Chapter Eight

I have created 6 personal scripts that are built upon some code that was taught in class.
They were all simple to do but the syntax took a while to get used to. Some of the scripts are javascript and some php.

Script 1: javascript drop down navigation form on my index page: here
Script 2: javascript scrolling status bar on my index page, makes info scroll on the bottom right.
This might not work right away in firefox, you need to change some content settings. here

Script3: javascript random picture display on my xhtml recipe page that shows a random picture of chocolates based on what time the user entered the page. here

Script4: PHP mail form, changed from cgi to php. Sends the mail to my rit account using php instead of cgi, with a thank you screen. I might get rid of this later so i don't get spammed. here
*SOURCE PHP*: here

Script5: PHP Top Secret Mail form, uses php to allow certain people into a secret society. I upped it a bit with a mail notification whenever someone submits the form. here
*SOURCE PHP*: here

Script6: PHP Guest Book writes to disk to a file in my password protected results folder. here
*SOURCE PHP*: here

Chapter Seven

We started to really get into php/form scripting and i learned that php is probably as annoying as html. This isn't really a surprise because it basically is html with some if statements and variables. Spelling, syntax, and caps are so important its hard on the soul and mind.

But joking aside, I learned some good stuff on how to evaluate a submitted form using if statements and variables in a php script. I had trouble at first because i was confusing the name and value attributes of an input html tag. I later accidentally erased the variable declarations in my php and couldn't understand why the weren't showing up in echo's.

However i figured it out eventually and fixed my php. I went for a Black/Gray color scheme for my form to emphasize the "secret" aspect of it.

The form is linked from my index and can be found here:

http://people.rit.edu/~rra9933/409/secretform.html

Chapter Five/Six

I have just finished my midterm and I feel very satisfied with it. I am surprised at how well the layout turned out. I suppose it is because that is how I planned it all when i drew it out on paper. I didn't think it would help so much just to draft it quickly.

The place I used for the project is a virtual world called Granado Espada. I play a game that involves the player (me) in this world called Sword of the New World. The virtual world is vast and very well done. This gave me plenty of content for pictures that i could take as screen shots.

The color scheme was inspired by a forum/messaging board I visit that was made for players of the game here: http://forum.swordofthenewworld.com/.

My midterm is linked from my indexWorking.html page and can be found here:

http://people.rit.edu/~rra9933/midterm/index.html

I am working with my partner on getting pieces of the design document together. We need to meet again before we present.

Chapter Four

Doing this exercise really tested my ability to format a good looking webpage. I had troubles from the very beginning when i tried to center the background image and still have the text placed appropriately over it. The seemingly abstract methods available for doing this always confused me even though i knew i could do it. I eventually got the setup to be a semi-centered static stylized form.

I learned that separating most things logically into divs can be easy, but can be confusing if not not planned out first. I hit an annoying moment when my padding and margins were messing everything up when i changed one div. I also had a strange problem where a picture i was putting into a div (the background picture) was being cut off at the top and bottom. After some messing around, i got the picture to show by setting the height of the div, letting the picture fill out the space.

I targeted this page mostly toward a minimum 1024X794 something pixel resolution because it is very common, and anything smaller would make things difficult when laying out the poem with the picture the way i wanted.

The Poem page is here:
Poem Page

It is also linked in my Index drop menu

Chapter Three

Rating css on the Zen Garden:
Group: Stephanie Davis, Me

The html was all the same and looked very organized and neat (unlike most of what i've seen).
I could not see the specific css, but the generic css looked all the same, set out for each section/div in the html.

Bad Design first.
Retro Theater by Eric Rogé (On right ->)

We both agreed that this design was not a good one. The information is not formatted well and takes a long time to find. The scrolling can be confusing because the text is limited to the movie screen but controlled by the right side scrolling bar. All the text tends to look the same and it is hard to decipher where you are on the page. It was unpleasant to look at after a few minutes.
There is also little to no defined navigation other than scrolling.







Good Design/css.
Kyoto Forest by John Politowski (On Right ->)

This page works very well with simple design and good colors/graphical images. The information is well and simply organized with easy to read headers. The menu is left-side which makes for very easy and comprehensible navigation. All the text is easy to read and well placed/aligned.

Chapter Two

After a week of HTML/XHTML review i think i'm getting a better hang of this.
We just started simple scripts and i've used the two simple examples in my new index page.

I started a page called home.html that turned into my index page in my 409 directory.
It links to my homework assignments and this blog so it is an easy page to use as an index.
I chose the Left side layout with a navigation area because it seemed the most traditional.
It is very easy to interpret and easy to convey information through.

Index Page

One of the scripts i put in it acts as my navigation bar, it is a drop down menu with a list of all the pages i made (or example that were provided by the teacher).

Chapter One

I reviewed HTML and XHTML and saw no difference except that XHTML has a different header and stuff. I forget the difference really except that XHTML seems to be a lot more strict.

I had some problems doing the styles because of the loose syntax at times but got it to verify soon enough. Doing paragraphs and unordered lists is not really that hard i suppose...

Here is the first assignment pages:

HTML
XHTML
image courtesy of www.grocersdaughter.com

I used css to change the font style and the ingredients heading (which isn't a heading but a paragraph, but oh well).

If there is one thing i've learned though, it's that HTML4 doesn't require/want stand alone tags like to have a "/" at the end, but XHTML does (at least i think).