My AJAX class is coming to a close with the presentation of my final project tonight. Since you heard from me last we’ve been exploring a plethora of different JS libraries and coming with with fun flashy examples of things you can do. The final project was to incorporate some AJAX into an actual website. I thought of creating a brand new website but couldn’t put my finger on exactly what I’d like to do. After stressing out about it for a few days it hit me, I just need to update a site I’ve already built. So that’s what I did. I changed the menu to something that looks better and now only the content refreshes on the page but the header, footer, and side bar stay the same. MMmmmmm AJAXy! I also found a way that I can open up external links right there on the website so people never actually leave the site when clicking on links. Very cool stuff. Plus the same library can be used to display pictures all fancy like. these are both tools I’ll be using in the future!
As for the closing of the class I’ll definitely miss it. Not so much the meeting from 6-9 every Tuesday but it’s been fun having a class where I can explore the different technologies AJAX has to offer.
As for this blog never fear. I’m taking another CIT 499 class in a month with Dr. Ho and I’m sure he’ll want us to keep a blog. The class is over Emerging Technologies so if you are interested in Web 2.0 and mobility stay tuned!
We’ve been playing around with scriptaculous recently which is a javascript library or rather a set of that lets you do some pretty cool stuff on your website. It’s as easy to use as going to the site http://script.aculo.us/ and uploading the libraries to your own site and then linking to it and calling the proper commands. I was able to do things with a picture like make it wipe up and over to the left to dissapear and some other neat stuff. It’s relatively easy to use so if you are at all interested in web development you should check it out. This page here tells you all about how to use it and will get you going.
Not much new to report. I did a little work on the class wiki front page making it look a little bit neater but it still seems like there are several different definitions for the same thing. I think people are nervous of taking down other peoples stuff but really we only need one definition written up in our own words instead of quoting another page. Actually going there now it looks like it’s been cleaned up a bit more. It is an open wiki so anyone who wants to can go there and edit it however they see fit.
I did find some interesting stuff in the world of AJAX this week. It’s been out for a while but I just found out Google has a toolkit where you can write a program in Java and it will convert it to AJAX. It’s called the Google Web Toolkit and it’s something I’m going to be taking a look at since the majority of my programming experience is in Java. http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/ They have tutorials and what not so I’m going to check some of it out when I get some of that precious free time.
Continuing on this week I basically just did some review of the chapter 3 material. I think that is what we are going to be going over this week and am not sure how far the class got last week. That was the night that my eyes and head were being ultra sensitive to light. Not sure if was exactly a migraine but I think that’s one of the symptoms. So next week I should have some better updates for you since I’ll actually be in class this week to do some good old fashioned learnin’.
This is just a test of the CIT 499 Blog. This is only a test. Had this been a real blog entry I would have probably been complaining about something.
After much stress about the Web 2.0 paper I finally finished the editing on it minutes before it was actually due. I still feel like I’m probably missing several things dealing with grammar and flow but overall I’m happy with the result. I guess at this point I have to be right?
We were also supposed to work on the wiki collaboratively. I did this several weeks back which means my edits are probably going to be at the bottom because at that time no one had really touched it. I hope that doesn’t impact my grade. I went back to check and it seems like some of the stuff I had changed and edited had been removed or changed so significantly that I can’t tell if I did anything at all. At least my page on Social Media with the examples I gave went untouched.
Unfortunately even though I’m on campus right now I’m feeling pretty terrible with a migraine so I think I’m going to head home and send the prof an email apologizing for skipping out. We are going over chapter 3 tonight and while I can read the book and look at the examples from the chapter online all I want I’m going to miss the lecture which always clears up any confusion but I’d rather not be miserable in a basement lit with fluorescent tubes staring at a computer screen all night. Hopefully my class will understand.
For your reading pleasure I’m including the paper I wrote. Feel free to check out it out if you are curious about what web 2.0 is as well as social media. If you have even the slightest idea though it’s probably a waste of you time to read as it is very basic.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been doing research into Social Media and web 2.0 as part of the class. I’ve been tasked with creating a video talking about these subjects with a few specific examples. After spending a lot of time trying to find a good screen capture program for the mac (iShowU) and doing numerous takes I came up with what you’ll see below. It’s not perfect and I still stutter a bit but it’s much better than the first few run through and since it needs to be done today I wanted to make sure I was finished last night. Of course YouTube is still saying it’s processing but I do have an embed link so while this may not play if your reading this in the next few hours it should be good to go soon.
I’m trying to get the Google map to work by reading an XML file and placing markers. Their is a button the user will hit that called the setmarkers function but it doesn’t seem to be working. It’s kind of frustrating and I’m wondering if anyone else in the class has figured it out. I’d like to have it work with geocoding too so I can just put City names or address in the XML file but for now I’m just trying to get the lat/long to work. Take a look at it here: http://www.jamescochran.org/CIT499/xmlmap.html You should also be able to get my data.xml file by putting it in for the address and saving source.
This week in my AJAX class we are going to play around with Google Maps. One of the first things we are supposed to look at is an article entitled How to Add a Google Map to Any Web Page in Less than 10 Minutes. It goes into if you have an API key but since this was written Google has made it easier to embed. On their maps there is a link called “link” that if you click on it will give the the web link as well as the code to imbed the map on to a web page. What should happen is you can paste the code right into your HTML document and it shows up as a map. A tip for you WordPress users: you must enclose code with the <code></code> tags so wordpress knows. I pulled my hair out on that one for about a half hour 😉
So I have my API key and I’m ready to start mucking about with Google Maps. Looking foward to the next class when we can play. Watch this space for some Google Maps fun!
This week in 499 we started our blogs and also started defineing web 2.0. One of the things I found that will help me with my blog is the iPhone worspress app. I’d define it as a web 2.0 technology and a great way to post to this blog on the go. Say for instance I’ve been meaning to post about this app all week and now it’s the last minute and I still have to do it. No problem! Fire up the iPhone and peck it out on a tiny screen. I’ve been using it on my other blog and it’s really full featured. I can even take pictures right from the phone and insert them.
James' CIT 499 Blog 