hw3: uses for firebug

So, I've been using firebug for a while, since I like doing web stuff. For HW3, I think the most important feature of firebug is that it can help you debug your javascript, it basically turns red and shows you how many errors there are in your script code.

You can also use firebug to change your css on the fly, so you can see how it'll be visually interpreted, so that you know what changes you should make on the hard copy.

Moreover, it will show you GET and POST information (which you need for Ajax) to verify that you're correctly sending or receiving your information from the server. It can also show you the header (which can be pretty important if it holds the information that the server can parse and handle on the server side). And finally it also shows you the amount of time it takes to load an image or retrieve your code. You are planning on optimizing, you can use this information to consider certain cut backs in your code, you could create smaller images, or images that are more likely to compress better.

Go Team

So, my group for cogs121 has met up and we've gone over some design and schematics-type stuff required for our site. We're basically planning on creating a site that looks up restaurants according to hour, so far, we just want to create something looks kind of like a timeline-bar that shows when the stores will close. There's a lot of stuff on our wish-list plate like getting it onto a cell phone or creating highlighted regions (not just a list of locations). But we have to consider everything else and at least conceptually get the idea to work out.

Everyone has been assigned shopping centers to collect information and we're currently going through APIs we need and possible software/GUI we might use for the site. This is going to be an interesting project, I really hope it comes out looking really nice. At first I thought it was an original idea, but I think one other person has kind of tried it, unfortunately his site is kind of ugly and umm... the user interface isn't the most visually informative, so it never gained much popularity.

This will be a pretty interesting experience and I'm quite happy that I'm doing web stuff and developing a web service instead of crunching numbers and dealing with low level stuff for animation. Unfortunately, it, like Prof. Powell said: 'It may all go away within these next ten years', so I guess I'll savor it.

week3- A2 q's

Using CSS over using HTML's physical tags is beneficial in many ways. First, it gives you more variety and say in your page, while HTML is very good for the logical tree layout, CSS can cover all physical tags that even some browsers have issues with rendering. Second, CSS allows you to link reference to a separate file, this allows you to make changes across every page in your website. Third, because you don't need to repeat the CSS information across all HTML pages, your overall website costs less bytes, which is a very good payoff because this means the site will render faster.

The difference between classes and ids is that ids are only for tags that will be unique to that page and classes are for tags that you will be using multiple times on a page. While, their importance may not seem to stand out right now, when you get to Javascript, it is important because a very commonly used function in javascript is .getElementById . If you mix up the classes and ids, the javascript won't do what you want it to do.

week2

Working on webpages is sort like a love-hate relationship. On one hand, it makes you feel awesome when your page is well received and looks really nice. On the other hand accommodating your page to deal with what piece of garbage the IE browser renderer is, is what makes most people run away from webpage design. Webpage making may seem easy at first, but it's fickle with it's own rules and irrational reasons for why it moves images and spacing.

Having done some of this before, if everyone thinks IE acting fickle over HTML & CSS is bad. Wait until they get to Javascript... or should I say Jscript. Jscript is basically a black box attempt by Microsoft to emulate Javascript. Unfortunately, seeing how well the IE browser renders HTML and CSS, you can guess what a mess Jscript is. In addition, I've been hearing recently that because Javascript is planning on adding classes and some nice aspects of Python, Microsoft's Jscript team has been caught unawares so they've been spreading nasty rumors about Javascript's new version. It's all one big flame fest in the forums now between the Javascript team and the Jscript team. This should be interesting...

Moreover, one thing that should be interesting to show to the class, how badly IE messes up css implementation by just having it run through the acidtest. It's ridiculous how off they are compared to most browsers out there. I'm almost tempted to write javascript code to redirect anyone coming to my site using IE to the firefox download page.

Happy to Begin COGS121

Sorry, I'm a bit late in getting into this class. I didn't actually realize that the topic for this class this quarter was mostly client-side web programming, which I love with a passion.

It's just one of those accidental things where I entered computer science convinced that I would like computer graphics because I loved art so much before. Unfortunately, it wasn't so. In fact, I realized that I loathed programming graphics and I was devastated because I had worked so hard to push towards a career that I had put on a pedestal only to realize that every moment I was programming graphics, I was miserable.

Then, one quarter I took client-side web programming, and then I realized that this was it. This programming sub-category was my forte and not only that, I found it to be so much fun to play around with. So, seeing that COGS121 was doing a client-side web topic, I was ecstatic and I signed up right away after checking out the class website.

YAY!

I know I'm almost 2 weeks late, but I'll definitely make up for it.