PME ciss232

Journal 10 - reflection of other journal comments

2005-04-27T07:31:00.000-07:00

I think we all worked the problem in such a way that we made sure that one block of code was working before we went on to the next. This much we all had in common. I separated the elements - - validation, then responding to a post-back with validation errors, then responding to a post-back without validation errors. Jamie separated his code in a slightly different way, but nevertheless worked on it in blocks, using success with one block as a sign to continue. I'm still comfortable with my approach and think I would tackle the next problem in the same way.

I did not think at the time of doing the class exercise of writing pseudo code until Jamie mentioned it in his blog. I think this would be worthwhile and would help to identify all of the elements up front. There's nothing worse than having to go back and re-work an element because it doesn't fit with how you've chosen to handle things later in the program.

Week 10 - Part 1

2005-04-23T04:27:00.000-07:00

I set up the validation first and made sure that was working before I even thought about the rest of the tasks. When I was getting the proper error messages, I then made sure that I could return the value back to the text box. The final thing I did was to present the finished product - - the greeting card.

In every assignment, it’s important to me to score lots of little victories because I’m still so unsure of my coding skills. So, I usually code one element and then test it. I don’t move on until I get that one element working. So, I think that the approach I took is my preferred method of accomplishing these kind of tasks and the approach I would follow with other projects.

journal entry - repost

2005-04-21T04:56:00.000-07:00

In Lab 4, a php include file could have worked great to post back the greeting in the text box. The example in lab 4 was a simple greeting but the nature of the exercise lends itself to being done on the web server.

In Lab 5, the validation for the room measurements and carpet choices could (and will be done in lab 9) as a php include. The calculations for cost could also be done server-side with php (and will be in lab9).

There isn’t any practical application of php for Labs 1 and 2. Although the rollover sub-menus could have been done server-side in lab 3, this application is not appropriate except done client-side.

Journal Entry - week9

2005-04-17T05:23:00.000-07:00

Journal Entry 8

2005-04-10T11:09:00.000-07:00

Lab 3: Roll-over sub-menus
This feature to a web page’s navigation is best done via client-side scripting. The functionality it provides is a nice feature but if client scripting was turned off, it wouldn’t prevent the user from navigating through the site’s various pages. It wouldn’t make sense for this functionality to be scripted server-side. Frankly, the user would never wait long enough on a mouseover for the request to go round trip to the server and back and a sub-menu to be displayed.

Lab 4: Collecting Form Data and writing output to a page

The nature of this lab was simple in that information from text boxes was gathered and sent as a greeting to the client in another text box.

For this simplistic exercise, a server-side scripting solution does not make sense because there isn’t any real functionality provided by the greeting and it wouldn’t be worth the wait of a server round-trip just to get the greeting. Things would be different if the greeting was displayed as a result of a successful login or the confirmation of other important input. So my answer to this question is that it could have been done server-side and would have been necessary to do server-side if the functionality it provides is critical to the task being performed.

Lab 5: Carpet Estimates

The carpet estimation example is appropriate for a server-side script because the entire purpose of the screen would be lost if the user’s browser did not run scripts. The image swap would still be coded for client-side as would the validations. But, the estimation would be returned by a server-side script. It would be practical to perform the estimation server-side and it would be better because it would guarantee that all visitors to the page got the information they desired.

Journal Entry - Week of 4/4/05

2005-04-03T17:46:00.000-07:00

PHP Alternatives

All three of these PHP alternatives do pretty much the same thing. They can all interface with databases and deliver dynamic web pages.

PERL (Practical Extraction and Report Language)
A weakly typed language commonly used to develop interactivity on web sites. A very popular tool because its open source, dependable and without worry that its support will vanish. PERL is full featured and powerful but is not considered that difficult to learn - - in fact, can be mastered in a manageable time frame. And, you can build programs and even entire systems using PERL and you can do so quickly.

PERL link

COLD FUSION (CF)
Cold Fusion mark-up language is based on tags and includes SQL (not CF statements) to access data from a database. Variable values can be easily inserted in the output by just referring to them. Its syntax is simple and tag-based - - a lot like html - - and has a powerful IDE. The Cold Fusion Markup Language (CFML) uses fewer commands and the commands are more intuitive than ASP or other languages. For example, handles the output - - just what you would expect. CF studio comes with all of the IDE tools you would expect but also includes a debugger. But CF is not free - - or the free version of it is so limited that its not very useful.

