Objectives

Background

After learning some programming languages such as Python and R, and documentation softwares such as \(\LaTeX\) and R Markdown, I realized that interacting through a GUI to conduct and document data analysis is actually making things more difficult than easier. When I decided to publish my website to show my work as a student and as a prospective data analyst, I expected that similar things will happen if I use a GUI-based website-publishing agent such as Google Sites. I made my decision to learn the basics of HTML and CSS to have control on every aspect of my website, and to gain insight into web creation and management.

How it works

All of the HTML files in the repository except for those in style folder were created, and are currently maintained, by R Markdown. Based on these HTML files, I added features through YAML header in .Rmd such as a clickable logo in the top left corner, a sticky navigation bar, dropdown menu in the navigation bar, and menu bars that show up when the window width is less than some threshold (as of 2020-01-12, it is set to be 800px). A footer is included in every webpage, and some animations came to life using jQuery JavaScript Library inside <head> tag. Math expressions are written using \(\LaTeX\) syntax and MathJax provided by R Markdown. Features are first tested here.

Learning outcomes

The most important lesson I learned is that it is crucial to apply mechanisms available on the Internet in a right way to make things work in an expected way. Since every person’s specification on his/her HTML document is different, you cannot directly apply what is presented on Youtube videos or W3Schools tutorials unless you start from scratch and/or have the same starting point as them. That is, to use these resources properly, one has to first understand what he/she is working on and is asking for.

Things I learned regarding:

Next steps