Finally

I finish the project and report Finally. I uploaded the project to another server and found things is a bit different. I tested it again and found another truth, it's easy to make things wrong if you are not carefully enough. Because I tested it before and uploaded to mim server and it can still pass the validation. But I found the documents on my computer have some problems in passing the validation. I have to modify them again. Once I thought I could download the files from mim server. It looks a rather clever idea. But it's wrong, I have to redefine the database again.
That's why I say FINALLY.

Group Presentation

I got some valuable advices from my group after group presentation yesterday. I should change the font size and color and line spacing, to make the texts readable.
Looking at others' work is helpful. I found they did their website in different way and with different function. Every time I know something, then find so many things I don't know...

About something else

I found there are so many tricky tools to build a website, like wordpress, Dojo, CMS. I'm a little confused with them. And I don't know what are their strengths and weaknesses. Most important, if it's necessary for me to learn some of them?
Since I have some more time, I do some research about them.
Dojo, web-oriented software development.
Dojo is the open source Javascript Toolkit. It's tool for constructing dynamic web user interfaces.
Dojo offers widgets, utilities, higher IO (AJAX) abstraction etc.
BSD or AFL licensed.
Dojo bases on the HTML and Javascript. Developer has not to use any strange programming language. Dojo ups abstraction layer in a higher level. Developer has not to reinvent wheel when starting programming project.

http://dojotoolkit.org/projects/dojox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dojo

Project Website

I finished it last week. But I forgot to put the link somewhere.
http://students.mim.iml.uts.edu.au/users/10531895/index.html

I will upload it to another server... try to build another database ...

project

After struggling, I have all my pages pass the validation. Although I think it's not necessary to put the 'validated' labels in every page, I did. Because it's not easy to get them all passed! I spent more time than I thought on validation. I haven't known testing is time-consuming before. I thought it's simple. Now I know. No wonder we are reminded to spare more time for it. And every time you change something you have to check it again. The good thing is I think I'm getting used to it. I make less mistakes than before, and try to make every tag clear when I work on it.

Debug and Test

I almost finish my project. In fact, I finished constructing it last week, but I find it's a lot of work to do for debugging. And it's necessary to leave enough time for testing and debugging in a plan.
The good thing is I don't make so many mistakes in my code as I did before.
And some problems are not mistakes. It's just when you upload your website you find something should be modified, because the usability, the users hobbies, the visual effect. It's to adjust the website to make it better. And it's not so easy as I thought.

search engine & security

I know a little about search engine because it's important for a website. And I'm a little confused with things like "meaningful title" and "keyword". I know we should make a meaningful title and keywords about our website. It will be easy for the search engine to tell what's your website about and both for your clients. The problem is since it's a key for search engine, many website repeat their keywords - words often used to search for their businesses, then they are more possible to be found by clients. Then the title like "welcome to my ..." doesn't work well. Something like "Products, services, Products, services, Products, services, Products, services, Products, services, Products, services, ..." can be found here and there. It's annoying.
Anyway, I have to find a way out.
"Learn how looking at the ways people find and use your web site can give you valuable insight into your marketing campaigns, your page content and your products. Our Analytics articles cover topics like why you should be tracking your analytics, which analytics programs to use and what you should be doing with the data you gather." http://www.searchengineguide.com/marketing.html
"The Basic Task of a Search Engine

Our goal is to build a search engine that returns the most relevant results to searchers. To do this, we need to have a comprehensive index that is as spam-free as possible. We also need to create ranking algorithms which are able to determine the value to searchers of a given site in relation to their query.

We build our index through these 4 simple steps:

1. Crawl the entire Web
2. Analyze the content of every crawled page
3. Build a connectivity map for the entire Web
4. Process this data so that we can respond to arbitrary user queries with the best answers from the Web in less than 1 second."

http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3624905
I should go over it later, just save it here as a bookmark now.

Security is another important issue. But it's too much for me... The lucky thing is I know little about IT but my sister is an internet security engineer. So I can find some help if I have to do something with internet security later. Anyway, it's good to get a rough idea about what are involved in the whole process and some relevant knowledge, products, etc., like iphone.

Ajax

I'm used to Flash...and now feel curious about Ajax introduced in lass. I think I heard of it before, but don't really know it. It's 「Asynchronous JavaScript and XML」. It's for dynamic pages.
It seems there are so many things I need to know and to learn. I put hints here in case I want to know more later.