Cold Fusion Link 1
Cold Fusion Link 2

ASP
Microsoft’s response to PHP and CF is ASP. Interspersed within the html, it uses either VB or Jscript for the actual code. The language is weakly typed. ASP can be used to interface a database with a web server. These scripts can be executed directly by the web server (as opposed to CGI which were executed by the Operating System) and thus have lower overhead due to the reduced number of calls to external interpreters. ASP’s primary advantage is its use of COM objects that can be created simply and easily. And, since ASP uses VB Script, whose syntax is similar to Visual Basic, it is simple to maintain in terms of finding programmers. And, ASP includes many built-in objects. The most prevalent criticism of ASP is directly at towards the instability of IIS - - not really a criticism of ASP as ASP can run on non-IIS web servers.

ASP article

Journal Entry - Week 6

2005-02-27T17:58:00.000-08:00

The javascript application I would like to learn more about is working with timed events. Timed events with text and/or pictures are interesting if done well (and tacky if done poorly).

Here is a web site with timed text messages that I think has an interesting presentation.

http://www.notredame.org

My best guess is that this is a timeout function and here is a tutorial about using the setTimeout property of the window. There are three examples on this site of using the setTimeout property.

http://www.w3schools.com/js/tryit.asp?filename=try_dom_window_settimeout
http://www.w3schools.com/js/tryit.asp?filename=try_dom_window_settimeout3
http://www.w3schools.com/js/tryit.asp?filename=try_dom_window_settimeout2

I think that the page that I selected is a good example of a timed event that starts ‘timing’ on the page load event. So, I would put the function in the page load event. The function would include a timer (x seconds) at which time, the display would change. I think I would use an array to store the various text messages and then call them in the function sequentially using a counter. Conceptually, I think that is how I would design it.

I think the timed text is a very effective way to add interest to your web page but I would not use it for critical or important information that I wanted every visitor to the site to see. Some people will tune out the ‘moving parts’ of a web site because they look and feel like advertisements so the information in the timed text area shouldn’t be a critical part of the information flow on the page.

Journal Entry - Week5

2005-02-18T12:18:00.000-08:00

After reading the other journals, I wish I had been in Jamie’s shoes and could rely on past experience.

Alas, I wasn’t so lucky and I had to figure this one out solo. I had an overall plan of what I wanted to accomplish and how I was going to do it, but unfortunately, my plan was too complicated. The task at hand was actually simpler than I had made it and I missed some obvious shortcuts.

After re-reading all of the blogs, I wish I had taken the approach of Mr. Zellers: what are the objects, what are the events, how do I manipulate them and when should they be manipulated? It frankly never occurred to me that the div was in itself an object and so I spent a lot of time trying to create an object like an array or a layer so that I could fuss with its attributes.

After I found a simple solution, I found that it didn’t work in Netscape and I had to re-tool and do it differently. The next time I have to tackle something like this, I will break down the project into small pieces, starting first with the objects and the events. Secondly, one of the on-line resources that I used suggested getting the solution to work in Mozilla or Netscape first and then worry about IE. The theory there is that it is more difficult to get a work-around for Mozilla and/or Netscape for something that works in IE than vice versa. I would continue to use the on-line resources. Even though some of them offered solutions more complicated than I needed, they got me thinking of the variety of ways one could accomplish the same task.

Journal Entry: Week 4

2005-02-06T10:20:00.000-08:00

The assignment for Lab 3 is to develop a sub-menu that is displayed on a mouseover event from the main menu.

Since I don't know exactly how to do something like this, my plan was as follows:

Read through chapter 8 in the XHTML and Javascript textbook
Develop the sub-menu lists
Define the placement, color scheme and other style characteristics of the sub-menu
Write code to set the visibility of the sub-menu from hidden to visible on a mouseover event
Write code to time-out the sub-menu display or react to a mouseout event
Test, de-bug in multiple browsers

A great plan, but once I finished reading through chapter 8 and didn't find any clues from the textbook as to how to go about this task, I turned to the web. I started with the JS resources that I had compiled for our week 1 journal and moved through a steady progression of sites, including codelifter.com. What I'm finding is that there are multiple alternatives suggested on the message boards and developer forums including using arrays and layers. Most of what I find looks over my head or at least I am unconfident enough about this process that I believe them to be over my head.

But, that's my plan for Lab 3.

