About

My name is Raya Bergin and I'm a front end website developer student based in Long Beach, California. I gained intangible assets such as critical thinking, teamwork, time management, decision-making, self-starting, timeliness, and dependability working with companies such as Makita USA, Inc., Bally Total Fitness, i-Unlimited, Inc., and goFetch.

I devoted serious and sustained effort to become a front end website developer because I realized that I like developing functioning appealing websites. The cool (and most important) part is developing accessible tools that let people solve their own problems, access/discover things more easily, and collaborate more effectively. I’m grateful that I can have influence in people’s lives.

I’m a cross between a geek, a nerd, and an artist. After years of working in the corporate world, I found myself needing to do something more for myself and the world. So, I went to Long Beach City College to pursue my Associate in Science (A.S.) Degree in Web Development to learn more about relevant present day web technologies. My motto is “Developing goes on and on.”

photo of me

Contact

Let's chat Instagram replit freeCodeCamp CodePen

Here's what I developed

class activity

Survey Form
I built a Survey Form for a fictitious dog training company and fulfilled freeCodeCamp user stories
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CSS Transitions/Transforms
I figured each of the 4 galaxy photos would bring out interesting CSS image and animation effects applied to them
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CSS Grid
A CSS Grid layout that features handpicked colorful nature photographs
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Product Landing Page
I built a fictitious cat food delivery Product Landing Page and fulfilled freeCodeCamp user stories
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Tribute Page
I built a Tribute Page for my favorite designer and entrepreneur, and fulfilled freeCodeCamp user stories

Reflection

This very last class, Front End Website Development, completes my AS Web Development major. What a fulfilling journey it has been. Time flew by like a wave of a wand. Our textbook, Learning Web Design by Jennifer Niederst Robbins, is my favorite book so far. Through her book, I got to learn and savor all the good stuff about HTML, CSS, and web graphics. I felt like I was eating candy out of a See’s candy box.

Favorite Class Topics

The best topics, by far, were CSS Flexbox, CSS Grid, and Responsive Design.

CSS Flexbox

Initially, CSS Flexbox confused me. But while I was working with it, I eventually understood it. For example, just adding display: flex; to a parent container that's holding child elements turns the parent container into a neat Flexbox element that looks like a string of beads (best analogy by far stolen from our textbook). I'm so relieved that I don't have to deal with floats anymore! CSS Flexbox is my favorite layout to use with the navigation and footer elements, or just to line up elements in a row or in a column on a page.

CSS Grid

CSS Grid's cool quality is that it lays out elements on the X axis and Y axis, and I can use CSS Grid with Flexbox! I haven't fully comprehended CSS Grid yet. So, I use Learn CSS Grid and a GRID cheat sheet to keep me on the right track while developing.

Responsive Design

My favorite part about responsive design is the mobile first approach (MFA) where I'm building a web page that is first based off a mobile phone's screen width and gradually developing toward tablet and desktop screen widths. I enjoyed completing our Lab Activity 8 assignment and learning so much from completing that activity. What I like about the MFA is that web page development is initially restrictive, which is challenging, then becomes freeing, and easy. Google Chrome's Developer tools is my BFF.

I developed this web page desktop first and I regretted not initially applying the MFA method. My absentmindedness was an opportunity to gain a few tricks to making this site responsive.

Website Development Journey

I learned that developing a website is a step by step process from discovery to planning to design to development to delivery to maintenance once we launch the site. Just like the first stage of developing a website, I began with discovery. I was working in a company that didn't supply opportunities to bubble up my creative juices. So, I went with my intuition on a journey to discover what it is that I really love doing: front end website development.

These days I'm interested in responsive web design, deploying a static site for a blog using Hugo, and writing content with Markdown. For the upcoming school term, I've enrolled myself in business classes. I'm aspiring to run my own business related to front end website development and writing.

I earned these beauties

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