Finishing touches

Today has been spent putting the finishing touches to my website and starting to construct the documentation around the site. I have been working with CSS a lot today and really feel that I have the hang of it (mostly) now. Although I am still getting an error on all the pages of my site through the validator on the script text= css part of the link. Not sure why this is happening and have probably run out of time to get it fixed. I had the aim of a completely valid site but I think that may have been wishful thinking - more experience required in working out how to fix the things that are making my site not 100% valid at this stage I think.
The site documentation is coming along. I am using screen grabs of each of the pages of the site and then providing an explanation of what the visitor can do there, what technologies are used on the page and the navigation of the page. This is not terribly difficult as my site is a content site and therefore quite static. There is some interactivity there but only on certain pages.
I was using the JavaScript onclick code from our week 8 lecture initially to get some interactivity in my photogallery however I just couldn't get it to work. I then went and searched for a photo gallery plug in online and came up with a great bit of code from Jon Designs at http://smoothgallery.jondesign.net/ using mootools v1.11 to create a slide show gallery that I am really happy with. This is probably what I should have done in the first place! According to Jon "Since it's based on the mootools library, it's somehow platform agnostic. I have fully tested it on:

• Firefox
• Opera
• Internet Explorer 6 and 7
• Safari"

This means that I am about as close to complete as I am going to get with this website and I have learnt a lot every day that I have worked on it.

Reference:
Schemoul J, Mootools and slide show gallery, http://smoothgallery.jondesign.net/ accessed 31 October 2009

Finishing up the details

After seeking a little help from a friend I have sorted out some of the issues in my CSS. I am feeling as though I have learnt a great deal about this in the last week and have managed to feel like I have an ok handle on how to apply it. My friend explained things as being in blocks and that was a bit of an epiphany moment for me. I realised a lot of what I was doing wrong and have been able to apply rules to the whole website and have it work - very exciting!
I ahve also been using the tutorials at thw W3C website at for example: http://www.w3schools.com/css/pr_background-image.asp to ensure that I am applying the correct code and rules to the aspects of the page where I want them to appear.
Now I just have to do some work on my JavaScript, correct the validation errors and I am just about done with the website component. I can then just finish up my documentation and have the files all ready to hand in/post next Tuesday.

CSS continues and Learning Reflection

This evening I sat down to write part of my learning reflection (so far) and found that I feel quite happy with the things I have learnt over the semester and that the things that I haven't learnt as well as I may have hoped have not really held me back from doing the final project and feeling a certain amount of satisfaction with the skills and knowledge I have gained. I feel that I don't want to pursue front end code as a job and this is a really good realisation for me. My strengths don't lie in this direction however having a good understanding on the backgounds of all of these technologies will stand me in good stead in the future.
I also spent a bit more time playing around in CSS - the saga continues! I have made some good inroads into getting the bits and pieces to sit where I would like them to but the job is by no means complete. I found some help at the following sites for some very simple things such as liquid layouts: http://www.bigbaer.com/css_tutorials/two-column-header-footer.html
And for my navigation menu which I was finding a bit difficult to place I found some really good options for a vertical menu at Exploding Boy: http://www.exploding-boy.com/images/EBmenus/menus.html These helped me to sort out my code so that I can continue on with the project without feeling too frustrated. I feel as though I am getting a better handle on CSS all the time now!

Updating the System plan and the world of CSS

Today has been spent working out a few bugs in my code and updating my system plan. There were a few things that I was unhappy with and I have changed those to better reflect the system that I have been building. This has been a good review exercise on what I originally aimed to do and what I have managed to accomplish. Time has not been my friend in this.
I think that if I had more of a background in this sort of thing my goals in my learning proposal would have been far more realistic. As it is, I have struggled to really learn enough about (X)HTML, CSS and JavaScript to bring together what I have done so far. I seriously underestimated the time it would take for me to learn how to use these programs. This may not be the case for everyone; different strokes for different folks and all but it has certainly been the case for me. I find that I really need to try things out quite a lot before I can get them to work even with the helps of books such as Learning Web Design. This title has been a saviour however I have still been working through trial and error and unfortunately I still don't know why some things suddenly work. I have to backtrack to understand what it is I have done differently or corrected to make something suddenly appear as I want it to.
I am going to continue my trial and error learning style as I am making progress and I am definitely the type of learner that has to try things to understand how they work. Explanations are great and really help however it is the actual doing that is the key for me to retain the knowledge and gain the skills.

Email me form - microformat

Today I have been working on getting my pages uploaded and doing some basic testing to check that all the links work and my thank you page comes up when I use the contact me form that I have put in. I used what is essence (at least I think it is) a microformat for Email forms. It has helped me add an anti-spam filter by adding a verification step to any emails that are sent through. This helps to stop spamming services from using these as the verfication code changes and needs to be input again each time you send an email. The place I found the most help with this was at: http://www.emailmeform.com/?page=cphome where like the hresume microformat I used it allows you to input the information that you want and then generates the code so that you can copy and paste into your own web page. I am also using their emailing facility to push the messages onto my inbox where I can pick them up. I have done quite a few tests to make sure that this all is working and had to backtrack a bit because I wanted to create my own Thank you page. This meant redoing the Contact Me form and adding the link after I had created my own page. I did this so that the whole website (apart from the online resume) has the same overall look and feel. I think this is important as it demonstrates the look and feel that I am trying to achieve. For anyone looking for a Contact Me form with verification. I would recommend using this as it also validates! I do need to add the additional page into my site map and system plan as it was not something I considered before I walked through adding the Contact Me page.
I am still having quite a bit of trouble with my photo gallery and am going to need to seek some help with this. The JavaScript is just not switching the images out at all. I have put all the images into an 'image' folder and this is something that I have had issues with before. I will have to try again tomorrow to see what I can do about.

