WOD 1
The first WOD took about 40 minutes to complete the first time around. Fortunately, a lot of the coding required in this WOD had just been covered in our in-class lab so I felt familiar and comfortable with the code–more so than I would have from just referencing the readings. My first attempt was without the screencast so that I could take the time to understand what each task was asking of me and how to successfully implement it into the code. It was a good thing that I did not screencast on my first try because I DNF’d. This was mostly due to the fact that I had to go back and review some of the readings for HTML that I was not yet completely comfortable with. Even though I exceeded DNF time, I completed my first attempt at WOD 1. I then went back through the instructions and verified what code I wrote for each task. This helped me solidify what each tag and element could do.
Now I felt confident to delete my file and restart, but this time with a screencast. I still hit a few hiccups along the way when I couldn’t remember the correct element for a task, but then it would come to me and I was able to successfully finish WOD 1 in Sd time.
I believe it was extremely helpful for me to continue working on the WOD even though I DNF’d because I needed to see the bigger picture of how all the code worked together in order to do better the second time around rather than get stuck on a further place and have to waste time on the second round. I advise others to also go back through the instructions and check the code they wrote before deleting their files and starting over–this was a big help for me and could be for others as well.
WOD 2
The second WOD took me a very long time to complete because my images were not resizing. I practiced this WOD many times and each time my images would stay their original sizes. I racked through my code multiple times and watched the screencast on how to do this WOD, but nothing seemed to be wrong with my code. Frustrated and ready to go to bed, I deleted my file for the final time and began to screencast. I was speeding through the WOD since I was so familiar with it at that point, and I had forgotten to start the server until I completed coding everything. Miraculously, when I started the server and opened the page in the browser, all of my images were the correct size and I had completed the WOD in Rx time–fortunately this was all caught on the screencast so I didn’t have to do it yet another time.
Later in class I found out that the problem I experienced with my images had to do with caching, and didn’t have anything to do with miracles after all. Anyhow, a big takeaway for me on this WOD was to either do a hard refresh in the browser or to start the server once the code is completed. This way you won’t be fooled into thinking your coding is wrong and spend unnecessary time on a WOD.
WOD 3
I experienced similar difficulties on the third WOD as I did in WOD 2 but this time instead of the images not being able to resize, the sections of text were not aligning properly on my page. The Internet Explorer and FireFox paragraphs were aligned to the left and right, respectively, but the Chrome paragraph was significantly lower than the other two paragraphs and not centered properly. I once again fell for the caching trap and thought that I had made yet another mistake in my code. I scoured the tasks and watched and re-watched the screencast but I could not find my mistake. I began my screencast two separate times, hoping for the same miracle as what had occured in WOD 2, but there was no such luck. I phoned a friend and asked him to look over my code to see if a new set of eyes could detect a minor mistake, and sure enough I was missing the proper float tag to center the Chrome paragraph in the CSS stylesheet.
I recommend that if you cannot determine the problem in your own code, ask a friend to review your work to help pinpoint the error. Alternatively, you could step away from the code for a while and come back to it with a fresh set of eyes on your own. This way you can easily detect small mistakes rather than getting frustrated over not being able to see what lies at the tip of your nose.