Ajax uses a combination of:

• XHTML (or HTML) and CSS for marking up and styling information.
• The DOM accessed with a client-side scripting language, especially ECMAScript implementations such as JavaScript and JScript, to dynamically display and interact with the information presented.
• The XMLHttpRequest object is used to exchange data asynchronously with the web server. In some Ajax frameworks and in certain situations, an IFrame object is used instead of the XMLHttpRequest object to exchange data with the web server, and in other implementations, dynamically added <script> tags may be used.
• XML is sometimes used as the format for transferring data between the server and client, although any format will work, including preformatted HTML, plain text and JSON. These files may be created dynamically by some form of server-side scripting.

about Javascript

I found Javascript is very interesting. At the beginning, it's not easy to understand. But later I try to write a new function. It's not so difficult and it's a bit like Actionscripts. I think this one is the only programming language which I can use before this semester although not very well.
The following is just a reminder to myself.
The script part is in head tag and is used to define a function with the code like
function rollover(imageName)'document.getElementByld(imageName).src='image01.jpg'';

Then in the body use this code,
in the 'a' tag
onmouseover="rollover('pic1');"

followed by the attributes of the image, the respond area.


the name of the function can be anything. and if hire more than one function in the body part - just follow the first one(without any symbol)

pic1 is the imageName, the id.

connect to database

It looks not so difficult, but when I try to connect the page to the database, I got confused. I've to try to read and think about it again. Which syntax is supposed to use here? Which part should be modified? I feel it's clear, but it's different when I start to work on it.

architecture diagram

I half finished my system plan. The potential users and their activities are not very complicated for my project. And I thought about to change the content of my project, but I found I have to change the users and their purposes. Therefore, I decide to keep it the same as beginning. And now I'm working on the visual sketch, site map part. The last part about architecture diagram seems a little more difficult than other parts.

about Technology Analysis feedback & next assignment

I found it's useful to get feedback from others as well as read others' work and give my feedback.
Almost every one has something they do well, I will improve my Macro & Micro Analysis later.
The next assignment is System plan. I was not sure what a site map and architecture structure should look like. Now I know it and I think I have maken it out a few weeks before. I will focus on architecture part this week. I made simple pages for my project already and build up my database. It's a simple one and I found it's almost like the guestbook we learnt in class. However, I still spend some time to make it out. It's so strange - I try to make it at home but error always happened, and later I did it in class with help. I'm not sure how to display all records in database(after leave messages, everyone could see all messages if they like). There must be a code to accomplish it. The next step I will do is to try google.

Busy

A few busy weeks for me. But anyway, now I know the relationships between all these technologies, XHTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, JSP, and so on. I used a little Html before, and I didn't know why people talk about XHTML as a better one. I couldn't tell the differences between them. Now I know why and decide to take the new technology.
It' also confused why I couldn't use some attributes in XHTML. Now I know it's because the CSS has been separated from XHTML. And CSS is helpful to modify the pages.
I also know why PHP, not ASP, why MySQL, not Access, or other databases. I think it's better for me to find technologies which are easy to learn, cheap, used widely.
Last but not least, open source is a good stuff.

Technology Analysis

Here is my Technology Analysis
http://students.mim.iml.uts.edu.au/users/10531895/TechnologyMicroandMacroAnalysis.html

Final learning proposal

Shall I put it here as well?
Anyway, that's it
http://students.mim.iml.uts.edu.au/users/10531895/Final-LearningProposal.htm

Technology choices

The technologies which will be involved in my project : XHTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, maybe Javascript, Actionscript, and Photoshop, Dreamweavor. I collect some information about them and put in the former posts, also some comparison.

about MySQL

MySQL is a multithreaded, multi-user SQL database management system (DBMS). The basic program runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases.

History
MySQL was first released internally on 23 May 1995
Windows version released on January 8, 1998 for Windows 95 and NT
Version 3.23: beta from June 2000, production release January 2001
Version 4.0: beta from August 2002, production release March 2003 (unions)
Version 4.1: beta from June 2004, production release October 2004 (R-trees and B-trees, subqueries, prepared statements)
Version 5.0: beta from March 2005, production release October 2005 (cursors, stored procedures, triggers, views, XA transactions)
Version 5.1: currently pre-production (since November 2005) (event scheduler, partitioning, plugin API, row-based replication, server log tables)
Sun Microsystems acquires MySQL AB on 26 February 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySQL

Tutorial for MySQL http://edu.itbulo.com/db/mysql/
MySQL powers more online applications than any other database in the world including such high profile web sites as: Yahoo!, Google, Flickr, YouTube, Wikipedia and thousands of corporate online applications.Why? Because MySQL is easy, safe, reliable, cost-effective, and very fast! With MySQL Enterprise you can:
* Deliver your online application in a matters of hours, not days or weeks * Implement a modern infrastructure leveraging the popular open source LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python) * Scale your applications without limit * Significantly reduce your TCO by minimizing your initial investment and keeping costs low over time * Reduce administrative overhead with an easy to use database that just works! * Get fast answers and assistance when you need it

