Marsha's progress in the DMT realm

Reports

2009-06-02T03:07:00.001-07:00

Please note, all of my reports are connected to marsha learning proposal, the links are down the bottom.

End of DMT

2009-06-02T03:05:00.000-07:00

Please chel out the following
All reports are contained in the following link
http://www-student.it.uts.edu.au/~marswhit/marshaproposal.html

Website Project
http://www-student.it.uts.edu.au/~marswhit/index.html

Zip Folder containing code
http://www-student.it.uts.edu.au/~marswhit/WebsiteMaster.zip

Ampersand

2009-05-30T03:39:00.001-07:00

Quick Tip

2009-05-30T03:37:00.000-07:00

When wanting to use an ampersand, the correct way to insert it in XHTML code is to use the ampersand, followed by the text amp, followed with a semicolon. I f I was to do this now it would appear as an ampersand, &.

Changing menu buttons to clean images

2009-05-30T03:32:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends!

I discovered something valuable in Photoshop yesterday that I want to share with you all. So, I decided not to use regular CSS buttons in my menu, and instead wanted to use an image of a record. Away I went and found and image of a recorded that I imported into Photoshop and fixed up a little bit and deleted the white background, assuming that once it was inserted to my webpage that the white background would disappear. This was not the case.

What you need to do is save it for Web and Devices. The image will appear and you will have to individually delete the pixels in the background. Finally after a few attempts, I was able to insert a perfect circular image that resembled a record.

Peer Feedback

2009-05-19T01:19:00.000-07:00

For the system plan Peer Feedback, I have responded to the htree people in my group:
Fiona WIlliams
Hai Yang Sun
Nguyen Thi Be Ha

All were great!

Finally a code to swap QT Vids!

2009-05-19T01:03:00.000-07:00

AFter many attempts, I stumbled on some very useful code while consuming my lunch the other day. I did have to alter it quite a bit and figure out how to stop it playing as soon as the QT uploads. After the video and code was complete, I include an image as a link. YAYA! NOw I just need to figure out the CSS code to tidy it up a bit.

Please see below for the code that assisted me greatly.

Link to code

QUICKTIME

2009-05-12T02:55:00.000-07:00

I thought since it was possible and relatively easy to create a simple imgae swap with a main marquee, I could do the same with quicktime videos. This is not the case as all browsers are different and the JS code is a lot more complicated than I expected.

Tonight I am hoping to convert my original quictime files to FLV files and create a moving carousel using a website called Thomix.

Fingers crossed this works tonight.

Will report back later.

cheers

Embedding Media

2009-05-12T02:47:00.000-07:00

Quicktime has become a big old mess this week!

Before I get to that, I have a few words about youtube. So when it was set up, it was providing users with the code to embed videos. Since media corporations and corporations in general caught on to how valuable the site was to promote whatever, music companies have stopped allowing supporters like myself the right to embed the code! And have disabled the ability to embed the URL. Riduclous!

Therefore I have limited videos that I want on my site and have had to be nonselective in choices.

System Plan

2009-04-26T01:18:00.000-07:00

In the System Plan brief, Alastair mentioned including "an achitecture diagram of how the component technologies and parts of your application fit together", are you all using the web architecture diagram Alastair has been using in class?

My confusion is that I'm not to sure how to implement my additional technologies into the flow of things. I know Youtube and Quicktime are both clientside technologies, but where abouts are they placed in relation to CSS and XHTML?

Semester Break

2009-04-26T01:05:00.000-07:00

FYI, for anyone who does have a mac, my screen as gone awol and more line have started to appear. According to work technical people, it is most likely my video card and the advice they gave me was to always purchase an extended warranty.

SPECIAL CHARACTERS!!

In my last post, I referenced PHP code I was having difficulty with. What I noticed after I posted the blog was that the tags I were using were being turned into code by this blog site.

Example, if I wanted to refer to

as a written discussion

, this blog may interpret it as an actually

tag

. By using a special character it should be writtn like this: < h1 > as a written discussion < /h1 > .

To see the special characters, go to this site on w3 Schools

Hopefully this works when I publish this!

Here goes...

Testing Testing

2009-04-14T01:24:00.000-07:00

For some reason , the vertical menu on the right has disappeared!

I'm not a fan of PHP

2009-04-10T19:30:00.000-07:00

I am absolutely lost with the PHP practical this week. I got it to work on my local server, but not on Charlie. Did anyone else have difficulties getting it to work on Charlie?

