned quite a bit from game development on Heroes of Newerth, by the way) - and of course, expressing myself! Since my website is considered a static website, I currently deploy my website automatically with Netlify and Github.

Since I wanted a minimalist approach for specific learning reasons (as well as a clean type of look for my website), the foundation of this website is based on a minimalist template from Pure.css with its grid system. After searching the web for a simple (yet elegant) UI design, I came across Liam Duffy's website (courtesy of sifting through Reddit threads) and adopted the blog post elements on the main page of my website.

The most challenging part of creating this website is to make sure it is displayed properly and dynamically on as many combinations of device height/width dimensions as possible through the usage of CSS media queries. I learned the most here as I had to let the website choose the correct banner image to use on my home page depending on the device's dimensions and pay attention to every single detail on a wide variety of devices. It is also important to consider the abundance of mobile data users and make image files as small as possible without sacrificing image quality.

Through this website building experience, I also ended up using Firefox's and Google Chrome's website debugger often, particularly for checking the expected output on a variety of devices. Overall, I learned that web development is a very deep field - and this is just the beginning too!

Since February 2020, I have learned NodeJS & React. Although I could convert this website to be hosted with NodeJS & React (or use some other frontend framework), maximizing performance, stability and accessibility are currently my primary objectives (while maintaining simplicity). Sticking with pure HTML and CSS is thus a deliberate decision I have made, as it ensures that my website will withstand the test of time.

Google Lighthouse is an Audit Tool that can be used to audit any website. On September 19, 2020, my website scores 100/100 (or close to it) on all categories for every web page, which meets my primary objectives that were previously mentioned!