Journal Entry Week: 10 Part 2

Yes, I agree with Pam that we all made sure one block of code was working before going on to the next block of code. The one thing that I would do differently is have more time to plan before actually writing the code. I was lucky in that I saw what needed to be done on this assignment. But other times, I may not be so lucky, and would need more time to research.

Journal Entry Week: 10 part 1

In class Lab

The steps that I took to create greeting card postback form:

1) I looked at our prior example of creating the greeting card.
2) I looked at Mr. Zellers postback example.
3) I pretty much followed Mr. Zellers postback example and used an if statement.
That is if the user hasn't made a selection, display the part of the form that the user can make the selection,or else display the user's selections.

Journal Entry Week: 9

using include files:

I could have used an include file in lab 2 and 3. I could have createted a seperate html file for the top and side banners, and then in my templete, I could have included that/those files.

lab 4, The processing could have been done in a seperate php file and included in the greeting html. But why make a seperate php file, when there isn't that much too it?

Lab 5 well, we are working on that one right now, and I know that I will use include files, but not sure how I will go about it at this time. Maybe I'll include the HTML portion in my php or vise versa?

Journal Entry Week: 8

Lab 3: Rollover Sub-Menus

This should definitely be done client side as it would take too long for the server to process the information. A good alternative if javaScript is turned would be to go to another page that provides links to the sub-pages.

Lab 4: Greeting Form

This assignment used the input to create a message. Yes, it could be done server side, but there wasn’t any need to use the server since the data was generated strictly from the user input. There was no need to process the information other than validating that the user input information which can be done client side. Unless the data was being input into a data base or something like that, no need waist time going to the server. If the user turned off client side scripting, I don’t see where there would be a loss.

Lab 5: Carpet Cost Calculator

Using server side scripting for the calculation would be appropriate for this assignment as if the user turned off client side scripting, well, then the calculations could not be performed. Still could do the client side validation, but would also want to make sure its done on the server side as well, because all the data is required to process the calculation. The image swapping is something that wouldn’t matter if it was turned off client side.

Journal Entry: Week 7

Three alternatives to PHP.
ASP.Net – The advantage of using ASP.Net is it is a complete frame work for building web pages and it will automatically generate the static html code. Another nice thing about ASP.Net is that it has a lot of built in components such as the data grid for data sets. There are several choices of programming languages to use with ASP.Net such as VB.Net, C# and Pearl Script, where in PHP, the developer has to write the static html stuff and can only use the PHP script. In ASP.NET, integration with databases can be accomplished through ODBC. “In PHP, you can also use ODBC, and there are also native drivers for MySQL, Oracle, and Postgres. Also, if you are connecting to Oracle, a special OCI8 library provides more feature-rich access to Oracle. One disadvantage of using Asp.Net, it is not completely backward-compatible with previous versions of ASP, and is expensive with respect to memory usage and execution time. Furthermore, PHP cannot be used to write client side processing and ASP.Net can. Also, PHP variables are case sensitive and ASP. Net’s are not. Another thing, ASP.Net is a strongly typed language and variables have to be declared and PHP variables don’t. One more down side to ASP.NET is that it is only compatible with an Internet Information Services (IIS) Server by Microsoft.
PERL:
Perl cam be used in many programming ways: procedural, functional, and object-oriented Perl is free software and is cross platform compatible like PHP. PHP pages are constructed like HTML pages, with standard HTML markup. “PHP code is inserted into the page and executed when the page is requested. Conversely, Perl scripts are run as stand-alone programs and create HTML pages when the script is run.”
Cold Fusion:
Cold fusion makes it simple to loop through a table of data. On the other hand, it has its own syntax for creating html pages and not easier that the standard way, but you can still use the standard syntax for making html. So there’s an option there. PHP has more examples and documentation than Cold Fusion because PHP is free. All in all there are not a whole lot of differences in the languages.
References:
PHP and ASP.NET Go Head-to-Head By Sean Hull
http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/hull_asp.html

Media College
http://www.mediacollege.com/internet/perl/perl-vs-php.html

acsoft.biz
http://www.acsoft.biz/cfvsphp

Journal Entry: Week 6

Well, what else is javascript used for? Its the most popular client side scripting language. After doing a little research, from what I can see, the most common use of the javascrpit is for validation, image swaps, and pop up menus. Okay, so I looked into java applets, well, they are not really javascript but actual java and so, that would not apply to this assignment. So one thing that I did find that would be of interest ,and javascript can be used, is cookies. :-)

Articles:
Crispy Javascript Cookies is an article that explains how to create a cookie, also with fucntions, to store values.

Javascript Cookies is another article/tutorial that explains how to create and use cookies.

Examples:
Here is a link to a shopping cart demo-
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~dcrombie/cartdemo/index.html

In addition here is a link to a friend's javascript demo for a shopping cart. She used cookies in her application too!

http://www.kiseta.net/JunkPunkStore/index.htm

Summary:

Cookies can be a very useful tool for developing client side applications as cookies can store information when the user is going from one page to another. In other words collected data stored in the cookie will not be lost when the user leaves the page. Therefore cookies are ideal for storing user input as in what would be collected in a shopping cart or data form entries.

Journal Entry: Week 5

I read the week 4 entries for everyone.

First I'll start with Jaime's posting since he's done this before. He described the basic concept to use the mouse events to control the visibility of the submenus in a div. But what would have been nice is insturctions on how to do it Jaime (just kidding).

Next, I went to Pamela's posting, and was impressed with her organization skills! She mapped out step by step what her game plan was to build the submenus. This can cut down on the actual time involved in developing a routine/program. Good Job Pamela!

Last, I viewed Mr. Zellers, and its always nice to get positive feedback from an instructor! Also, Mr. Zellers put an emphasise on looking at the objects that is being used when developing the application. Good Point! Also, good point about not using individual links, but need divs. I think I used the word link in my blog when I meant div for submenu. I will be more careful with my wording in the future.