accessibility

#100DaysofCode Day 13

For the last two days, I’ve been working on a website for The Whisker Shop, my spouse’s cat furniture store we’ve been talking about making for ages. This started out as my capstone for WD4E, but it’s turning into a pretty awesome project: my spouse is also doing a Coursera capstone, but it’s for the project management specialization. So he’ll be focusing on implementing the business’s online presence, and I’m focused on making the website happen. If anyone from Coursera ever reads this, I hope you get a kick out of this capstone crossover collaboration. 🙂

Here is the link to The Whisker Shop’s Codepen, and I post this with the caveat that it will change over time, and will eventually be migrated to a live site. Some features so far:

  • Responsive design: mobile first, with an alternate wide screen view
  • Currently only utilizes HTML and CSS
  • Monochromatic color scheme for accessibility

    Wishlist and future plans:

  • Lightbox for displaying photos
  • Must pass validators, including accessibility validators
  • Minimal JavaScript for simplicity and ease, with a noscript option
  • I need to start taking some photos to display!

#100DaysofCode Day 12

I fully admit I’m slacking with the documenting– I’m getting so wrapped up in whatever’s caught my eye that day, that I forget to jot it down here after I jot it down in my notebook when it’s time to walk away for the day. (as an aside: all this learnin’ has reminded me how much I love to just WRITE stuff in notebooks. I retain everything a lot better if I physically write it with a pen and paper. So far I’ve gone through half a box of pens, and countless random pens, several notebooks, and my hands are TIRED.)

I’ve been working with Django more. Current project: a CATalogue of my cats. (get it? CATalogue?) I’ve created the model and the view(s) and next on my agenda is to figure out how to get image files in on this action. Because what’s the point of cataloguing my cats, if I’m not including pictures with adorable captions and descriptions?

example: models.py
from django.db import models
class CatProfile(models.Model):
cat_name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
# should change this to approximate year of birth:
cat_age = models.IntegerField("cat's age")
cat_desc = models.CharField(max_length=200)
def __str__(self):
return self.cat_name
def elderly(self):
return self.cat_age >= 10
elderly.short_description = 'Is this cat a senior?'

#100DaysofCode Day 1

Happy new year, friends. I spent most of the holiday season working on the wd4e specialization, and finished intro to CSS3, interactivity with JavaScript, and advanced styling with responsive design. My capstone begins in March.

When I first read about 100 Days of Code, I realized I needed this kind of motivation, and I’ve been focusing on developing a code-something-everyday habit… and opted not to blog about it. I want to track my progress more linearly, so I’m going to change that today, and restart the clock to Day 1.

Day 1: Finished drafting contributing.md and editing code of conduct for the Aardwolf project (PR link). I’ve been tracking my job search in using mySQL and a CRUD UI I designed myself, and I spent some time tweaking the UI for that. For privacy reasons, I’ll just share my CSS using a representative table of cats.

This exercise is a reminder that I prefer back-end to front-end work. I am colorblind and the things I find attractive, you might find hideous. My personal style leans in a simpler direction: black, white, shades of gray, which also tend to be much more accessible to a broader audience. But there’s something relaxing about playing with color pallets– kind of like coloring with a fresh box of crayons! So for this exercise, don’t judge– I don’t feel bad about it. 🙂