Welcome to my portfolio site for "Emerging Web Technologies and Trends!" Throughout this course, we've been tasked with taking a look at a wide scope of topics that will ultimately enrich our web development knowledge and aid in our future careers. From researching the latest trends, resources, and tools, to actively trying out several up and coming features ourselves, there's a little bit of everything here to browse through. I sincerely hope you'll enjoy the content presented within, and perhaps learn something along the way.
- Josh Baade
My Class Experience: A Reflection
Overall, this class was an intriguing look into some web design implementations that I may not have been able to explore otherwise. I admit that I had fun creating several projects throughout the semester, particularly the progressive web app and the Copilot AI-built site.
My difficulties mainly consisted of not knowing where to start on a project. For a good amount of the class, we were basically left to our own devices, coming up with a layout that satisfied the project requirements. I tend to thrive on a more structured atmosphere, so not knowing where to begin or how to make a satisfactory product intimidated me at first. Additionally, I ran into some trouble with the React project. Most notably, the images weren't working for me at first, as well as the learning curve of learning how to create a final build of the project.
If I had more time with the project, I may have added more imagery to the various pages, to give each one more of a visual flair. I had also considered perhaps adding a hero banner to, at the very least, the home page.
In order to continue my learning, I plan on researching more on progressive web apps so that I can add in additional content to my current PWA. I would also like to explore the capabilities of an AI-generated chatbox more. I'm curious how expansive it would need to be in order to match the likes of chatboxes on sites like Walmart or Amazon.
For topics I wasn't able to cover this semester, I mainly would like to look more into Dark UIs. I believe that dark modes are going to become ever more frequent in our design space, given the overabundance of screen usage in this day and age. As such, it would be quite vital to me to learn more about this hot trend. Additionally, I think the hero video banners would be intriguing to look further into. While I have experience with an image-based hero banner, getting a video to run on one would be an excellent way to enhance a website.
All in all, this class introduced me to an abundance of topics that will certainly help aid me as I continue on my journey as a web designer and developer.