Float Layouts

When I started learning about HTML and CSS we were already getting rid of having to use tables to build a site and have everything align where you wanted it. So from what I have heard about table layouts I must have dodged a bullet. I find it pretty easy to use float layouts and floating my content and elements on my pages. I am able to tell certain content to stay on one side of my design while I have other content go to another area. Like everything you also run into problems where some of your content starts to float on top of other content. But this is easily fixed with some tweaking here and there on the other floated areas. Like we sometimes have to clear one float so it will drop below another float. that way it does not try to squeeze itself next to a float you didn’t want the content next to. With floats you also get total control on where you want the content to display on your page.

With floats you can easily have an image next to some text and be able to determine how far away you want the text to be from the image with some simple CSS. Then you wont be having issues with the text wanting to disappear under the image. It is also easy to control how much of an area you are wanting to cover with certain content and if you want to have the content floated above or below and to the right or left of other content.

Final Project Ideas

One of my ideas is to build an e-learning type website. At this site you will be able to learn either JavaScript or ActionScript 3 Languages. I would like to make this site not be all cluttered up on pages like your usual e-learning sites, where they just throw all kinds of information at you on every page.

My second idea is one that I would consider a default site-build in our program, doing a photography site. I would like to set up a site that would give the customer and photographer the ability to connect even after the photo shoot. This will be somewhere where the client would be able to view and order their prints from the comfort of their home and be able to see what the product will look like before it goes to print.

HTML5+HTML 5=HTML5

For starters I found this HTML 5 validator.

HTML5 Hiccups is something I found through Jeffery Zeldman which he became a part of a team of other designers to get some standards going with HTML5. It seems as though HTML5 will be helpful in many ways but will still need to have many things looked at. One of those things that stood out to me was the footer element and how you were not able to put navigation in that element like you could with the header element. Seeing that these two tags are widely used my pretty much every designer/coder as the same thing then the footer should be allowed to accept navigation in it.  HTML5 is suppose to be more meaningful markup language. If we go off and change something like this then we wouldn’t be helping much. There are many tag and element names that have become standard in our industry and that should be taken into close concideration. Superfriends seems to be a team of designers that have gotten together to make this happen for our industry. It would only make sense to have some of the top designers help with the structure of HTML5 since they know what element names should become the stanrds for HTML5.

Meaningful Markup “Semantics”

Well I am back to doing more on blogging about what I am up to her at The Art Institute of Dallas. This quarter (winter 2010) I am finally taking my clients side languages classes.

Semantics
I was doing a bit of research on meaningful semantics and the web and came across this blog by Kevin Dees. At first when I started my research into this topic I was really unsure what emantics and the web meant to eaach other. In Kevins article he talks about how we should use tags that are proper to what they are and use them when they need to be used. Not just use all sort of names to id a certain div if it does not make sense to what content is in that <div>. For example why would we name a <div id=”first-div”> when that <div> contains images of landscape photos. A more proper name would be <div id=”landscape-photo”>, so it would actually come down to using more of a description to name your content instead of just a name. Something else he touched on that I really found most interesting than anything else was how he is now using less <divs> and giving his content meaningful semantic by giving the content an id. For example instead of putting your <ul> <li></li></ul> inside a <div>, why not just give that <ul> an id and control it like that ( <ul id=”navigation”> ). I think this would also help in keeping our code cleaner and tighter.

I think that Kevin has many good points about meaningful semantics and I for one like to give meaning to the names i use to define the id of a <div> a class=” ” and I think that the idea of giving an id to your <ul> instaed of putting it inside a <div> sounds like a more meaningful way to code a tag.

Final

The Inspired Gallery Final

Here is the finished image gallery and final program I had to do for Programming Logic. I had my ups and downs in this class and enjoyed every moment I was in class learning and the long hours at home doing the assignments. I am looking forward to learning more Javascript over the break and I will also be getting into some flash to prepare myself for next quarter. I am really starting to understand how to use Javascript more and more, at times it takes me a longer time to get my code working but I always end up working on it till I get it figured out, even if it does take me longer than it should.

Week 10 Javascript

Ok, here is the update on my image gallery which is the final project for class. It took me a very long time to figure out what I have so far with getting the images to switch when you click on the thumbnail. I’m a bit slow but I will end up getting it figured out.

The Inspired Gallery

I will have this all finished up within the next two days and I will have the final posted asap.

Week 9 with Javascript

Well this week we are starting on our final project for Javascript. It is a gallery that will consist of a minimum of 6 images, thumbnails, and text to go with the images. We are to create the web page with all the HTML/CSS first and then week 10 we will be getting into the programming part. Which will let the user click on the thumbnail image and then a larger image will show up with the text and replace the current image. I have been waiting a long time to do something like this and I’m looking forward to this week.

Image Gallery

Week 8 Making a Form that works

This week we are building a form that will ask the user for some general information and will alert them if the form is filled out incorrectly and then send them back to it to fill in the missing information or the incorrect information. It is pretty much making sure the form will validate if the user is giving us all the information we need to accept the form.

Form Assignment Week 8

So far I was able to build the form then have it validate all the information except the email. I know what to use to have it do this but I am running into a bit of a problem once it finishes up checking the phone number information. Know my past mistakes it is probably going to be a missing bracket somewhere. I have gone through and checked all of them but I’m not finding anything missing so I think it is know time to have someone else have a look at it, before my head starts to pound inside out.

JavaScript “Getting a bit more advanced on me” Week 7

Worked on some challenges for Programming Logic.

• Challenge 1
• Challenge 2
• Challenge 3

The Homework was a bit more complicated for me so I’ll be getting some additional help on getting that finished up.

• RGB Assignment

Ended up needing a lot of help on figuring out how to change the value entered for the colors into hexidecimal value.