HTML versus ‘To Don’t’ List

Earlier in the term we were asked to read Daniel H. Pink’s article in the Telegraph, “Think Tank: Why we all need a ‘To Don’t’ List, just like Moses.” The article essentially advocates that in combination with creating lists that outline what we need to accomplish, it is beneficial to also give serious consideration to the “actions, behaviours and obligations that sap our energy, distract our attention and therefore ought to be avoided.” This reading, though rather unassuming at first, has resonated with me throughout the semester. I suppose I haven’t created a concrete list, but I’m not sure I’ve ever made a concrete ‘To Do’ list either. That being said, I have narrowed down my number one ‘To Don’t’ when writing – no internet. In particular, I avoid the internet (email, web-browsing, twitter, online newspapers, etc.) in the morning and avoid it entirely until I have composed something worth putting on paper. It’s as if, once I open a browser window, my brain loses any ability to focus on writing. Now whether the internet are the real culprit or whether I have created an invisible wall for myself I suppose doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I can’t be on the internet and be productive (writing-wise) at the same time.

Now this has created a real dilemma for me throughout the past few weeks of my Digital History course as each project has involved the internet in massive ways. My recent entry on Quaker Meeting House Architecture was undoubtedly a challenge as the entire point of this task was to browse and dig through the web to find the best resources available. I found some amazing things, but also found myself off on strange tangents that were difficult to return from. I went from looking for information on Quaker archival resources in Philadelphia to somehow searching for what would be good to eat if I were in Philadelphia? My last entry on the Eaton’s Winter Catalogue book search was a little more revealing of my distractions. Again, I went from legitimately searching for full-text copies of century-old books, to watching online episodes of a favourite show, to searching hundreds of pages in Radford’s home books. Not that these tangents aren’t informative, but they certainly extend the length of time it takes me to complete projects.

The project that I have been working on the longest has been to make my way through the W3 Schools HTML tutorial and to create a new index.html file using the skills learned throughout the tutorial. I enjoyed this project almost immediately. At first, I thought this was a new language I could really master (unlike French) and it seemed to play out that way until I became frustrated with layout. Honestly, I was frustrated that when attempting to add a unique style and layout to my page it began to look more and more like a ’90s high school project.

After learning that you can view the source of any website I became almost obsessed with browsing the web for unique, aesthetically pleasing, thoughtful websites. I would view the code and try to decipher how these seemingly simple, yet sophisticated layouts had been created. At this point I also began dabbling in the W3 Schools CSS tutorial. Finally, I was beginning to be able to create something that felt a bit more like me, yet I was still unable to meet the demands of my perfectionist side.

The largest problem I have encountered has been with various web browsers. I was eventually able to create a page that met some of my expectations, but it could only be viewed properly in Chrome with a full-screen browser window. My layout was inspired by the Hey Rosetta! website with its fixed background and transparent scrolling text columns. After much trial and error I was able to achieve many of these elements, but again they would only display properly in Chrome. It became clear that imbedding CSS into my html code was really an inadequate means of producing the layout I wanted.

At this point I decided to abandon my lofty goals in favour of correctly creating html code in a simple layout. So here I present two versions, both somewhat failed attempts at what I would have liked to have achieved. I do plan to continue my new language learning through following the CSS tutorial in a more orderly way and now have a new form of distraction as I have turned learning HTML and CSS into a new game for myself.