half a year gone

It's hard to believe that half a year has passed already!!! I'm hoping that i've passed all my modules (crossing fingers and toes) and am looking forward to the last half of the course.

*note to self* study hard, and do your assignments!

Some pest control for javascript (aka debugging)

I found a couple of stand-alone programs for debugging when I did a google search.

The first one is SplineTech JavaScript HTML Debugger (available for download here at a cost of a measly US$70 up to a staggering US$400. It has a lot of features that sound good for debugging, but the cost is a real turn off.

The second stand alone I found is Komodo IDE 4.3.2 which is found here and it costs a lot less than the previous product. It also has a student edition, but you have to email them for prices on this, as they want verification you are a student before they give up that state secret. Seems to have the same things that SplineTech has.

If the debuggers you can get for nothing are not your cup of tea, then either of these programs would suit your needs.

Now onto the good stuff ... debuggers that are FREE

My system is AMD athlon 64 X2 dual core processor 3600+ 1.90 GHz, 894 Mb RAM, with a 32-bit operating system. I am running Windows Vista Home Premium, with all available security updates installed.

My main internet browser is Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/20080404 Firefox/2.0.0.14, and so I looked for free debuggers which work with this.

I installed both FireBug and Venkman but have yet to use either of them. I really don't know how to test them, and haven't found the time during the week to do anything. I do have information on both, taken from the websites so I don't know how good the information is.

Firefox does not come with a built-in JavaScript debugger. Nevertheless, Firefox users can download Venkman JavaScript debugger version 0.9.87.2 as an extension ( here ). I have had a quick look at it, and it seems to be fine at first glance. It has a built in help function if needed (just type /help)

Now to FireBug. Information from http://www.joehewitt.com/software/firebug/# states 'FireBug lets you explore the far corners of the DOM by keyboard or mouse. All of the tools you need to poke, prod, and monitor your JavaScript, CSS, HTML and Ajax are brought together into one seamless experience, including a debugger, error console, command line, and a variety of fun inspectors.'

I'm relying heavily on correct information from both websites, as I haven't tested either of them. One day I will test them, and add another blog to let you know what I think.

Oh, for IE users, there is help available.

'The best tool for debugging JavaScript on Internet Explorer is the Microsoft Script Editor, a free component of Microsoft Office XP/2003. There are other options, but they are less attractive: Microsoft Script Debugger is not very powerful, and Visual Studio .Net is an expensive purchase if all you need is JavaScript debugging for IE.' (http://www.jonathanboutelle.com/mt/archives/2006/01/howto_debug_jav.html)

The best advice I can give at this time is for IE users to switch to FireFox, and use the free add-on FireBug for all your debugging needs. (no, I don't like IE and only use it when I have to)

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Image: 'high point for little creatures'

www.flickr.com/photos/37996577120@N01/858410838

Venkman information from http://www.mozilla.org/projects/venkman/

Think I'll need piles of coffee to work on this stuff!

Over the past two weeks we have been given an introduction to programming. UGH, what a way to start the week! The notes Peter has given us are certainly helpful, although a tad confusing at times.

This week we did our first little bit of javascript! A simple little thing that adds two numbers together, but still mind boggling as i've only ever copy and pasted javascript from dynamicdrive.com so writing it myself was certainly an experience.

Looking forward to more exciting stuff next week.

ta ta for now ....

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Image: 'Un latté svp ....'

www.flickr.com/photos/58002590@N00/341113489

How do I think I'm doing so far????

I think I'm doing okay with html and css, although I tend to forget the simple things. I'm sure I don't need any refresher lessons, but if you want to give them that's fine. If I could practice more at home this stuff might actually be imprinted on my brain lol. And now I don't have anything more to say, so ..........

ta ta for now

CSS and tables

After a bit of mucking around I finally got my 2 exercises to look right! Yippee!!!! Guess this CSS stuff isn't half bad, especially if you do it right so your final product comes out how you want it to. Hopefully though, there won't be that many times I will need to do a table when I get out into the real world to do this stuff as I think there is too much stuffing around. But at least I know I can do it.

ta ta for now



Image: 'Setting up the Tables'
www.flickr.com/photos/90514086@N00/216729825

HTML, CSS, drills and other exciting stuff

Today Peter has us doing more stuff to our css for '10 things'. I'm telling you, this is confusing stuff! Maybe I should record it and play it while I'm sleeping lol (i've heard this is a good way to remember stuff)

He's got us adding images to the background, and to different elements. I'm not sure having a background image is a good idea, but using them as borders is interesting.

