⭐ casseroleCodes

image of Cassie on red background with yellow star

Hello world!

My name is Cassie and welcome to my learning journal.

I'm a self-taught frontend developer with a background in the arts who loves creating visually appealing experiences. I prioritize inclusive and user-friendly UI design, constantly finding ways to optimize processes. I'm driven by curiosity and creativity, always exploring new ideas and improving my skills. I seek meaningful work and projects where I can make a positive impact, and I want to help build a sustainable future for my community and our world. Challenges fuel my growth, and I strive for excellence in all that I do. Openness and collaboration are important to me, fostering intentional communication and inclusivity.

How I stay committed to learning

One of my fundamental values is personal growth and learning, which naturally led me to pursue self-taught web development. It's truly remarkable what we can accomplish when we strike the right balance between focus, determination, and consistency. To achieve this balance and continuously improve my skills, I employ and fine-tune learning systems while also ensuring a healthy work-life equilibrium.

How I got started

I began blogging on WordPress, and as someone who is naturally curious about how things work, creating these websites motivated me to learn coding from scratch. My goal was to develop the skills needed to create clean-coded applications, impactful UI/UX designs and ensure accessibility. In addition to joining the Scrimba bootcamp, I have also completed online courses offered by LinkedIn Learning, freeCodeCamp, and Codecademy.

The Learning Journal Project

To familiarize myself with WordPress and content management systems (CMS), I built this site in two ways: from scratch on VS Code using Github, and using the WordPress.org engine. For the homepage, I copied all the code from my HTML index file. As for the about page, I utilized different blocks in the block editor to insert HTML. To customize the site, I utilized the “add additional CSS” feature and incorporated my own CSS while also making edits to the default CSS provided by the theme. While I retained the WP theme’s header, I created my own header and hamburger menu for the scratch version.

Learning Journal WordPress Site

With guidance from chatGPT, I learned how to integrate JavaScript into my WordPress site. This involved adding my JS file to the theme's directory and incorporating additional code into one of the theme's PHP files.

Furthermore, I began studying how to ensure video accessibility through the W3C's guidelines. I discovered that video accessibility is more complex than simply adding an alt tag to images, and it suggests utilizing more accessible players than what the default HTML video tag provides. Armed with this knowledge, I plan to update the project to make it more inclusive.

Recent posts

Invoice Creator

This was a great exercise in manipulating user input data, converting it to an array of objects, and then rendering and manipulating that data. I also added some UX enhancements to direct users if they enter an invalid entry: blank inputs, duplicate tasks, and entering tasks without a price.

March Madness Challenge

Four projects in four weeks!
💣 Embracing failure : while I did not bomb my challenge, I did a whole lot of failing at JavaScript. My biggest takeaway from this is to set time limits on problems, step away from them and come back, and then ask for help. At one point I was able to solve an ongoing problem in five minutes just by giving it a day!

Portfolio Evolution Walk-Thru

This is made with HTML and CSS, and I'm sure I'll want to change it again once I get further into JavaScript and React. It's designed to grow with the Scrimba frontend developer career path as I move through the modules.