Farewell

A road that once followed will no longer be a strange road. It will become a road traveled. The true test of any experience is what was learned and what was lost. For this semester the gods of CSS shown a little brighter and revealed a little more of their language of design. The CSS we learned at the start of the semester has been invaluable. I had seen some of it before but there was also a lot of new stuff and i can easily say that without having learned the more advanced CSS concepts that we did the next road would have been an african game trail complete with bushwhackers. The road of javascript has been full of bushwhackers but at least it wasn't an african game trail. I definitely understand the overalls a lot better and i am getting pretty good at manipulating existing code. As far as writing code from scratch i just haven't had the experience necessary to be able to do it without getting blood on the keyboard. But i am happy about what i have learned and i am going to continue on with learning javascript until i am comfortable with at least writing some basic scripts from scratch. As far as the final on monday. It scares me more than my algebra final did.

Implementing Events

After reading through the chapter 3 times and then doing the worksheet I was finally ready to try and attach some of the code to my website. Big mistake. The first things that i encountered is trying to understand what the programs were doing. I can go through and read the text and follow along and get a semi clear understanding of what is being done. But to try and think through the problem and come up with the code on my own seems to be an eternity away not to mention a few trillion brain cells that i don't have. The more i work through the problems in the book the more that i realize that working with a library that you understand is vitally important. In fact most of the techniques and lessons in the book seem to depend upon the core.js library as its backbone. This is a little frustrating because there are a lot of different libraries out there. So you have to learn how to use each different library that you come across. The other problem that i have found is trying to remember the massive amount of information and concepts being thrown at me. The chapters are deceptively complex. As far as implementing the tooltip and the accordion list i found multiple problems with both. First of i decided to put them on my main webpage. So I had to adapt the CSS to work within what i had already set up which wasn't to tough. But there is still a problem of the tooltip displaying underneath the other links on the page. I cant figure out how to get the tips to display on top of the link underneath it on the page. The other problem i found was with the accordion. I made the ul list according to how the book specified but then i had to spend three hours messing around with the CSS in order to get it to display anything at all. And after it was all said and done the result was a 20 px padding set on the ul that no matter how hard I think I cant figure out how to get rid of. This is going to bother me until i get an answer.

The DOM

Well the bad thing about the W3C website is I'm not sure what they are saying most of the time. But from what i could recognize as far as terminology the DOM is not just a page structure that javascript can interact with but a platform for providing interactivity between clients and servers. The importance of the DOM for web development is very important since HTML and CSS is designed to use the Document Object Model. The DOM creates objects that can then be manipulated changed using scripting languages (i think). So as far as importance the W3C website said that there are more languages that are working on implementing ways of using the DOM structure to interact with the objects on the page. So from what i can tell if you want to know what the future will hold for web development you better be familiar with the DOM.

For Browser developers they need to correctly interpret the DOM in order to create a browser that supports and correctly implements W3C standards. If a browser interprets the nodes differently then the page will display differently. The DOM provides a standard way of viewing the elements of a web page and they provide a way for scripting languages such as javascript and html to display their content in a standardized format. 

The importance of following the W3C standards is paramount if you want your browser to be compliant. 

My personal opinion on the DOM is that i don't have an opinion yet. I haven't seen enough about it to fully understand its downfalls or potentials. As far as JavaScript the DOM seems to be the whole point of having JavaScript. Without the tree structure and the nodes within that tree it appears that the whole web thing would go up in smoke. So I'm definitely looking forward to learning more about it. And from what i was able to understand it seems that the object model used by the DOM is being used by other languages as a way of setting up page structures for other programs. But i could be wrong (don't know much aboot them thar programifcations thingings).

JavaScript Impressions

HMM well my initial impressions of JavaScript is !!!WHAT!!! I've read chpt 2 twice and it doesn't seem to be jelling yet. Im not really sure how to do the homework even after reading the chapters. Although ill go through the power-point's and see if that helps. Up till now the only experience I've had with JavaScript is using it to create rollover buttons on a web page. Well Dreamweaver used it. I just watched and scratched my head wondering where all that code came from and whether or not i was going to be able to validate with it. Other than rollovers in the text it talks about using JavaScript to do some html hacks and I've seen it used as counters and to create popup windows. Other than that I'm still not sure how to use it. Im hoping to become efficient at it. If i can get good at JavaScript i might be up to trying some other programming languages.

JavaScript is confused with Java because of the name. In the early nineties Navigator had one of the first scripting programs built into its browser which was called Livescript. At the same time a true programming language called Java was making headlines and waves. So in a bold move by Netscape they decided to cash in on the popularity by renaming their scripting program from Livescript to JavaScript. (A very microsoftic move.) So that is where the name JavaScript came from. The difference between Java and JavaScript is that Java is a true programming language whereas JavaScript is a scripting language. It's main purpose is web based and it is a lot simpler than Java.  

