week 10 blog

This week I worked primarily on the presentation and the paper. For the presentation I helped create a powerpoint outlining different things such as motivation, technologies used, difficulties encountered, a time line of our progress, the different components of the project, etc. I had also created some slides to explain some of the code in my attempt at validation but in the end we decided not to present it. As for the paper, I am assigned to contribute to explaining the validation code, some of the potentially scalable aspects of our application (such as adding cover letters or increasing templates) and writing the up the conclusion once each of our respective parts are submitted. We are all contributing our parts through GoogleDocs and once we gather everyone's segments we will combine the paper and submit it on Tuesday.

week 9 post

After having nearly completed the client-side validation for the large resume form we have on the facebook application - using javascript - when it came to testing time on facebook, it didn't work. Facebook markup language did not allow for many of the javascript functions to work, such as get document.by.element.id, and so ultimately those many hours of calling different functions was in vain. Luckily, however, the server side validation with PHP was not too hard to implement. At first I attempted to use this tutorial: http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2004/04/22/php_css_forms.html?page=2
to have the php page submit to itself, and begin validation only after the submit button was pressed, thus allowing for the validation to take place all in one page. However, it turns out that embedding php into id classes and id values within the form caused the whole form not to show up when uploaded onto our fileserver. Thus, even though this route seemed promising in its intuitiveness, I chose to go with a different route. Now upon "submitting" I am having the validation take place on another php file which "Gets" the data. I am also using !eregi to validate for things such as names, phone numbers, addresses, and I am using if(empty) to see if the fields are empty. The final step is to figure out how I will send the validated information through to the original php file that it was intended to go to in the first place.

late week 8 post

This week I tried making a template of the frontpage for the facebook application, but since it did not turn out aesthetically pleasing at all I do not think we will be using it for the project. So far we have completed most of the backend work involving php/mysql; one thing left, however, that we must complete is making the resume files submitted into html files, so that we can style them in different templates with css. Currently I am working on client-side form validation using javascript. I am using a variety of different tutorials in trying to figure out how to submit a php file using javascript, in addition to form validation. Tizag.com has been of some help, but I am still have difficulties getting my script to work properly. Last week (during week 8) I also looked through some mysql and php tutorials on tizag.com; it was very helpful in assisting me to comprehend the different sequences that are taking place for this application to work.

end of week 7 post

This week our group met after class, and once on Friday evening to discuss the logistics of where we are in our project and where we are heading. It was a good meeting in that we specifically assigned tasks for each person in the group to handle. We decided that it would be good idea to split the group into a "back-end" and a "front-end" team, where the former focuses more on the database side of the project dealing with mysql/php, and the front-end works with fbml, css, etc. Although job tasks will change with each group meeting and all members are flexible in this sense, these are the rough designations we've made. Thus, as someone working more on the front-end of the project, I have been working on creating CSS templates to use for styling different types of resumes. Since resumes can be organized and constructed in different ways, depending on what kind of information one wants to put on it and what kind of information one wants to emphasize, it would be a nice idea to have many different resume templates. So far I have copied down a sample resume into html using tables, and I have styled it as much as possible using CSS. I will have to discuss more with the group to see how the resume forms will, once submitted, be translated (or not) into html files where CSS can be used... Thao has said she will use DIV tags to style the resumes -- perhaps that will be a better method of utilizing the power of CSS in such a way that, so long as the information is gathered through forms, we can utilize that data to arrange many different types of resumes. With tables, however, it appears that most of the information has to be directly entered into each cell; subsequently, the role of CSS is not big. Therefore, maybe it would be easier to simply have different forms to fill out, rather than trying to assemble information in a smart way using css? We will have to see in tomorrow's meeting.... So this week I think it will be a good idea to begin working on the resume forms.

week 6 blog

This weekend I made the facebook application "CareerFolio" and added the group members as developers of the application. We haven't yet added the different links to the server or the webpage to make it functional; we will do that next. It seems that our initial plan last week, after giving the presentation, was to split up the group into a "front-end" and "back-end" division, where the front-end would work mainly on the appearance of the application while the back-end worked with php and mysql. It seems, however, that this is not exactly a plausible idea simply because most of the process of creating the resumes and how it will appear must be done through the server and with fbml. I looked at the WC3 tutorial on PHP today and installed the necessary files onto my computer. I also looked into free webhosting, just to practice a little bit of php on my own to see if i can make it connect to the facebook app. On one of the tutorial pages it explained how to upload files and save files with php, and so if our group decides to go this route with resumes, hopefully we can use the tutorials on WC3 to help us. Judging from how another Facebook application, Professional Profile, allows facebook users to post resumes on facebook (through uploading), this may not be an unreasonable route to take. Tomorrow we will meet after class and try to figure out more of the logistics, seeing as how much of the work is intertwined....

week 5 post

So this post is a little late for week 5, but regardless here it is. Creating advanced forms for the last assignment was quite difficult for me. Even though I seemed to have gotten some parts of the javascript to work, such as having the script tell when the entry was filled or not, I only later found a tutorial on the wiki that specifically addressed the different types of code needed to "check" if each entry was filled in with the information it specified. Still, it was a good learning experience as I got to see a a bit more of how the potential of javascript and how in-depth you can make your sites depending on your knowledge of the language. I think these assignments have been very helpful in introducing me to different programming languages -- though i'm sure what I know is very basic, it has given me something to work with in the future.