Journal Entry: Week 3

2005-02-06T05:39:00.000-08:00

A liquid page will resize to fit whatever size browser window (within reason) that the user has available. Based on readability standards from print mediums, a width of column text should not exceed 4”. When the web designer incorporates this standard, the web page is not only easier to read but has adequate white space to make it more eye pleasing to the user. Monitor sizes and resolutions vary widely and setting the elements of a page to a certain percentage, will generally yield a more satisfactory result for more users. Zeldman’s site – A List Apart – didn’t use percentages to format the display but rather used two side-by-side tables but the right table didn’t include a width – hence a liquid design. A liquid layout requires much more planning in that the developer must account for browser rounding of the percentages and spacing between the elements. It also involves much more trial-and-error in the testing and de-bugging phase as the page is displayed in the various browsers. But, success is gained when the page contracts and expands to any screen size on any browser.

Good resources for designing a page with a liquid layout:
http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/liquid/index.cfm#definitions
http://digital-web.com/articles/liquid_web_design/

A site that uses a liquid layout:
http://builder.com.com/

Journal Entry: Week 2

2005-01-26T05:27:00.000-08:00

a. The Web Standards Movement is an effort to reduce the cost and complexity of web development and increase the accessibility of web pages. The Web Standards Project is an organization co-founded by Jeffrey Zeldman who coincidentally helped to end the browser wars by persuading Microsoft and Netscape to support the same technologies.

b. Link to one article in favor of the movement: Mark Newhouse

c. Link to one article opposed to the movement: a critical article about the focus and attention on web standards. The author believes that the focus should be on usability and that web designers should focus on delivering a working site that is easily maintained.

Doesn’t rate as an article but is a comic interpretation of the web standards movement:

d. The notion of web standards makes a great deal of sense. The advent of hand-helds and the number of browser choices makes the case for web standards even more critical. Developing web sites should be faster if presentation and content are kept separate and maintaining those web sites should be easier. In theory, I think that the adoption of web standards makes perfect sense. On a practical level, I don’t know how we’ll ever migrate towards that goal. Both amateurs and professionals can put up sites on the web. A number of web authoring tools exist that make it easy for amateurs to post a web page. And, these authoring tools break the rules of web standards almost at the first key stroke.

Web standards will take hold when developers and their clients realize the economic value in building sites for longevity that are accessible to all users.

e. A useful link for developing a site with web standards (and validating that the site will perform across platforms). This site contains a CSS Validator that checks CSS and XHTML for compliance with W3C standards.

Journal Entry: Week 1

2005-01-23T06:02:00.000-08:00

XHTML On-Line Resources:
Website Tips (Shirley Kaiser from SKDesigns and others have contributed tips and book reviews to this site since 1996)
Coding Forums (a message board and posting site for exchanging ideas, posing problems and accessing free software for a variety of web related tools)
Hudson Valley Community College Web Tutorials (a collection of tutorials from an instructor at the Hudson Valley Community College for his students in his web design or internet programming classes)

JavaScript On-Line Resources:
Tek-Tips: (a forum that allows IT professionals to pose questions and offer advice to others on a variety of software, hardware and networking issues)
Developer Shed: (Development tips, software and book reviews, articles, a script library and a wide variety of other information for web developers)
Web Developers Virtual Library: (An enormous collection of tutorials, tips, graphics, discussion list, job postings, web hosting and other things of interest to the IT professional)

CSS On-line Resources:
HTMLdog: A web site devoted to html and css
W3Schools: Tutorials, samples, quizzes and other resources to learn css.
SitePoint: Articles, books, blogs and forums for the web developer.

Web Accessibility On-line Resources:
The W3C Web Accessibility Guidelines: the official recommendations of the W3C for building web accessible content.
WebAIM: a site dedicated to expanding the web’s potential for people with disabilities. Advocates but also includes information for web developers on how to use accessibility features in html authoring tools such as FrontPage and Dreamweaver.
Web Accessibility for All: resources, links and tutorials designed to help create and maintain accessible web content.

Introduction

2005-01-22T16:46:00.000-08:00

My name is Pam E. and this is my 4TH LCCC course and my second from Mr. Zellers. I am an IT professional specializing in systems analysis, design and deployments. I have spent the last couple of years trying to get up to speed on Internet applications and web design. Most of my prior work experience was with large mainframe systems that were written in COBOL.

I currently work for a not-for-profit managing their development systems and dedicating my time to training their staff and working on system enhancements to increase office productivity.

I have a lot of interest in learning more about the languages and tools that support Internet based applications. My goal for this class is to be able to write scripts that will send web forms to an appropriate destination, to enhance my knowledge of javascript and to use style sheets. My concern for this class is finding the time for it given my family and work commitments. But, I'm sure I'll fit it all in.