Basically, I was totally lost by the code and FRUSTRATED as I did not understand any of it.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN!!!!!!!

All I would liek to do is to create an area on my webpage where people can leave comments, i thought it would be easy to do. I have tried using the

MARGINS!!!

2009-04-06T03:29:00.000-07:00

Hi troops,

so, with margins, is it the pixels from the top of the browser or from another word??

Say this is a margin right now: if we type in 20px in the CSS, does that mean 20px from the line above or 20px from the top of this post???

Week 6

2009-04-06T03:13:00.000-07:00

Hi DMT,

thankyou to those who assisted with last week's tutorial. I actually was able to complete 98% of this week's CSS practical. The only element I struggled with was the pseudo class link and making the text change color when my mouse hovered. Any advice?

ALSO, TO MAC USERS: A vertical line has appeared on my screen, has this ever happened to anyone?

In regard to the Macro & Micro report, I'm still a little confused by the 'considerations' provided, for example, what is meant by 'Does it Support the development of accessible systems' actually mean?

I found this site useful for discussing open source technologies:
ZNET

Hey did anyone figure out how to get that nifty ruler tool Alastair was using in class?

Week 5's practical exercise

2009-03-30T19:58:00.000-07:00

Hi class :) , who managed to crack the PHP exercise last week? Can anyone explain to me how you were able to get:
'Monday 15th of August 2005 03:12:46 PM'

Were we supposed to get thsi exact date or any date in this style?

Also, for people working on a Mac, I downloaded MAMP which enables a server on my mac as well as PHP etc.

CSS

2009-03-23T03:41:00.001-07:00

Hey Tony,

I just checked out the CSS site you suggested, I still don't understand the idea of a class and id. Can you or someone else explain??

Lecture 4

2009-03-23T03:17:00.000-07:00

Evening all,

So, to check out my undertanding of the first two parts of the practical exercise for week 3 please see http://www-student.it.uts.edu.au/~marswhit/comments-1.html

However, I did encounter a bit of difficulty when it got to the CSS part.

Question Time:

So is the main difference between MySQL and Filemaker is that MySQL is free?
I was confused my what exactly an open source database is in contrast one that is not.

The book I am using currently as a reference to all this marku up language jargon is: Castro, M. 2007 "HTML, XHTML & CSS, Sixth Editin" Peachpit Press, California. Worth a look.

For anyone who had issues understanding wireframes

2009-03-16T04:38:00.000-07:00

http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/present/frames.html

Web Site Wireframe 2/2007

(aka Wire Frame, Page Architecture, Low Fidelity Mock-Up, Page Schematic)

What are wireframes?

Web site wireframes are blue prints that define a Web page's content and functionality. They do not convey design - e.g. colors, graphics, or fonts.

How are wireframes used ?

Wireframes - combined with Site Maps -are the bread and butter tools of information architects. Web site wireframes are useful for conveying the general page structure and content requirements for individual Web pages. Typically wireframes are developed by an information architect, requirements analyst, or designer. In many Web groups these are all the same person.

Using detailed wireframes will frequently flush out new requirements and questions that nobody has thought about yet. They also help to keep a paper trail of functional and design decisions that are made. I sometimes use wireframes to get people thinking and generate requirements. Getting signoff on a set of detailed wireframes can save a lot of time and money. Forcing managers and clients to actually think about the site's functionality at a page level will avoid changes later on. Otherwise programmers can end up making endless changes and tweaks to their code.

Wireframes can end up evolving into the default requirements document for a system. I sometimes end up adding a sitemap to the beginning of the wireframe document. I then add notations and requirements on specific pages. Sample Wireframe 2 below is an example of this.

How are wireframes created?

Wireframes - like most information architecture diagrams - can be created using a variety of software programs. I generally use Visio because of its powerful stencil feature. Visio stencils allow you to save libraries of commonly used shapes and elements. I have custom stencils created that allow me to easily drag and drop wireframe elements onto the screen. This really speeds up the process of creating wireframes.

I have also see wireframes created using Excel, Word, and Power Point. So the choice is yours.

Wireframes need to achieve a balance between being too detailed and too general. A wireframe that is too precise may leave little creative room for the designer. A wireframe that is too loosely defined can be misinterpreted by designers and developers. The wireframe format used should be dependent upon the audience.