Didn't want to miss Monday, but life sux that way

Thanks Peter for posting what we did in class on Monday ... I really wanted to be there, but things happened that were out of my control.

Anyway, I have done the tutorial bit today, and am going to do the rest of the stuff on the post tomorrow as I am going to have a full day with no kids, so no interruptions. They won't be getting home till after 5 so I should get a fair bit done. Will post again when I've finished!

Okay ... I'm starting to get another headache trying to figure out where I've gone wrong in my divs for my 10 things index page. Think I'm going to have to walk away for a while and come back later, maybe even start from scratch so I'm not getting so annoyed/frustrated with it and myself. I can say that I will definitely be at TAFE on Monday, no matter what.

FTP Clients

I downloaded a couple of FTP clients that I thought might be good (luckily they were only small file sizes hehe) but couldn't work them out. I opened up FileZilla which I couldn't get my head around when I first installed it but thought I'd give another try. After a few unsuccessful log-in attempts I finally made it. YAY ME!!!!!!

So yeah, I think I'll stick to this one ... free and easy, just like moi! (haha just kidding) You can download it from here if you'd like to try it. Oh, and the site allows you to download for all platforms (FileZilla Client) which includes windows, mac and linux, or just for windows (FileZilla Server). I just tried to download it to catch the file size (I installed it from disc) but it was too quick for me, so I guess it's not too big lol

I really didn't notice that much difference with this and CoreFTP, but Peter told us how to use Core and I worked FileZilla out all by my lonesome. I think the major benefit of FZ is that it is open source. Major Bonus in my book.

I took a look at the wikipedia entry for active/passive FTP (here) and from what I can gather, the difference between the two is where the FTP server binds the source port to. In active mode, it binds it to port 20. In passive mode it binds to a dynamic port between 49152 and 65535.

Anyway, enough from me for now ... i still have some more school work to do, and some housework (okay, lots of that ugh)

ta ta for now

Image: "Frustrated"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/happilyobstinate/159162368/

Some new stuff!!! woohoo

What are we learning today???

Well, we are doing content of the webpage and doing some style work too. Learning some new things, but I don't think it's going to stick in my brain for long :s

Working on my Canada page now, and I think it's coming together okay, although I may have to rethink my color scheme lol

Later on I'm hoping to learn how to do captions, as I have a few photos of my holiday in Canada, and adding some info with them would be good for anyone who sees the page.

"10 things I would like to do before I die" is the home page, and I'm thinking I may need to change it a bit, because doing a whole web page on getting divorced would be rather boring! I'd also have to think hard about what to do for the page on seeing my kids get married, or getting off my medication. Do you think I need some more exciting aspirations????

Anyway, I am doing what I want to do for the moment, which is how to build a webpage, and all the other subjects I'm doing here at TAFE are things I don't know ... will be good for setting up my own business as a web designer, which is what I really want to do.

That's all from me for now, ta ta

I should have stayed in bed!

My alarm woke me at 6am, as it does every weekday, and all I did was go back to sleep! Half an hour later I thought I better get up and get the kids out of bed. After all, they have school and I have TAFE!

The kids had drunk all the milk by 8pm last night :s ... and nothing is open out where I am that late at night (except for the pub) so no coffee and no breakfast. I was ready to leave, but my youngest son wasn't dressed for school, so another 5 minutes waiting for him and then I had to chat to his babysitter so we weren't on the road again until 8.20. Had to stop and get money and headache tablets, so ended up dropping the other 2 off just in time for school, but I was late.

Now for the good stuff! In class today we learnt all about html elements, how they have attributes and the attributes have values. Can all get a bit confusing let me tell you. Not very good for a headache lol.

We touched on the style element, which is good for a html document as it doesn't clog up the page with repetitive coding, helping the web designer immensely.

Guess it's time for me to get off now, might write a bit more after dinner tonight.

~~AngelBaby (aka Gretchen or Kitty)