A scripting language is separate from the program with which it interacts. Scripts are read by a program such as a browser and that browser will interpret and implement what that script tells it to do. This is different from a program which can execute independently from any other application. A script needs to be read and decoded by a program. Scripts are accessible to the end user and therefore they can be adapted to the users needs.

From what i was able to find JavaScript has gained in popularity due in part to it becoming a more standardized language much in the same way that HTML and CSS have. And also that is has gained far more browser support. It also has undergone a few name changes and then there was the difference between Microsoft's version and Suns version. I read some articles where it is being used in a lot of different non web based programs. I couldn't understand a lot of the acronyms they were using but it sounded impressive and gave me the impression that it was not only being used more extensively but also that it was going to continue to develop and change in structure.

Accessibility

Web accessibility is (based upon what i read) a very important part of the internet. Its implementation as far as disabled accessibility is as it has always been important and necessary if you are creating a very public site. However in practice it seems that not all sites are accessible for screen readers. According to a few websites about accessibility the aspects that need to be paid attention to the most is alt tags and keeping content presentation and actions separate so that screen readers can access the sites content. The alt tag can be very important since there are so many images on websites. One site suggested that the best practice for alt tags is to not describe the image but instead to narrate the intent of the image. Is the image being used for a link or is it simply a design aspect. But yet another site recommends that since links are identified by screen readers as links there is no point is describing the image as a link but rather to say where the link takes you to. Another point was with the use of display: none or visibility: hidden tags. One site suggested they should be used only when they helped to convey information only apparent to sited users. Not to provide additional accessibility or content that sited users would miss out on. After reading more on the subjects and more subjects such as font size and using ems instead of pixels to size fonts and pages it is painfully clear that it is not clear. There are many arguments as to what is best practice. But depending on what side you choose accessibility is important for an equally important reason of improving how your site functions on devices other than computer screens; such as cell phones or PDA's. These devices often have text only based browsers and if you design your site to be easily accessible for screen readers they will be easier to navigate with cell phones or PDA's. As far as resources for keeping your sites compliant there are various software based programs that will navigate your site and provide information. And there are a lot of really good websites that provide tips, ideas, and the latest information on accessibility. I personally feel that the more people have access to your sites the better the site will work. Keeping readable fonts that have good contrast are scalable and easy to understand is not only good for accessibility it will often make good design sense.

Analyzed websites

Sites that i like. Well, I started by going to www.deviantart.com and analyzing it. I have to say that the overall flow of the site is good and I’m going to use it as a site that I like. I liked how the site is set up to lead you to different parts of it. I liked the navigation and how you have links at the top of the pages that will let you into your settings at any time. The ability to comment on different works is greatly enhanced by having a comment box at the bottom of the pages. Other sites will take you to an entirely different section of their site. The advertisement were unobtrusive and did not detract from the site like many others do. As far as being CSS or tables I’m pretty sure it is CSS. I viewed the page source and there is a ton of javascript and a lot of div tags but I didn't see any table elements. The downside to this site is they could use some more information about what it is and how it works.

The second site I looked at is www.photoshopsupport.com I like this site also. Its navigation has a really cool effect applied to the hover states. The layout is clean with some good colors being used. There is a lot of information in the site so the navigation is not bad for how much you have access to. They used CSS and tables to design the site. Ease of use I would give it a 5 middle of the road no matter which side you are coming from.

The third site I looked at was www.madisonartshop.com . This site is an online art supply shop. The first thing I don’t like about the site is the colors they used. The layout is dismal and there are some glitches throughout the site. The navigation is basic but it does provide access to all of their categories from every page. Which on second thought I do like. But they should make the width of the site a little wider and provide some sense of space. The site feels crowded. They used tables and CSS to create the pages. 

In conclusion I was a little surprised by how many of the sites used embedded CSS and Scripts to create their sites. This made the markup unchangeable later on. 

Web Development Perceptions

My current perceptions of web design is that it is not only becoming more interactive technologies like Flash but also that well planned out and easy to navigate design is becoming paramount. As an example i would site site's such as banking websites. If you compare a site such as First Federal to one such as Wells Fargo i thing that you will be able to see that wells fargo is more intuitive and geared more towards current customers. It is far easier to navigate if your focus is online banking and i think it is more visually striking. Which for a business is important. With CSS i think there is positive push towards keeping web content separated into the three layers. And i also there is going to be an even heavier push towards major websites being accessible. Im talking in terms of technologies such as the iphone and phone based web browsers. The recent newsletter from Sitepoint stated that the new web crawler for google can now read flash based text. And flash based text loaded using javascript (I'm not sure what that means). But from last semester we learned that one of the drawbacks to using flash fonts and flash content was that it wasn't indexed by google and other search engines. I think that this new approach is going to allow websites to still have optimized SEO while still being greatly enhanced with flash. So the future of the web is going to be more interactive and possibly faster, requiring a greater amount of knowledge as well as an eye towards design. As someone who loves art and who loves design i think that as a web developer the possibility to impact society is still yet to be determined. Look how Facebook, Hotmail, Youtube, Myspace has impacted society. If you have a good idea who knows what can happen.