I C(SS) You Missed My CSS Puns

I had some great feedback from my former manager that she liked my CSS puns. So naturally I had to bring these back in again.

In all seriousness here's my update.

• I finally finished JavaScript Conditional Statements
• I struggled a bit on the second project at first but once I'd gotten past my anxiety around the first few steps and cross-checked them against the tutorial I saw that I was doing great.
• I felt the need to move back to CSS for a bit and so I retreated back to the Box Model.

Back to the CSS

Today I focused on the Box Model, as stated above.

It's a method of styling elements (I guess?). 

I learned about 3 mains things today

Borders, Border-Radius(es)(?), and PADDING.

1) Borders

I learned about these and these are REALLY REALLY SUPER COOL. There are a couple of cool things that I learned about them.

• Border styles are written in one line.
• They include width, style and color.
• Width can be done in pixels, but it also has 3 predefined key words which can set the thickness of the border:
• Thin
• Medium
• Thick
• Style has 10 different styles which can be rendered by web browsers. These are (yes really):
• None - no border, takes lowest priority
• Hidden - no border, takes highest priority
• Dotted
• Dashed
• Solid
• Double
• Ridge
• Groove
• Inset
• Outset
• Color - CSS has about 140 built-in color keywords, as well as hexadecimals and 'a few' other formats.
• The order is always width style color.
• The default style for the border is medium none color - so this is what will happen if you don't put anything into the code.

An example would be: border: thick double coral;

2) Border Radius

I LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS THING! If there are ever hard moments (see below) then IT IS MOMENTS LIKE THIS THAT KEEP ME GOING. Moments when I love something about CSS (or another language)!!! And WHEN IT TRANSLATES ACROSS TO SOMETHING THAT I HAVE SEEN IN THE WEB (or especially on word processing tools like Google Docs or Microsoft Word) AND I'M LIKE, THAT MAKES SENSE!!!

Ahem. So border-radius. I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED ROUNDED CORNERS!!!

Ahem yes. 

So border-radius (my favourite thing) can be done in 2 ways:

• By percentages (%)
• By pixels
• The number of pixels is the same curvature that  a circle of the same number of pixels would have.

The way to make a circle border using border-radius is:

• Set the width and the height to equal numbers
• I.e. create a square
• Then set the border-radius to 50%

3) Padding

The last CSS thing that I learned today was padding

• Padding can be thought of as the space between a picture and its frame. I love this metaphor, it's beautiful.
• Padding is done in pixels (px)
• Padding can be applied to the whole element by just typing padding
• e.g. padding: 30px;
• Padding can also be applied to top, right, left, and bottom, like so:
• padding-top
• padding-right
• padding-left
• padding-bottom
• I've just read that there is padding shorthand.

Final Thoughts: How do you keep on going?

I'm going to be honest. It can be hard. People around me would describe me as an incredibly positive person. 

But being someone who takes on new challenges always pushes you outside of your comfort zones. And this can be really heavy sometimes especially when it feels like you're doing it on your own. Even when you're not (shout out to Rosana and Adam and to my team at work!). 

It's hard balancing a job with learning how to code. 

It's hard balancing doing personal stuff with learning how to code.

It's hard wanting something so much, this badly, and feeling that it is so right, and having to take it slowly.

I have been on a lot a lot of journeys in my life, some very personal, and I am not a stranger at all to having to have patience, to have to have resilience, to have to have faith. 

As Lady Gaga once said in one of her most amazing songs, Million Reasons, 'Every heartbreak makes it hard to keep the faith'.

But she also talks about Reasons (and again we're back to Reasons again, like in Yosemite by Lana del Rey where she sings about doing things for the Right Reasons). And Lady Gaga talks about just needing one good reason.

So my good reason is that I love it. Coding is what I love to do. I love it. What more of a reason do I need? What more of a reason to keep pursuing it and to keep going?

CASE IN POINT: Here is a quote from a poem I wrote in 2014, on the only other blog I have ever run: a poetry blog!

But when am I going to feel like I have broken through, when, when, when, when?