I’ve been creating some demo movies as part of my on-line classes and have posted them out on blip.tv.
I thought you might like to look at the series. I’ll be adding new ones on a regular basis.
Here’s a link showing all the videos available out on Blip.tv.
I’m using ScreenFlow to create my onscreen videos. This is an amazing program that allows me to capture video and sound and edit using scrolling and panning. Mac only. What is displayed here is only the video portion of the more complete tutorials I offer as part of my online and face2face courses.
The videos shots of my whiteboard talks are taken using a very inexpensive ($150) Aiptek HD1080P pocket-size video. Chad Peterson, one of my students is working on the editing. These resulted from one of my online students asking me to record my entire class. That is very difficult, getting good sound, but I thought I’d try some simple videos that focused on specific concepts to see how enhance the learning activities for each module.
I’d be interested in your comments on how useful these would be to you as a student. Thanks!
Matt Potochnik, the webmaster for the City of Mankato and a graduate of South Central College Computer Careers , has recommended Aptana . This is an excellent, open-source text editor that can be installed as a stand-alone editor or as a plug-in to Eclipse, the popular GUI programming environment that IBM wrote a
nd later made open-source.
I’ve been using Aptana to edit my XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript files for several weeks now and really like it. It has an excellent debugger, plays well with FireFox, and allows me to code very quickly with its excellent syntax popups and DOM tree display. Errors are flagged immediately so I can fix things before things get all snarfled in a ball of goop.
Jesse Daniels , a software engineer from DayPort , and also a graduate from the Computer Careers program, pointed out how cool the DOM Display is. It allows a programmer to see the entire structure of the page and then jump to any specific element in the code window by simply clicking on the element in the DOM map.
I highly recommend this editor to anyone that spends time writing XHTML, JavaScript, PHP, or other scripting languages.
Here’s a link to a series of videos showing Aptana in action .
Got API?
An Application Programming Interface is a set of functions that let you “hook” into a system without having access to the source code or inside workings of that system. There’s an API for all the modern languages like Java, PHP, Ruby On Rails, and HTML. Sites such as Google, Amazon, and eBay all have an API allowing programmers to access information from their sites. Here’s a list of the APIs Google has available for many of its services including maps, adwords, and Blogger data. This lets a savvy programmer include all types of eBay or Amazon services on their web site by using what these sites have already created.
You can also think of an API as a dictionary. Just like an English dictionary displays words and their meanings, an API lists all the functions available in the API as well as what type of information each one is expecting and what type of information each function will return. Programmers use an API as a reference in using functions correctly.
Up until now a programmer had to keep a copy of each API on their computer or keep a list of bookmarks pointing to the APIs out on Web.
gotapi.com changes all of that. All the common language APIs are now available from a single link page. (Sorry, the application APIs such as Google, Amazon, and eBay aren’t listed yet.) As a programmer this means you can find information quickly as you are writing code.
Tip: With the gotapi.com page displaying, click and drag the icon in the Address field 
of your browser and drop it on upper part of your Start menu button. You’ll see a solid black line showing you were it will be positioned as you drag it into the Start list.
Anytime you need to look up a function, gotAPI.com is only a click or two away.
- Special thanks to Sean Washington for reminding me about this really great programming tool.
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This is a temporary posting for all my Web Students.
There’s a free 2-hour seminar in Bloomington covering AJAX. This is sponsored by Intertech. You can register at http://intertech.com/REGISTER
AJAX is the JavaScript tools that are being used on web sites such as Google Earth where you have the smooth scrolling. Using AJAX smoothes out the user experience because you don’t have the pauses every time you click on a web page.
This is being held at Microsoft at 8300 Norman Center Drive, Suite 950
Bloomington, MN Which I could go but I have other plans for that day that I can’t change.
Post a response if you attend. I’d love to hear what you learned.
One of my students, Gil Hanson, just finished creating a volunteer web site for SMILES, an organization that works with people with disabilities, helping them live more independantly. Gil has been taking classes here at South Central for several years and never stops learning.
I’m pleased to see him helping out non-profit organizations in this way and want to point out how well-crafted his code is. Here’s there new web site: http://www.smilescil.org/
Gil used a menu system from Milonic. Their policy is to make their tools free for any non-profit corporation. This is a great thing to know about whenever you have a non-profit client you are creating web pages for.
