After what seemed like an eternity, I have (finally) finalized the design of my blog! Whew, after weeks of preparation, code testing, coffee breaks, sleepless nights, and multiple HTTPS insecure errors, I have finally pulled off this daunting task—and I'm now ready to celebrate. So, for the time being, please listen to this celebratory song (courtesy of Girls' Generation, of course) that perfectly fits the emotions that I'm feeling right now.
To your professional web developer, the design of my blog might look, well, undercooked. But, to many of my blockmates and other people I know, the design of my blog actually looks great. While I agree with both, I have to say that I actually agree more with the first one—that my blogs design looks undercooked. Honestly speaking, the design of this blog is really finalized, but I haven't really tweaked it yet to its maximum capabilities. I still have some design inconsistencies here and there, and there are a lot of things I need to remove in the HTML of this blog.
Nevertheless, I've tried my best to make sure that this blog looks extremely professional and is well-suited for devices with smaller screens (unlike my other blog, Memoir of an Undergrad).
I've also made sure that this blog is fully HTTPS compatible by running several tests on it using the website Why No Padlock? as the main HTTPS compatibility checker for this blog. When I first made this blog, I wasn't even aware that Blogger supported HTTPS until I saw this post on my Blogger Dashboard talking about HTTPS availability for Blogger blogs.
I immediately enabled HTTPS availability and looked up an HTTPS compatibility checker. I found the site I mentioned earlier, and I tried to fix the errors that I saw. Funny enough, all of the Blogger blogs that supported HTTPS got the same error—that an insecure URL was found in the CSS of their blog. It was not hard to fix, I just added an extra "s" in the // link, downloaded it, replaced the URL, uploaded it to Dropbox, got a link, and replaced the original Blogger CSS link with the Dropbox link. Sure enough, I thought I had solved everything, but there was one problem left: according to the site, the server supports SSLv3, and that's (probably) a bad thing(?). I'm not sure, I'll understand what these mean someday, but I know that I don't control the server(s) hosting my blog, so I can't really disable it. I've done all I can to make sure this blog is fully HTTPS compatible, and I hope I did well for a college freshman.
Those being said, I still have a lot of things to do and a long way to go in terms of a "perfect" and fully professional design. I am far from actually finalizing the design of this blog—and it'll probably take me years to do so. Like I said earlier, several design inconsistencies and I've found a page where everything just looks broken. I have a lot of time to fix those errors, but now I'll just focus on the main purpose of this blog—to log my daily activities and share my story with others.
In my original blog, its main purpose was to see how much I've changed over time, and did I sure change a lot. I'm hoping to see a lot of (good) changes that I will apply to myself over time.
Ah, what a time it is to be alive. I have so many things to write about and so little time to write them (due to my somewhat busy schedule), but I'll make sure that I'll write in this blog every week. Until my next post, goodbye!
THRESHOLD 1
I just loaded my blog using Microsoft Edge (I use Google Chrome for web design and Microsoft Edge for personal browsing) and, wow, the transitions when resizing the page are so smooth. Also, I've fixed an issue with the share buttons.
THRESHOLD 2
Lots and lots of changes have been made and I almost forgot about this post. For starters, I added a blur to the slideshow on the home page AND I (kind of) blurred the top image for posts. I've fixed MULTIPLE design inconsistencies since then and I've added my own lines of code here and there. I've fixed some of the problems with the broken pages by enabling the loading screen to show up there. I've also added in a BSoD as the error page for 404 links. I've also fixed several issues when viewing my blog from multiple screen resolutions, so hopefully the people on Android won't see the images glitch or be extremely large.
There are seriously a boatload of new changes and fixes in this build compared to the base version of my blog. I've since added multiple hover effects, color transitions, accent color prevalence, and so on. Oh, and if you have a really keen eye on my HTML, you'll notice a few new things here and there. Maybe an easter egg when you search something in the search bar, I don't know.
The best part about all of the changes here is that I did most of the changes by myself and before my web programming class/es. Believe it or not, I actually spruced up everything here myself and I just relied solely on tutorials online and by the handy Inspect Element tool in Chrome.
My blog design looks finished now, but hopefully there are a lot of changes to come, especially after my web programming classes. I'm really proud of the changes I've made, and doing so many at a young age. I still have a long way to go in terms of becoming a professional web developer, but my blog is a testament on how far I've improved.