As someone who was born in the early 90’s, the Internet was prominent in my juvenile journey. I vaguely recall touching on basic HTML in Year 10 Information Technology, creating web pages that link to more pages, in an endless motion of opening pages featuring only a single link and photo.
If you’d seen me during those formative years of high school, you’d think I had less than zero interest in learning to code, and maybe that was actually the case.
Then came the age of social media. I didn’t get into the social media boom until MySpace gained attention through the up and coming musical acts being found on their many pages. This is where I, and many of my friends, gained a flare for basic HTML.
Profile Edit page of a MySpace profile
The MySpace boxes asking for short descriptions of various interests for display on your profile quickly went from plain text to being riddled with HTML that casual users were learning for the sake of their profiles to pop. Soon after, I found myself being able to write out entire lines of varying text appearances, just to show that I could.
Just to give you a taste of a bit of my overwhelming expertise, the code displayed below:
shows up on a page like this:
This sentence is here.
In my blogging adventures that I’d previously mentioned on this blog, I’ve also uncovered several Tumblr users that have immense knowledge in creating entire website themes, yet they weren’t schooled professionally in coding, it just came about through trial and error. With the help of the Internet’s many tutorials, getting at least a light grasp in HTML is no longer ridiculously intimidating and easier to accomplish than ever.
What I’ve also discovered is that in my possible future career of being a Public Relations practitioner, HTML experience is vital in getting noticed amongst the sea of applicants. With the world of PR (much like many industries) shifting focus to online counterparts, the ability to code even at a basic level will allow you to stand out in a crowd that may have no experience at all. With employers streamlining competencies, a PR practitioner may find themselves handling various outlets of a campaign that are online, and the basic knowledge can avoid them from being intimidated by a prompt to create HTML material.
Anyway, I guess all this post is uncovering is why I have a (shockingly) basic grasp on HTML which has helped me stay afloat in several classes that require it. Perhaps Networked Media (for which this particular blog has been set up for) will allow me to attain a tighter grasp, and even a further interest in delving deeper into coding.
A close tie of mine has also made an observation regarding our voyages in the class into HTML on her blog, Dale Cridland.