Great job Gil!
PS – SMILES is the organization that first connected me with Earle Harrison. See my Accessiblity entry from a week ago.
If you work with files you should have a set of rules that you follow so that your file names are always consistent. This is especially true if other people will be working with your files which is very common in web work and programming.
Here’s the file naming conventions that I have developed over the years as a programmer and web person. What you do is not as important as being consistent. Using the same name convention will save you countless hours of “fixing” things and looking up to see how a filename was spelled. I recommend using these rules for filenames, folders and directories, and variable names.
- always start a filename using lowercase
- don’t use spaces or underscores _
- use camelCaseToMakeNamesEasierToRead
- don’t use plurals – for example: Use “graphic” instead of “graphics”
- be consistent with extensions. .html should always be .html and not .htm one day or .default on another day.
Here’s the reasoning and experience that helped me develop this list:
Always start a filename using lowercase
80% of the web servers use Apache running on Linux and Linux is case sensitive. By starting every name with a lower case letter you remove the guesswork like “Now, was it Index.html or index.html?” On a Linux server these are two different things.
Each time you have to go look up a file name to find out you used the wrong upper/lower case means less time with your video games or bronzing on the beach.
Don’t use spaces or underscores “_”
Web servers and programming languages are befuddled by spaces. They may work in Windows and Word, but most other computer programs don’t even allow them. Linux is a good example.
Why not underscores “_” you may ask. Underscores will “hide” when being displayed as an underlined word and users think they are spaces. Also, why add another character to your name if you don’t have to? And finally, how many people can touch-type the _ character. Every time you have to pause your typing to hit a special key means the longer it takes to complete your killer app.
Use camelCaseToMakeNamesEasierToRead
This is the solution to not using spaces or underscores. Note how easy it is to read the statement above. Its much faster to type this way. You’ll have to personally decide how you are going to handle acronyms. For example: web3RSS.html or web3Rss.html or web3rss.html
My recommendation, for readability and recognition, is to keep an acronym as all caps: web3RSS.html
Don’t use plurals
For example: use “photo” instead of “photos”
When working with a programming team we spent countless hours fixing our programs because of simple spelling “errors” like this. Then, one day someone suggested that we follow this rule and everyone’s life got so much easier.
It’s a little weird at first, but after a few times of knowing how a foldername will be and not having to go look it up makes it all feel right in the end.
Be consistent with extensions and keep them lowercase.
I recommend always using .html. Don’t use .htm one day and .html the next.
Same thing with .jpg
By following these rules on a regular, and consistent basis, you will be able to work faster and with a lot less frustration.Note: There’s a few exceptions to all of this. If you are a Java or .NET programmer than you will want to have all your Class files begin with an upper case letter. And constants are always written using ALL_CAPS with underscores to separate the words. These are both naming conventions that were around a lot longer than my little set of rules.
This class covers both client-side scripting like JavaScript and server-side scripting using ASP.NET. Every year I go through the same anxiety, “What book(s) will I use for Web Programming II?”
Because this area is changing so dramatically I always need to find new textbooks. I think I’ve found a great JavaScript book for the class starting this August. I first heard about it while listening to a podcast from Paul Boag (Boag’s World podcast #23 – Defining Your Project) It’s called DOM Scripting by Jeremy Keith and offers great scripting techniques that include the DOM (Document Object Model), CSS, and XHTML.
The DOM allows a programmer to address any component on a web page. This could be a button, a title, or a specific paragraph. In the past DOM scripting was very tedious and worked differently in different browsers.
Jeremy starts out discussing the basics of JavaScript and builds on that utilizing the DOM based on its current standard which now works in all the popular browsers including Internet Explore and FireFox.
The projects he uses to demonstrate the code include a photo gallery and an animated slideshow. These not only look like fun but could be a valuable addition to your web site.
I’m also looking at making some Flash movies available for the second half of the course. Check out the instructional movies at LearnVisualStudio.net I’ll be looking closer at how I can include these as part of the course over the summer.
This is going to be a great course. Here’s the syllabus that lists all the stuff you will learn. (This is last year’s syllabus and it will be updated and revised over the summer.)
