The external Javascript library that I have chose to make is a slideshow.

Why a slideshow?

We that slideshows provide: increased user engagement, a good first impression, a way to show all products, a way to convey information in an easily digestible way, and a call to action (Mishina, 2019) and (SKT Themes, 2021).This means that slideshows are a way to grab the attention of a user and ask them to engage with your site by clicking through the slideshow. As the users click through the slideshow, they can get to know all the projects I have been working on, and perhaps they may become more interested in other works I have done. Additionally, the slideshow enhances the excitement about and engagement with the timeline. A user may see a project that they think looks interesting and seek it out within my Itch.io profile or through my timeline links – the slideshow is thus all about convincing my viewers that they want to find out more about me, what I’ve done and where they can try out my projects for themselves.

What are the alternatives?

Slides shows are not always effective. They can pose accessibility issues if they rotate automatically and because screen readers struggle to read them, slideshows are often missed by users, and are sometimes associated with junk content such as advertisements (Fisher, 2018) and (Stanley, 2021). Some alternatives to the slideshow could have been to use columns (like in a newspaper) because it presents all the information at once, and the users know what to expect meaning that they might engage more. Additionally, an engaging video, videos, or specific landing pages for targeted audiences are good alternatives. I feel that a video would have been the most suitable alternative because if I chose to use an image grid, I feel that it would have made the timeline obsolete. I feel that a slideshow was the most useful feature to add because the timeline does not have any engagement, and the slideshow provides only a “taster” for the projects I have made without being overwhelming.

The challenges

The main challenge with building something like this is the JavaScript. I do not personally feel like I have the confidence to implement these features and edit them on a good enough level. Unlike CSS and HTML, it is much more difficult to know exactly what goes wrong. Additionally, JS does not give you as much feedback and the actual language feels much less obvious to use. In CSS, you know exactly what “color” does, or “text-align”, whereas in JS seeing something like “let potatoes = [];” is much more mysterious. Another challenge for me, due to the lack of confidence, is that it takes a lot of time to implement even simple functions. Of course, this means that I have much less time to do everything else in my project.