noimaginationRegistered UserPosts: 7,054Senior Member
It still requires a lot more intellectual thought than most extracurriculars, especially when you get into programming and go beyond simple markup languages.
I definitely won't deny the complexity of managing a major website like yours. Having written the forum software yourself is just icing on the cake.
yeah, nice work. if it's something you're passionate about, put it on your app of course!
for all you webdevs, developing in firefox+addons is BOMB!
i use firefox 3.5 with
Firebug (best add-on EVER, it let's you browse html and css in the bottom third of your screen, you can actively change it and see real-time changes in the page you're viewing, SOOO much better than changing your code and figuring out it doesn't work. it also includes a javascript debugger!)
Web Developer (toolbar with tons of options, most important is ability to disable cache)
MeasureIt (measure any pixel length or box size on your webpage)
I don't know if I could live without Firebug. I actually just yesterday used it when filling out the Common App. My dad's position / title wouldn't fit in 40 characters so I popped up firebug, inspected the text element, changed the maxlength and bam, it fit. I was half-expecting the excess to be truncated by the server-side script but it wasn't.
@jumpcondition - I absolutely love FF. Firefox + Firebug is the ONLY way to go for serious web developers. I use all those plugins and then some. You should add Greasemonkey and FireFTP to that list of addons. Also, thanks for the link it's really helpful. I've been using (Browsershots - Cross Platform Browser Test). Cross browser compatibility is the single most annoying issue I have ever faced when developing a website. Especially, Internet Explorer. It's so behind in web standards and I can't believe that people still use it. I've decided to stop support for IE6 on my sites. There's just too many bugs and hacks to deal with.
So what browser do you guys primarily use. I'm a Firefox fanboy.
a co-worker just sent me 'browsershots' today. helpful if you want to support multiple subversions of a browser, but still not the same as a five minute working test. we don't use it anything more than to test layouts.
you would be amazed at the IE6 userbase, especially for certain sites. IE6 was out for the longest, thus schools, libraries, older folks, lazy IT departments... they all had IE6 originally and just haven't bothered upgrading. depends on the site, though.
and yeah, i forgot to mention greasemonkey and fireftp (how could i? )
genevieve961Registered UserPosts: 205Junior Member
I read this whole thread and everyone is mostly talking about a website. I want to know about a blog, too. I have a friend who is a little too young for this forum, but she is going into high school. Would something like this count:
With blogs, it would depend on the content. The blog you cited is very shallow -- recently published with only a few posts, and the posts show no depth in the subject (which happens to be in my field).
The author has clearly just discovered this topic and is posting information from other people's sites with little (if any) meaningful, original analysis. From my perspective, it seems a little pretentious that she's already writing "advice" to others on the subject. But she is writing a travelog on her "journey of discovery," which is the way a lot of topical blogs begin. Give her a year or two on that journey, and she may have a blog worth reading (and worth including in an application).
Does that answer your question? IMHO maintaining a blog wouldn't be an EC in and of itself, but maintaining a blog that reflects your depth and a degree of expertise in a particular topic absolutely could.
I can imagine some exceptions to the above as well. If you were an opinion blogger on The Examiner, perhaps, or blogged for your school newspaper, then the blog itself might be more key. Even then, though, the content is really the point.
By the way, if that blog owner is your friend, she should look into the Teen Academy program at her local FBI Headquarters. And Infragard. Although she may be too young for membership in the latter, many of its meetings are open. I think she might find the content and the connections interesting.
In order for it to count, do you have to make it entirely yourself? Or can something you get at like webs.com, where basically you can choose an existing template and don't have to do any HTML work since it does it all for you, count as well?
It depends on what skills you are trying to show the admissions officer by mentioning the website on your EC. Anyone can easily make a website through webs.com. If you were to list a site like that, the content would need to be impressive. For example, if you were into photography and created a site on webs.com to showcase your photography and really kept it up to date, mentioning the website could help show your passion for photography.
Creating cookie-cutter websites through webs.com isn't a passion itself.
Thanks for the reply! In that case, I better start designing and coding from scratch then (I was too lazy to before). It's just a class of '10 website for my school that I started in freshman year and keep up to date. Basically I just want to show it's another skill I have because I taught myself how to do everything from trial and error. Otherwise it has nothing to do with what I want to major in.
Replies to: Does Maintaining A Website Count As An EC?
for all you webdevs, developing in firefox+addons is BOMB!
i use firefox 3.5 with
Firebug (best add-on EVER, it let's you browse html and css in the bottom third of your screen, you can actively change it and see real-time changes in the page you're viewing, SOOO much better than changing your code and figuring out it doesn't work. it also includes a javascript debugger!)
Web Developer (toolbar with tons of options, most important is ability to disable cache)
MeasureIt (measure any pixel length or box size on your webpage)
Colorzilla (advanced eyedropper, colorpicker, page zoomer tool)
FireGestures (executes various commands with mouse gestures, handy if you refresh often)
let me know what you think. these are all free, btw
Forgot to mention Run IE8/IE7/IE6, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera from the web
Extremely nifty plugin that allows you to test your site in IE 6,7,8, FF2,3 and opera, safari, and chrome, all from your current browser.
I don't know if I could live without Firebug. I actually just yesterday used it when filling out the Common App. My dad's position / title wouldn't fit in 40 characters so I popped up firebug, inspected the text element, changed the maxlength and bam, it fit. I was half-expecting the excess to be truncated by the server-side script but it wasn't.
More like the site is the icing on the fake and the forum software is the actual cake.
So what browser do you guys primarily use. I'm a Firefox fanboy.
you would be amazed at the IE6 userbase, especially for certain sites. IE6 was out for the longest, thus schools, libraries, older folks, lazy IT departments... they all had IE6 originally and just haven't bothered upgrading. depends on the site, though.
and yeah, i forgot to mention greasemonkey and fireftp (how could i?
Cybercrime International
The author has clearly just discovered this topic and is posting information from other people's sites with little (if any) meaningful, original analysis. From my perspective, it seems a little pretentious that she's already writing "advice" to others on the subject. But she is writing a travelog on her "journey of discovery," which is the way a lot of topical blogs begin. Give her a year or two on that journey, and she may have a blog worth reading (and worth including in an application).
Does that answer your question? IMHO maintaining a blog wouldn't be an EC in and of itself, but maintaining a blog that reflects your depth and a degree of expertise in a particular topic absolutely could.
I can imagine some exceptions to the above as well. If you were an opinion blogger on The Examiner, perhaps, or blogged for your school newspaper, then the blog itself might be more key. Even then, though, the content is really the point.
It depends on what skills you are trying to show the admissions officer by mentioning the website on your EC. Anyone can easily make a website through webs.com. If you were to list a site like that, the content would need to be impressive. For example, if you were into photography and created a site on webs.com to showcase your photography and really kept it up to date, mentioning the website could help show your passion for photography.
Creating cookie-cutter websites through webs.com isn't a passion itself.