HTML Wireframes

Information Architects and designers sometimes end up creating the initial HTML layouts that are then turned over to a developer for "real" programming. This often makes sense, because in some cases it's the IA or designer with the best command of HTML layout and design. HTML may be used to create basic wireframe templates that can be used for usability testing or to get client feedback. In other cases the HTML is created in order to keep tight control on the design, rather than leaving it up to the programmer.

Is anyone is class using a Mac?

2009-03-16T04:36:00.000-07:00

Hi there DMT students. Quick question, what text editor are people using for Macs?

Music websites that take my fancy

2009-03-09T23:50:00.000-07:00

julietteandthelicks.co.uk/

Check out James' Blog

2009-03-06T20:38:00.000-08:00

http://jamesmcintyreblog.blogspot.com/

Class 2 Part 2

2009-03-06T19:33:00.000-08:00

I just made a mistake people, I posted the first part to this update as a comment to last week's post. Anyway, it has been fixed.

In viewing the diagram on the second page of the lecture notes, I needed definitions in order to press on because I see the terms everyday, I am completely clueless when it comes to their actual meaning. Please see the following:

HTTP: Hypertext Transfer Protocol

Javascript: A scripting Language that adds interactivity to HTML. Hmmm, I still don't understand what it does so if anyone can provide me with an example, I would be most grateful.

CSS: Cascading Style sheets. Allow you to define how web page elements are displayed. W3schools.com provided a great definiton and tutorial on how this works. Basically you require a Selector, a Property, and a Value. The property and value are separated by a colon, and surrounded by curly braces.

XHTML: A cleaner version of HTML. The X is for eXtensible. That is really all I understand about this so it would be great if someone could also go over this.

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. It is a server side scripting language

I continued reading the notes and the helpful sites provided to gain some knowledge about the internet in more detail.

Internet began in 1969
We connect to an ISP when using the net
Internet is simply a network of networks
Every machine using the internet has an IP number, an Internet Protocol number that consists of four numbers
Computers communicate in binary form which is made up of 8 positions
DNS is what we view instead of the binary form
DNS maps text names to IP addresses, this leads into URL'S
DNS translate the human-readable domain name into the machine-reaadable IP address.
The top level domain names include .com, .org, .net, .edu, .gov

The browser breaks the URL into three parts:

The protocol HTTP
Server name, www.DNS
the file name, web-server.htm

And that is about it folks. I'm still confused with how ports work, so if anyone has any insight. please comment.

Cheers

Class 2

2009-03-06T19:32:00.000-08:00

Firstly, in logging on to my blog, I discovered something I never knew. If you hold down the apple key + F5, a computer voice over is prompted, it is amazing!!! On a PC it refreshes the page.

Anyway. So I did turn up to class on Tuesday night knowing that it was cancelled because I had a few questions I wanted to ask Jeremy (the tutor) and also because I thought it would be a great time to study for a couple of hours.

Keeping in mind that I have limited knowledge of the technical side of the internet, I found this week's reading fantastic.

Both W3schools.com and Webmonkey are brilliant learning sources, in particular the glossary on Webmonkey.

After the lecture notes, I thought it would be wise to read over the basics such as defining the major terms HTML etc.
In summary, HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language)
is the language used to build webpages. It is also a set of markup tags. Web browsers read HTML documents and display them as web pages. Whatever you open with, you must close with.

After this i downloaded textwrangler to use on my mace so i could have a play with HTML basics. At this stage, I have not tested it on a web space.

Class 1 Part 2

2009-02-24T00:25:00.000-08:00

So...so far I have created my first blog. Not to sound patronising but I have never really been interested and I suppose a little self conscious in revealing my opinions.

I admit that the course outline seems a little confusing when it comes to outlining the assessments, in particular the final project. Is the 3000 words a combination of the first two assessments?

So, did anyone watch the Oscar's last night? Mickey Rourke was robbed!!!

Class 1

2009-02-24T00:11:00.000-08:00

Well, after attending this university two years ago, I am embarrassed to admit that I never visited any other building besides Bon Marche (including the library) and had a minor panic attack when i casually walked into building 4 and read 'Science Labs'. I immediately checked my timetable and dashed up and down corridors assuring myself that I read my room allocation correctly. I shamelessly approached a student who felt sorry for me and asked if this was my first year (I didn't confess that this is actually my 6th year at university and it was not my fault that UTS doesn't provide more obvious faculty signs). Thankfully I was saved by two fellow students who were also walking round lost. I don't know your names yet, but hopefully we will be introduced shortly.