Jimmy Gosses

Wow. 2020 was tough. I won't lie, I fell off some of my goals, hunkered down and just tried to keep my head above water last year. And I think that's okay. It wasn't all bad though. I got engaged (woo!), got a puppy(woof?), and honestly...I made it through a year of quarantine.

Now it's 2021, and it feels like I'm coming out of a fog. Goals are becoming less hazy, and my hunger for more has come back. I'm back to coding, learning as much as I can and trying to jump into a different career field. Whether that is in web development or in a unique role that utilizes my people skills and love for all things local, only time will tell. Let's get it.

I'm back in the 757! I left Norfolk a little over 5 years ago upon graduation from Old Dominion, and haven't stopped thinking of it since. As of a few days ago, I've moved back and could not be happier. The Hampton Roads has so much going for it and I'm beyond excited to join some of the great minds of this area to help our region grow. I'm currently contuining systems analytics work for Johns Hopkins in a remote capacity, and in my free time continue to build websites and grow my knowledge base. I'm feeling inspired and am ready to work hard and continue this positive momentum in my life.

Since the launch of this site, I have been pushing to complete more projects and expand my knowledge base. I spent some time on the Merkur Club website, completing all but one final PayPal integration piece, which the client wants to wait on until after the club's main event in the beginning of June. I then turned to furthering my knowledge in the Javascript realm.

Javascript has still been a work in progress for me, and in a book I'm working through there is a large JQuery section that I had been putting off until I felt more confident in JS. I decided to read into those chapters a bit, just to get an idea for what JQuery was all about. Shortly into my reading did I realize that JQuery could be an incredible tool for expanding my JS use. One issue I've had with JS is navigating the DOM easily. JQuery's use of CSS Selectors all but eliminates any confusion. I now realize that my issues have been around using incorrect selectors when hand coding pure Javascript.

As I prepped to explore JQuery, I went down the rabbit hole that is Gulp, which is a task manager that I had heard of but didn't fully understand. I knew that I wanted to use NPM to easily install and manage project dependecies, thus allowing other users to work with my projects with ease, and I wanted live reloading of my local dev environment while I coded. Previously I was using a static environment that we had setup when I first started my Front End Dev class, which worked great but didn't have live reload, and I also didn't understand how it worked. So now I have Gulp and BrowserSync all setup, and so far am really happy with the ease of use.

Once I was all setup with a new local dev environment, I started playing around with JQuery. My goal is to build out a bunch of tools that I can use in future projects, so tonight I started with a toggle nav. I previously built one with pure Javascript on this site, but it took my quite a while to figure out the logic. JQuery allowed me to figure it out almost immediately. I'm ecstatic with the functionality and can't wait to keep learning.

It’s been a little over a week since I launch this website, so I thought it would be a good time to document the launch process and what issues I encountered post launch. I used Netlify to launch my site, which was a fairly seamless process. I decided to go with Netlify based on the ease of pushing site updates through GitHub. Once I linked my Github account to the correct repository I was able to deploy within minutes - including the time it took to purchase the domain. The simplicity to use and deploy through this site has been a big relief, and has given me one less thing to worry about.

What I have had to worry about is cross-browser functionality bugs. Throughout the site build I was testing in my local development environment, and building with a mobile-first approach helped me easily keep the site responsive through all screen sizes. What I didn’t consider were bugs due to cross-browser functionality. The morning after I launched I cycled through a few different browsers to ensure proper functionality. Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari all yielded positive results. On the other hand, Internet Explorer was a mess. I worked through and deduced that if I added a few max-widths to my article sections, all of my formatting reflected correctly across all browsers and I was good to go.

Besides that issue, I added a min-height to my tablet view media query to improve user experience by retaining the mobile feel when you turn a cell phone landscape; I also adjusted the body width for a cleaner visual on wide desktop screens. These issues are all part of the learning process, and are just adding more tools to my skillset. Next time I know to check across browsers before launch, and I would now consider the launch a success.

One thing I am learning about web development is that inspiration is everything. For some it may be the inspiration to get working, but for me it's the inspiration for the design of the site. If you're working through a site and something just seems off, that's a great time to take a step back and look around for inspiration. I've found that the color schemes and fonts can be two things that make or break a site, and until I find the right one, the site won't look correct. I seem to hit this realization when a site is about 80% complete. I'll be happy with most of the functionality, excited about how it's coming together, but there's a cohesion that is missing. When I make it to this point, I like to search around for some website inspiration, then jump to a color scheme generator to find a scheme that fits with the goal of the site. Once this is locked in, the font ties it together.

As I continue down the path of web development, one thing I have wanted to complete was my personal website. I initially started building the site while still taking the front end web development class, and quickly realized that I didn't yet possess the skills to create a site that I could be proud of. I still have tons to learn, but I finally feel that I'm to the point that I can execute an idea from start to finish and complete this endeavor. I will continue to polish and improve the website, but for now, this is it! It has been super fun to build and I've learned something new every time I worked on it. On to the next!