Labs!

• older models to look at
  • WebDevLabsWinter08 - from back on Blackboard, this is a set of labs that are somewhat 'packaged' for other faculty, administrators, etc., to look at.
  • Labs from WebDevFall08 - 'in situ', not processed or modified at all, but you have to click to see each lab, etc.
• things we'd like to do differently
  • we'd like to get a much richer narrative. NandiniPremmanisakul asked whether investigators should be keeping a journal while doing a lab, and that is the perfect metaphor for the level of richness we want, at least for the moment.
  • we're trying to sort out some balance between prep work and involving the classes in the design of the labs
• our labs
  • TemplateLanguagesLab
  • Transformations in several parts:
    • AbstractionsPartOne - finding commonalities from concrete examples.
    • AbstractionsPartTwo
  • ExploringJavascriptsRole

Notes

• WebDevDayOneNotes
• WebDevFlow
• WebDevLanguagesHowToLearn
• WebDevResources
• WebDevMetaDataStandards
• PeerEvaluation?
• ScaffoldingInInformationScience
• EasingIntoJavascript

References

• reset stylesheets - an important tool to learn how to use gradually. As you get better with these, your ability to design and implement solutions that gracefully degrade from highspeed highres in the office to handheld on the street will improve one-to-one.
• http://xmlsoft.org/ - home for all things to do with XML and XSL

What you should be doing

• 3/2/09: summary: we've moved on from the Abstractions labs.
  • you should be polishing your AbstractionsPartTwo and getting the final version of that in at this point.
  • We spent some time looking at the big picture w/re to how all the technologies fit together.
  • We started Javascript today, see EasingIntoJavascript.

• 2/2/09 - we started working with CvInformation. For Wednesday, work with the starting example. Specifically:
  • start building your own version of the XML object. Feel free to add (and omit) tags as appropriate to represent your CvInformation rather than Art's.
  • work on creating a DTD for the resulting XML (our goal is a DTD that is expressive enough to generate all of your CvInformation objects.) It isn't important that you have a perfect version of the DTD for Wednesday(!), just that you put enough work into it that Wednesday's classwork will let you integrate the knowledge you need.
  • try writing a narrative CV similar to Art's. This sort of document is very valuable as we all have a tendency to loose track of important details over time.
  • You may also want to explore OxygenXML or XMLSpy (which offer free trial versions).
• 1/28/09 - more with TemplateLanguagesLab, first time looking at peer evaluations (see also LabPeerEvaluationTemplate, and PeerEvaluation? )
  • TemplateLanguagesLab
• 1/26/09 - first pass through TemplateLanguagesLab
• 1/21/09
  • we did a lot in class - talked about WebDevMetaDataStandards, Crockford's book, and started on CSS. You should read Chapters 2 and 4 in Wyke-Smith over the weekend, focusing on the layout in CSS and how it integrates with your growing knowledge of XHTML. I gave you a task to work on - figuring out how the tooltips work.
• 1/7/09
  • read Chapter 1: XHTML: Giving Structure to Content in Stylin' with CSS: A Designer's Guide, Second Edition by Charles Wyke-Smith in the Safari Online Library
• 1/5/09
  • tutorials on http://www.w3schools.com/
    • XML
    • XHTML
• start to explore (analyze or even dissect) web pages. Here's a starter tool list
  • Start by installing firefox (browser). Under the 'tools' menu (on a mac), click on 'addons', and you'll find tons of nifty stuff. We'll start with:
    • These first three integrate together to provide a very powerful web development workbench:
      • firebug
      • web developer's toolbar
      • DOM inspector
    • Then you need a test recorder/player, both of these are front ends to Selenium
      • Selenium IDE
      • Molybdenum
    • i also love
      • no script ( gets rid of all those annoying ads, more importantly, protects your privacy )
      • better gmail2

books to consider (really important!)

• Charles Wyke-Smith, Stylin' With Css: A Designer's Guide (UsingSafariBooks)
• Christian Wenz, JavaScript Phrasebook: Essential Code and Commands, Sams, 2006 (UsingSafariBooks)
• JavaScript: The Good Parts, 1st Edition, by Douglas Crockford (UsingSafariBooks) - it teaches you to 'see' JavaScript as the lovely programming language it really is
• Flanagan, JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, 5th Edition

books to consider (important, but less so...)

• Holzner, Inside XML (for all of $5 or $6 with shipping! Buy it!)
• Holzner, Inside XSLT (for all of a couple of bucks, buy it)
• Schmitt, Blessing. Cherny, Evans, Lawver, and Trammell, Adapting to Web Standards: CSS and Ajax for Big Sites, New Riders, 2008.

tools