Mooving Around

Inspiration

There are so many transportation methods and services in Davis. When I was new here there was a lot that I did not know about. I think being more informed about transportation and making it more accessible will allow people to better understand the costs and coverage of different methods, so they can find the best ways to explore Davis and Northern California. Specifically, many people are used to depending on their car, so I want to talk about the other transit methods that are unique or enhanced by Davis.

What it does

The website contains information on the main transportation services as well as tips, and best practices.

I focus on biking, driving, bus, and train information. I list current costs and put my personal experiences with the different types of transit so people can make an informed decision.

How I built it

I am not very comfortable with web development, so I programmed the site using vanilla HTML, CSS, and a little JavaScript. I wanted to avoid using frameworks, so I could understand fully what I was doing and I did not use CSS libraries, because I wanted my site to have a distinctive look.

Challenges

Because I am not very familiar with HTML/CSS, i ran into a lot of formatting issues, where the site layout or content did not look right. I had to look into centering divs and how to change the relative positioning of components. I also had to spend a lot of time playing around with CSS, color palletes, and fonts to get a look that I liked.

Also, because of the time constraints I was not able to implement all the things I wanted. I was hoping I could web scrape from certain web sites so I could track information (like fare price) in real time. I also wanted to implement a search feature that could take in natural language and return a summary of what the person was asking, by using an ML algorithm. However, I had to opt for a more primitive, but still working, search feature.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I am really proud I was able to complete the site and deploy it on Vercel. This is one of the first projects that I made that I was able to deploy and that could actually offer practical advice and information to people.

I am also happy with the look of the site. It took me a long time tweaking the CSS and searching for fonts. I wanted my site to be playful and unique, but still have a modern feel and I think I accomplished that.

What I learned

I learned a lot about HTML and CSS while working on this project. I think I am not as intimidated by doing design from scratch and I no longer have to rely on more generic libraries like Bootstrap to get a decent-looking website.

I also learned more about JavaScript and how to integrate it with HTML and give interactivity to web sites.

What's next for Mooving Around

I want to keep adding information to the site, like videos and links, so that it is even more helpful for new students. I would like to make the search feature better and implement web scraping or use an API to get real time information on pricing and other data.

While I am happy with the look, I think the site could use more images, so that it is more visual and there is less white space. I would like to work on the mobile formatting a bit so that it's a bit more user-friendly.

Built With

• css
• html
• javascript