PHP & others

What is PHP?
PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML.
http://www.php.net/
http://au2.php.net/manual/zh/language.basic-syntax.php for basic syntax,
http://au2.php.net/manual/zh/index.php for PHP manual
I read the introductory tutorial. http://au2.php.net/tut.php
I'm interested in comparing PHP with ASP, because I used a little ASP before, but later I found a lot of developers use PHP.
1. Open Source. User have to pay for upload, send Email, etc. in ASP, but it's free in PHP.
2. PHP is faster,
3. support from ISAPI,

Perl、PHP、ASP、JSP
1. Perl（Practical Extraction and Report Language）- An old language, flexible, very easy to write obfuscated and confusing Perl.
2.PHP （Hypertext Preprocessor）- uses a blend of interpretation and compilation in order to provide the best mix of performance and flexibility to programmers.
3. ASP （Active Server Pages）- it is proprietary, single platform (Windows), and slow.
Can I say the dollar-sign in PHP is cool, and I like it.
4. Cold Fusion -The biggest advantage to ColdFusion is its IDE and the language it uses, "CFML" (ColdFusion Markup Language), The main drawback is user-friendliness, stock ColdFusion has just one way to solve a problem, and this greatly reduces your control over the solution you make.
5. JSP（JavaServer Pages）- "dark horse" in web scripting, a popular choice when existing back-end business logic is written in Java.
PHP Equivalents for ASP Objects http://phplens.com/phpeverywhere/node/view/32
Looks like I found some answers to some simple questions but came with more complicated questions.

Research Ideas

After a few weeks study, I know more than before. And I think the following technologies will be involved in my project and I will do some research about them, Xhtml, CSS, PHP, MySQL. Maybe more later...

Quirks mode

"Quirks mode refers to a technique used by some web browsers for the sake of maintaining backwards compatibility with web pages designed for older browsers, instead of strictly complying with W3C and IETF standards in standards mode."

Comparison of document types: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirks_mode

about Div

This tag is useful in web designing, I collect some information about it.
Definition and Usage
This tag defines a division/section in a document.
Differences Between HTML and XHTML
The "align" attribute of the div element was deprecated in HTML 4.01.
The "align" attribute of the div element is not supported in XHTML 1.0 Strict DTD.
Tips and Notes
Note: Browsers usually place a line break before and after the div element.
Tip: Use this(div) tag to group block-elements to format them with styles.
Optional Attributes
DTD indicates in which DTD the attribute is allowed. S=Strict, T=Transitional, and F=Frameset.
at http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_div.asp

Some perceptions

DOCTYPE(document type), it's quite simply an element used to declare what language (and its level) a document uses,
1.Transitional: !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd>
2.Strict: !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
3.Frameset: DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Frameset//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-frameset.dtd">　
The relationship between them like modle and clothes. Modle is datas, clothes is form. They are separated, then you can change the clothes for your modle as you wish. However, in the html4(transitional), they are mixed together. It gets more difficult to change your model's clothes.

"next generation" protocol

What is IPv6?
IPv6 is short for "Internet Protocol Version 6". IPv6 is the "next generation" protocol designed by the IETF to replace the current version Internet Protocol, IP Version 4 ("IPv4").
Most of today's internet uses IPv4, which is now nearly twenty years old. IPv4 has been remarkably resilient in spite of its age, but it is beginning to have problems. Most importantly, there is a growing shortage of IPv4 addresses, which are needed by all new machines added to the Internet.
IPv6 fixes a number of problems in IPv4, such as the limited number of available IPv4 addresses. It also adds many improvements to IPv4 in areas such as routing and network autoconfiguration. IPv6 is expected to gradually replace IPv4, with the two coexisting for a number of years during a transition period.
http://www.ipv6.org/

Learning Proposal

I finish the draft of it , still need to be improved later.
http://students.mim.iml.uts.edu.au/users/10531895/LearningProposal.htm

Week 2. Reflection

I found it's a good way to understand how internet stuff get to work by watching a 3D Animation. The film explains the difficult things in a easy way. I like it.
Now, I know more about networks and some commands. I think it will be useful in further study to get a perception about the whole system at first place.
The task is writing the study proposal in a html format. I got a rough idea what to do, about a website, I will develop it with more details later.

Hi~

Hi,
I start my new blog today.
I guess I will put down my study notes here in the following posts.
That's all for today...