So at this point we have developed a rough timeline of what we want our project to be. We agreed that we would change our name from facebook pro to careerfolio, and we want the facebook application to have your coverletter, resume, and references. We've been having several online group meetings on AIM to discuss our plans, and it seems that I will really have to work hard to learn the facebook API since my skills as a web programmer are lacking and this project is amibitious. So after setting up the server, hopefully we will be able to somehow partition the workload so that we can all contribute to moving the project along.

week 4

Since doing the last couple of assignments I have realized that I have learned quite a bit of web programming knowledge. To be sure, I am by no means advanced in any of the languages we have covered thus far (html, css, and javascript) but it's been quite fun actually learning the basics of each one. I am happy that I now have basic html and css knowledge (i'm working on javascript right now); the idea that I know how to make a basic website and style it on a simple level gives me some amount of pleasure. Perhaps it is the prospect of becoming a more advanced web programmer and one day being able to build aesthetically pleasurable sites that is the most promising part of this whole process of learning new languages. But I understand that I still have a long way to go...

For the second javascript assignment I think I will either do the facebook API or the advanced forms option. Our group is most likely going to try to create an application called "facebook pro," which will hopefully try to feature uploading resumes for editing and sending out to employers on facebook. So this might be a good chance to learn more about the facebook API.

week 3

Luckily I got the hang of Assignment 2 and how CSS works. I'm not sure why what I was doing at first that failed, but creating a horizontal list, taking off the bullet points, taking off the underlines, and changing it so that the style changes when the mouse hovers over it was relatively easy. What was more difficult was creating the columns on CSS. But after 10+ hours of fidgeting with it I think I have some of the fundamentals down. Creating a new page with a drastically different style also was good in that it allowed me to compare two different layouts. So now I will begin my adventure into trying to learn javascript....

A use for Firebug!
In trying to learn how to use an external javascript file to send an alert when a button on my page is clicked, I used Firebug to see how the script in an example is used since it was not clearly explained on the example page. In this way, I was able to see what code I needed to write to connect the javascript function with the button. I'm sure Firebug will help me understand more of assignment in this way.

week 2 blog post

CSS is not going as well as I would like it to be. It seems that when I try to style my text by giving it italics, setting the text size, font type, and aligning the text, everything but italicization can be completed. It makes me wonder if there are limitations to how many styling assignments I can make for different headers. Also, I am having trouble having my external CSS file style the pargraphs I want it to on my original page -- I thought I could simply differentiate different Paragraphs by using Classes, but it seems that perhaps Classes do not work for font size. Regardless, it is quite apparent that at this point I have gotten myself confused with the proper workings of CSS. Currently I am using the W3 CSS tutorial but I am not finding that as helpful as some of the API pages offered on our cogs121 Wiki. At this point, I have created an external CSS but I still must create a list, create columns, and style my page. I also found this webpage helpful: http://www.tizag.com/cssT/index.php

Assignment #2 answer:

Still, using CSS has allowed me to see some benefits. The main one is simply that it makes styling one's webpage much easier -- one could potentially apply one's style to one website to the other regardless of the content on the page. One also only has to create an external CSS once, rather than continously put in HTML code in each website that he/she creates to suffice for styling. Additionally, the advantage of classes over IDs is that while IDs define a special case such as when there are two of the same elements for specific cases, classes do the same thing for one or more occurrences. Thus, one should use classes when there are more than one such occurrences in a page, rather than IDs that should be used when there is only one such occurrence in similar elements.

week 1

It is interesting to see how much internet usage there is in Asia, compared to the other various continents -- I wonder why there is such widespread internet use there, as opposed to other places. Still, the usage growth from 200-2007 in Africa, which has the second greatest growth (the middle east is first) makes me think from a development perspective that one can perhaps interpret growth in the usage of internet as the underworkings of development processes. The changing nature of computation, first as simple calculation, and now as interaction is also an interesting comparison. At first it is hard to see computation metaphorically as interaction, but it would seem that as technology becomes more distributed and ubiquitous, and the capacity at which high-level calculation can be engaged at becomes a non-issue, the next step is towards interaction -- the human is able to interact freely and widely so as to have broad control over the computers which they are interfacing (in the form of widgets, interactor trees, and event-driven programming). This probably reflects the model view controller paradigm, where the model uses the view to see the changes made through the controller on a ubiquitous level (so it is not just situated a computer, but really with technology embedded everywhere).

Currently I am working on the html assignment and I have learned several different html tags, such as how to bold, break, change sizes, include pictures, link pictures, link text, etc. Understanding the basics of html is exciting, but it makes me think that for a truly aesthetic and user-friendly webpage, one may need to be quite artistic in creating aesthetically pleasing designs, in addition to having knowledge of basic user-interface concepts learned in classes such as 120. This combination, I suspect, along with more knowledge of html programming and other languages, may result in the right recipe for a good, user-friendly website. I am excited to learn the fundamentals of CSS next week.
-takashi