Six Sick Scripts

My 6 scripts are as follows:
1. Drop down menu - List section of home page
2. Search Engine - Content section of home page
3. Popup image - Content section of home page
4. Super Secret Society Form - Self explanatory
5. Random Background Color - The background color of the cookie page changes based on the time
6. SSI Virtual includes - The link list and footer are imported from a different location

Super Secret Society

Apply now to the Super Secret Society

The php was actually quite simple. Didn't take a lot of effort to make a functional form.

Commenting

I just went back and commented up my midterm. I added notes to my CSS and all my XHTML pages. I didn't go into great detail about how i did everything, anyone who wants to know should just take a look at the coding as it wasn't all that advanced.

I want to learn some PHP, javascript, and SSI's to do some of the things I did with repetition. It would have saved me time on the commenting.

Midterm

I spent way too long working on the midterm, trying to get things lined up properly. Most of the time I spent messing around with various layouts and trying to get them to fit properly in the space I wanted.

I wanted to make web pages that could be edited easily. I also didn't want to use JavaScript. Finally I wanted to use the Strict Doctype. I wanted to have some sort of frame that contained my links back to my home page and blog so that I could change it if necessary. It was more than necessary for this assignment, because I don't plan on ever going back and changing it, but I wanted to know how to do it for the group assignments.

In the strict doctype you can't use frames, and you can't use the iframe object. The way to embed another web page is to use an object of type 'object'. The next issue became that clicking links in the embedded page would open in the embedded area, rather than the full page. The work-around was to make the embedded XHTML a transitional doctype and have it use the target attribute of a hyperlink. It kept the strict doctype for the main page, while providing the necessary functionality.

I should probably cite some of my sources now:
I got the Japanese Archipelago & sun image from http://www.vsjf.net/images/nihon.gif
The tiled background from http://www.fiu.edu/~morriss/backgrounds/tilegrbrgrey.gif
and the blank postcard from http://www.b9robotresource.com/goprimitive/images/cafepress/quilt-postcard-back.jpg

With the picture of Japan, I did some pixel editing in paint to remove the white anti-aliasing and then added the text JAPAN on the image. I then gave the image to my roommate Ian, who quickly created background transparency for me.

All other pictures used were taken by me, or someone using my camera.

Anyway, I rather enjoyed playing around with different styles and things. I did not enjoy positioning things with CSS. The way I positioned things to have an overlapping effect was touchy, and goes crazy if you look at it using Internet Exploder. I have yet to figure out why.

I haven't commented any of my code yet either. I'll get to that in a few days.

JavaScript

So it was pretty interesting and I think I'll be able to apply what I've learned to other pages. I added a script that changed the background based on the second.

I edited my first website

The Purple Cow

Ah yes I coded "The Purple Cow"
I stayed up way past one
But, I can tell you anyhow
It was somewhat fun.

The last few assignments I've been doing completely by hand in Notepad or any other text editor. This assignment is no exception, so I went with simplicity. I'm not a very good artist, so I chose a poem that needed little supplementary artwork or styling.

I won't go so far as to say I'm proud of the job I did centering the body of the page. The image is a link, but because I used position:relative in CSS the link doesn't cover the entire image, and the text can be selected from awkward parts of the page. I figured out how to remove the underline from links.

Also, I learned that you can use a comma to designate more than one class (or id) subtype to have the same style attributes in css (My homepage CSS file has .linklist a:hover, a:focus, a:active all using the same styles). I thought that was a nifty way to minimize CSS styles, especially for links.

When I was all done with Purple Cow, I made a parody page and hid the link to it in the original page. If I'd planned on doing it to begin with, I would have linked to a separate styleshteet rather than leave the style in the same page, but

• I'm lazy


• It loads quickly


• I've put enough time in this ICE


• I'm lazy

Zen Garden

Retro Theater
Trevor doesn't like this particular CSS that much, and I don't blame him. I actually think it's quite a clever design, however it doesn't fit the content of Zen Garden because there's too much content for that particular design. I think the Retro Theater design would fit well as the website design for my local Park Theatre



Wilderness
Dayne, Trevor, and I like this page. It fits the content onto the page properly, and resizes well to 800 resolution.


Edo and Tokyo
When you first go to the page, the image at the top is significantly overwhelming. Also, on a 1024 or larger resolution, there is a large amount of white space on the right side, because the entire page is aligned to the left. The text is awkward to read because the background color isn't dark enough for white text.


Dark Industrial
I like Dark Industrial for its design. The colors fit well and the text is well spaced. The sides have a lot of blank space, but it's tasteful.

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I worked with:
Dayne Kilheffer
Trevor Mumaugh

Learned that Alt+PrintScreen takes a screen shot of the selected window