It's just a bit of Monkey Business

For the assignment we were asked to do a series of tasks including looking into copyright legislation, come up with our idea of a good team roles combination, create a valid CSS/XHTML website, note the differences between various browsers, and create an executive business summary for our own freelance web design company.

This assignment was a relatively simple one once it got going, though there was a lot of research to be done prior to starting. The majority of this research came into play when researching for CSS web design as this is something I had no prior experience in at all. Other parts of the research, such as the copyright legislation I had some prior knowledge in. Even the business summary I had some knowledge of from my GCSE Business lessons.

Though it is quite easy to say that the assignment was simple looking back on it, I have had quite a stressful time trying to do parts of it, sometimes staying up until midnight trying to figure out what I was missing, or where I was going wrong – again mainly with the CSS website.

One of the most beneficial parts of the assignment would have to be the team roles part of the assignment. I think trying to work out just what members would be needed in a team and especially what documents would be required will help immensely in the group assignment next year, and it will be interesting to see just what other members of my group have come up with in respect to their ideal ‘team roles’ scenario.

The business summary was also a vital learning experience for me, as if I were to go into freelancing, then I would need to know about business summaries to even get my business off the ground.

I think however that as a whole the CSS website design will be the most beneficial, as this will be one of the most used aspects of the assignment over not only the coming months, but hopefully the coming years too, whether I go into freelancing or into a job as a designer with an agency. By learning some basic CSS now, it will also hopefully make learning some extra CSS knowledge next year easier and allow for even bigger and better things to be built. With the assignment being quite long, it has also given me time to experiment with CSS, and although the design is a little bland, I am happy with what I managed to achieve.

Saying this, I did try to implement a Google Map into the website showing where the school was for visitors, but I struggled to get it working which is a shame, as the map is sometimes quite a useful tool to have on websites, especially when users can get directions from their own homes to the school.

Still, perhaps I should have tried to take my time more with learning CSS and learnt to crawl before I learnt to run, but this is a case of learning from my mistake and I will try not to be too down about it.