Another Project Done

Building two web sites was the ultimate goal of two of my classes (one web site each, of course). Both are now done and released to the world. They are quasi-semi imitations of commercial web sites, one for an ERP company and the other for a CRM company. There is, however, no rest now as three other projects remain, as well as the last of the small assignments. Speaking of which there are four (X)HTML labs that are done but not posted on the web site; that will have to wait a week or so.

Cascading Style Sheets

This week’s installment is all about cascading style sheets, which you won’t see just by viewing the mini web sites (there are two, Lab 7 and Lab 9). But if you were to look at the HTML code behind each page, you would see only content. All of the formatting, except for the table structures, is done in a separate CSS file. For Lab 7, this meant designing one of the ten web pages (HTML file and CSS file), then simply referencing that CSS file to do all of the formatting on the other nine web pages, a considerable time saver. As I built the other nine pages, I came across a problem or two and a design tweak or two. To correct the problems and tweak the design, I made the change in the style sheet alone and the change was automatically applied to all pages.

Lab 7 is an attempt to build something similar to a commercial web site, with an emphasis on structural unity between pages and ease-of-use. The set of pages includes an introductory page, one about the company, one on contacts, one on service, and one for each product. Since I am not in a position to actually sell anything, the product line is a bit whimsical. In a future class I’ll learn how to connect a database to a web site which will remove the need for managing a fair amount of content on each HTML page.

Background, Image Map, and More

The web site has a new look; I’ve learned how to add background images. The main page has a background picture I took in Wyoming (near the Big Horn River) that is 70% transparent (done using Photoshop). The image on top of it is from the Lockhart Ranch farther downstream on the river in Montana if I remember correctly. I’ll have to change the image in a couple of weeks because there are more than three lab assignments in the course.

Lab 2, just completed, had the goal of creating a mini-website with at least four pages, background image, different fonts and colors, and navigation links (e.g., Home). Beyond that any content was acceptable. Hence the rather eclectic mix of subject matter. I also gave the Lockhart Ranch image and image map, which defines specific areas of the image as clickable links (also known as hotspots). Move the mouse over the image and you’ll see the mouse pointer change to a hand and a little pop-up box with Lab 1 or Lab 2 appear. Click and you go to the appropriate web page.

Our intrepid instructor walk though an example where he explained some computer terms (bit, byte, nybble, word), so I played off of that a bit (or a nybble). I also took an HTML exercise that appeared in this blog earlier and re-jiggered it. If I get really clever (and learned in the tools of the web) I might rework it again using an animated map.

A bit of trivial drivel: at the bottom of the home page is “Palestrina Build 20100202”. This is a version indicator. Rather than using Revision A or Version 1.2, I chose the typical software development convention of using a build number. All the pieces of the web site that you see now regardless when they were created, together represent a single “build” of the web site as of 2 February 2010 (20100202 = YYYYMMDD). Because I like music, I also threw in Palestrina because he died on 2 February.

Class Starts

The first three weeks of class has been nothing short of a drenching. From the fire hoses of instructors has come a tsunami of knowledge through which only now am I learning to swim. Since the classes are all primarily vocational in nature, as opposed to academic, repetition is key. Figuring out how much repetition is enough to learn, say, the syntax of the printf method (a Java programming thingee that formats what the user sees on the screen) or to become familiar with the lasso tool in Photoshop (great for rounding up pixels that need to be included when selecting one apple from many in a photo) is just as important. I could, and have, spent hours selecting and extracting objects from a photo, only to find it was too much; I should have stopped and move on. It’s all just too much fun.

The most visible of my classes for you, the reader, will be Dreamweaver and XHTML. The former is Adobe’s development tool for web sites and the later is the coding language that governs the layout of a web page. I have a web site: RuppOnline.net, where all of my Dreamweaver assignments are posted. The method for turning in assignments is not turning in paper, as those of us who attend school in the last millennium did, but to post to the web site. You see what the instructor sees. I am starting to join the 21^st century. I have latitude to add other items to the web site, so long as it is kept separate from the Dreamweaver assignments, so results of Photoshop, Illustrator, and maybe even Java will appear there.

Right now, all you will see is Lab 1, a simple set of web pages with things one typically finds on the Internet, such as text, images, video, and music. I’m working on Lab 2, which adds some more features and should be operational by the end of the day tomorrow.