W3C Validator

I love this tool! It has helped me no end in working out what silly things I have done in my code that stops the whole page from working. It has meant that I have spent far less time trying to figure what I did wrong and just fixing it up, reloading and moving on. If you haven't used this as you are writing your code, I highly recommend that you do as it makes life so much easier. You can either put the code directly in or you can just paste the link in and with one click you are shown the error of your ways. Try it out at: http://validator.w3.org/
Now that I have all (or most) of my HTML working I will be moving onto the more somplex part of my project. I need to get my CSS working. I have been having a bit of trouble with this but I am determined to master it. I will begin battling with this first thing tomorrow morning and keep testing it until I get there. If all else fails there is always next weeks class to get some feedback from my peers and lecturer on how to fix what doesn't work. In the meantime I am going to be referring to the two texts that I have been using all semester; Nierderst Robbins - Learning Web Design and Wyke-Smith's stylin' with CSS. With these two resources and all the available resources on the web I should manage to sort out most of my CSS issues in the next couple of days.
The other issue I still have to resolve is my Contact Me page however more about that tomorrow.

JavaScript & the photogallery

I have been working on including a bit of JavaScript into my project and have finally managed to get some of it working. I have used JavaScript for my photogallery to offer some interactivity to my website. I originally just uploaded the photographs in the file format I had taken them in but discovered that this is too bulky so have compressed the files down and reduced the size to small web size to make this work alot better. I may struggle to produce the thumbnails I need as I haven't got access to photoshop at home. I am going to do a bit more research and see if there is another way to do this.
I have basically been tidying up my code in the last few days and running it through the W3C Validation tool to work out the issues and debug. This has proved to be very useful and is helping me to make sure that what I am producing really works. It helped me sort out the following pages: Photogallery, Home page, portfolio space and the PDF resume page. I will be continuing to do this as I go to make sure that errors don't creep into my code.
I have also been considering my Contact Me page and have come to the realisation that I won't actually need to use PHP and MySQL for this page. I only want people to email me from the page, not to store their information as this will come through via the email. I therefore will amend my system plan accordingly and not include this technology in these pages.

(X)HTML and CSS

Today I have worked through and put all of my content into (X)HTML and started to build the CSS as well. Progress is slow but it is coming along fairly well. I have learnt alot over this semester however because there is considerable time between when you first learn something and when you need to apply it there has been a lot of revision going on. I have been looking back over each weeks lecture notes and checking out bits and pieces of code that have been useful in my final project. I have used JavaScript, CSS and HTML thus far and have been working on a bit of PHP as well.
I am finding that pulling everything together is a bit more complex than I had thought although it is coming together slowly but surely.
I have found the peer feedback that I have received on my various submissions very useful although I have received feedback from only one person in my group. This has been disappointing as I would have liked to get a better idea from the whole group about the work I have submitted. Not sure how that works out in the end as I have supplied feedback to everyone in my group so far.
I am putting together a list of questions that I need to ask in class this week and am hoping that the answers will clarify any outstanding issues I have. I am basically keeping to my schedule as outlined in my draft system plan.

Finishing the system plan

I spent the day today working through the system plan and putting the finishing touches to everything so that I can then move onto getting the actual website itself up and running.
I found a microformats site today that helped out a great deal with getting the basics of my online resume organised and into (X)HTML. This has saved me a great deal of time and will ensure that when I put the site up it will be in an internationally recognised format as it is one that The Guardian newspaper uses. I found the site at: http://microformats.org/2009/10/06/recently-2009-09
I also created all of my wireframes today. I downloaded a free trial version of SmartDraw which retains a watermark on it with draft versions but works fine for my purposes. I eventually want to purchase one of these but would like a bit more experience in some different options before I make the final decision on which to purchase. SmartDraw has a lot of great features and the learning curve wasn't at all steep so I managed to create my wireframes quite quickly and simply whihc with the pressing time frame on this project is ideal. I found this at: www.SmartDraw.com It only gives you a seven day trial though. There are others out there that give up to 30 days.

CSS decisions and planning

I have been looking over my notes and reference books on this topic debating whether to have an external style sheet or not. As I am wanting to keep my website very simple I thought initially it might not be necessary; I am now convinced otherwise.
I have been looking at Niederst Robbins (2007, p. 193) recommendations that 'this is the most powerful and preferred method for attaching style sheets to content.' and this has helped me decide on this course of action.
Tomorrow I am planning on putting the bulk of the text required into the (X)HTML which is what I have also decided to complete my final project in. I don't feel that I have played around with HTML 5 sufficiently at this stage to use it so have opted for the former. I will need to do a basic content audit on what I have to generally tidy up what is there and help me decide what should go where in the website. As this is essentially an online resume some of the material is really quite dated as the last job I applied for was over three years ago.
I am also going to be fixing up my draft system plan over this weeked as it was definitely in draft format when it was put up there a few weeks ago. Having spent some time thinking about what I can get done and what won't get done the draft needs some updating.

Reference:
Nierderst Robbins J, 2007, Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to (X)HTML, Style Sheets, and Web Graphics, 3rd edn, O'Reilly Media, Sebastopol, CA

Chris Mills' talk

I found Chris Mills talk this week in class very interesting. It was great to hear from an industry professional who is such an advocate of web standards and open source.
I thought his explanations on Opera and the motivations behind what they are doing were great. It really is important that everyone around the World can access the web and everything on it.
It was a little difficult to hear and see some of what he had to say however I think it was very valuable none the less. It would have been better to be in the 4 o'clock class and see hime face to face.
It was also great that he shared some code with us that I think I might be able to use in my final project.