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.