You just got week fived

I don't like the word reflection. Just saying. It's almost as bad as "journey".

I think by this stage I've gotten the basics of HTML and CSS downpat. That said, I'm still not very confident with it, and building pages from scratch is a bitch. So. While although I think I've got it, I also think I'm a massive beginner which depresses me. I think it's necessary to put a little more effort into learning it than I have, I guess. I know that semantic markup is the name given to the code that describes the information you're putting on your page in elements - so rather than having to put bold tags throughout your page to make headings bold, you can make it so all headings of a certain type are bold. It also makes readability more possible - think of the word "semantics"... different words have different meaning for you. You want tags that make more sense. For example is less logical than , with the em standing for emphasis. And and so on.

I've never been good at explaining things so this is hard. But I understand what it means. I guess I'll steal this website's example, which was very helpful when a few moments ago I tried to explain ~semantic ~markup.

Say you want all of your headings bold. You could go through and put all the necessary headings in b tags. However, as you update the site, you start adding more headings. More b tags. You screw one up here and there and the page looks ridiculous. You constantly have to comb through your code and find the offending tag.

The heading code is very useful for this. It requires CSS. There are a variety of header codes, ranging from h1 to h4 and so on... I think they're automatically bold. With CSS you can also edit the header tag so that the font size is how you like it.

For example
h1 { font-size: 50px; } will make all of your h1 headings 50 pixels in size. And then you can edit the colour and stuff.

Even though it's in the CSS code, you'll still have to put HTML tags in around your headers so the computer knows which text are headers. So if you've put the aforementioned CSS code in using the h1, put and (without the ! marks) around your headings.

What is epic about it is that you can make different headings. h1 could be red and big and h4 on the otherhand could be more like a subheading and blue and small. But either way you're transforming entire elements. Which is nice.

As a result, non semantic markup would do the thing will all the bold codes and have to specify the font size and colour for every heading. Which would be a pain in the ass.

I guess I kind of made that website's example my own, but oh well. I need to credit them anyway. The website also goes into presentational markup, which I now understand, but I won't bother going into it.

I can't really explain what the 'cascading' in Cascading Style Sheet really means. So I'll get the internets to help me.

This website is legendary.

Style Sheets allow style information to be specified from many locations. Multiple (partial) external style sheets can be referenced to reduce redundancy, and both authors as well as readers can specify style preferences. In addition, three main methods can be employed by an author to add style information to HTML documents, and multiple approaches for style control are available in each of these methods. In the end, style can be specified for a single element using any, or all, of these methods. What style is to be used when there is a direct conflict between style specifications for an element?

Cascading comes to the rescue. A document can have styles specified using all of these methods, but all the information will be reduced to a single, cohesive "virtual" Style Sheet. Conflict resolution is based on each style rule having an assigned weight according to its importance in the scheme of things. A rule with a higher overall importance will carry a higher weight. This will be used in place of a competing style rule with a lower weight/importance. A hierarchy of competing styles is thus formed creating a "cascade" of styles according to their assigned weights.

So basically, cascading means the ordering of code based on importance so that stronger code overrides less strong code in order to style something. This is important because there is often conflicting codes when styling elements.

I think. Chances are I got that completely wrong.

Censorship. This is something I feel strongly about. The government's plans to filter the internet are stupid. I first became aware of the topic on a website message board I frequently visit.

I think it's a poor move by the Labour Government for several reasons. The first - it is a typical, vote-grabbing stunt designed to attract parents with the 'somebody think of the children' mantra. The government thinks there is a need for something where there isn't. Yes, there is a lot of inappropriate content on the internet, and yes, children can access it. But it is the parents' responsibility to filter this for their kids. This is where the problem is. It is not the government's responsibility to do so, and it is also nearly impossible for them to do this on a national scale. It is too difficult technically, financially, and morally, when you think about other people's civil liberties, particularly for members of the population that are over 18.

The cost. According to the Australians Against Internet Censorship group on Facebook, initial setup costs are estimated to be around $44 million, with an additional $33 million for every year it runs. The Labour Government has already cost us enough, what with a several billion dollar deficit currently reported, and this is just another useless program designed to attract votes and cost way too much money.

It will slow down the internet. When various filters were tested, internet speeds dropped from 21 to 86%. My internet's slow enough already, thank you very much.

Civil liberties. We pride ourselves on being a free country, where we have freedom of speech and all that stuff that some citizens of the world don't get. In an earlier lecture I remember Michael putting up a list of other countries whose internet is already censored in the same way that our government proposes to. From memory, most were Communist or run by dictators. We are a democratic country and yet our government is impeding on our rights.

How can you define what is appropriate or inappropriate? There are so many boundaries. What age level is the country internet's content appropriate for? How are the lists of illegal content compiled? Who compiles them? Who will maintain the list?

It's a shit idea. Basically Kevin Rudd is a n00b. And Stephen Conroy. And whatever dimwit thought it was a good idea.

CSS (creativity sucking swine)

I'm not that bitter about CSS, I just thought my HTML abbreviation thing was so cool and assumed it would be possible to make another one. But it didn't work.

Coding is frustrating, but I guess oddly rewarding. The thing I find interesting, though, is that we're being creative by using a code, a logic, a set language... it's creating something out of logic. I guess that's not normal for me, and I'm sure Jackson Pollock would be ashamed. I've tried to throw code on a blank TextWrangler thingy with miscellaneous passion and try to reveal my artistic subconscious, just like Pollock, only to come out with a webpage so excessively hideous and wonky that the only thing logical at that point would be to throw the stupid oversized Mac computer screen at the stupid frigging wall.

I guess what I'm trying to say that it's challenging. But isn't it like any other work of art?

This is what I'm thinking. A painting, right? You're mixing colours and trying different paintbrushes but it just won't come out right. So you paint over the top. You mix more colours. You snap your paintbrush in half and shove it down some poor soul's throat but just apologise by saying "I'm an artist, I'm allowed to be violent". In the end you come up with a visual creation, an amalgamation of colours and lines and thought processes that gets put in a wanky art gallery and people get their own meaning.

A webpage might not be conceptual, and instead a little more factual and logical, but if you're trying to make it pretty with CSS you're imporing the aesthetics and making it something that a visitor could appreciate more. At least I am. So in the same way you're mixing paint, trying different colours, and snapping that godawful $30 horsehair paintbrush into tiny little pieces like it deserves, with CSS you are going back and forth, deleting code, looking up a new one and trying it out, and in the end trying to create something distinct, charismatic or easy to understand - it all depends on your website's purpose. The same as an artist is trying to create something specific too.

I don't know, maybe it's some pointless thought from the recesses of an overactive and confusing but not at all original mind, but I find CSS interesting as a result. It's a stylesheet, it is trying to add style to your bland webpage... make it more visually pleasing. (Or maybe visually annoying, depending on how postmodern you are.) So it's sort of a kind of visual art. The weird thing about it, though, is we're using a completely logical (or supposed to be logical, depending on how CSS-savvy you are) code to create it. A lot of art isn't logical. It just comes from somewhere, like the deep crevices of the subconscious for abstract expressionists.

Or maybe CSS isn't an art and art is logical anyway so I should shut up. Either way, CSS is endlessly frustrating but I'm determined to beat it down with my big oversized wooden spoon. Suck it up. My web proposal at this stage looks somewhat average, but just you wait.