I’ve had a really hectic couple of days, but I got to sit down today and spend the whole day at my computer, which has meant I’ve made [at least some!] progress.

I read through step 4 of The Basics section on the Odin Project, which was all about defining terms that we need to become familiar with. I’d heard of all of them before, at one time or another, but to be honest I didn’t have a clue what some of them meant! The Odin Project provided links to a list on The Flatiron School’s Prework page, and a glossary from Smashing Magazine. I’m really enjoying the way that I’m looking at different resources to learn, instead of just learning from one site- I think it’s giving me a lot more confidence in what I’m learning.

Things I learned about today:

POP and IMAP are methods of email delivery- that much I knew already, but I didn’t know what the difference was. Using POP means that the entire email is downloaded to the client and removed from the server, while using IMAP keeps the email on the server, downloading only the headings onto a device until you request more.

‘A Bad Neighbourhood’ is apparently a computer thing too! If your website’s hosted on a server which hosts other sites which spam or use bad SEO practices, your site could get punished too! (Which doesn’t bode well for me, what with the free site-hosting I’m currently using…)

Progressive enhancement and graceful degradation are basically about making sure that your site looks good to everyone, and that while users with browsers that support the latest features can take advantage of that, the site still looks good, and works[!] for people who don’t.

I’ve also given a lot more thought to using a different operating system, and I’ve convinced my other half to let me try installing one on his old laptop [he doesn’t really use it anymore, so I’ll use that to try it out.] I haven’t decided which one to go with yet[-leaning towards Ubuntu,] so I’ll be doing some reading up on different OS’s over the weekend, but I’m open to suggestions if anyone has a suggestion!