Embed The Fact That I Finished

     I have made it back for another week! Not that I went far. I did venture out into meatspace a few times. Don't worry, I have virus protection (read Kleenex) and no one got hurt. The cool news is that I finished the XHTML/CSS section of the class! Now it's onto .js! I've been using Sublime Text 2 on the XFCE partition on my Chromebook and it's been so nice to use it, but Brackets has proven itself great when it comes te HTML/CSS so I think I'll use Sublime Text 2 mainly, but if I have something that is just HTML/CSS then it'll totally be Brackets. On Wednesday, expect some .js. Today I don't have Grooveshark going(such shock!!) Instead I'm listening to a live-stream of one of my favorite radio stations. Listener-supported FTW! I already had my coffee(French-press of awesome!) and the music is going so it's time to plug in and plug away!

HTML/CSS

      Today the first thing we're going to start off with some easy stuff; templates, and CMS's. CMS stands for Content Management System. That's a fancy way of saying pre-made website. CMS's are sometimes a good thing to use if you just want to create something really quickly, or it's a simple website for just a few things, and you don't think that you're going to be changing a lot, for example, a blog. There are a lot of free ones out there, but they aren't always the best, because; they are usually limiting, they're pretty much a template that lets you cheat. www.freecsstemplates.org is a good place to go to check some of them out. Something I forgot to cover in the forms section, is the <label> it is used to identify elements inside a form, but really you can use it any time you want, but it seems it's handy in that type of thing.

     Now we get to the embedding section. Embedding is pretty much just like linking, it just creates its own little space that shows whatever you're trying to link to. Here is an example of YouTube:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/P3Of6vsIIA8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 The way you get the embed code, you just go to the 'share' section of the video, and either use the code right there, or select a size or do a custom size (the size can always be changed in the editor) and put the code where you wont it. One thing you have to know about this is that YouTube changed its code requirements, but of course their embed code didn't change. So, you have to add an http: in front of the //www. in the src. Even though it's a video and not text,  use text-align to  align it how you want.

     Google maps looks a little different now that they've taken the new Maps out of Beta(it looks so good on my Pixel's screen), you just click on the settings gear and you'll have the option to embed and all the things you need.
 With Twitter, you have to click on the three dots and it gives you embed. Twitter has a lot of way to embed. Go here for all the info about how to do widgets and all the things you can do with Twitter.

A little pro-tip for when you're working on creating your website:
Keep your different file types in their own folders/sections makes it easier to manage things and remember to save periodically. That way it's just easier to manage.

We have discussed the different types of things you can do to a link before, but there's an order to them so that they don't cancel each other out or cause some hinkery that gets annoying fast. When you do the active, visited, hover, link tags on a link  make sure to have them in this order: link, visited, hover, active. That way you can have different colors for different activities, and they won't overwrite themselves. You don't have to use any/all of them if you don't want to.

Last, but not least, we have the favicon. The favicon is the little picture that shows up in the tab. Sometimes it's just a piece of paper with a folded corner. That usually means that they didn't set up a favicon. The best place to get one is to go here. You can upload any image, and it will give you a favicon in .ico and .gif form. The .gif just scrolls constantly. If you use that, I will judge you.
The way to implement it is like this:
<link href="images/fav.ico" rel="shortcut icon"></link>

You just put it by your meta tags and your CSS tag at the top in the head.

And that's it for today! Today(3/24/2014) at 7:06pm I finished the XHTML/CSS section. Only took ten days! Whoo!! I powered right through it! Which just means I'll slam right into .js tomorrow. I'm sure that makes some of you happy. See y'all on Wednesday!

--Martin

Links And Links!

     Well, it's Wednesday, and I'm late. Again. The fun part is I learned some things, and my website is actually coming along nicely! The other day, I showed my gf +Briana McCarty the code of what I'm working on. She was all, I don't know what this means, but it looks cool. I was like psh. Same here, but then she said that I wouldn't have been able to do most of this just a few months ago. And I realized that was totally true! I had like a mental slap in the face. I realized I had done most of the website with no guidance, or they would say do something, and I would know how to do it without looking at the demo. Le gf probably doesn't know any of this, because I was so tired I don't think I physically reacted. Anyhoo, the moral(AKA TL;DR) is that I actually  have come a long way, and maybe don't suck at this as much I think I do! Olé...? Maybe. I just need to keep plugging away! I did about five hours yesterday, and looked up and it was  7:00pm time just flies while I study. Which is one of the reasons this is so late. So, while I didn't learn too much, I did get some cool stuff. I have Grooveshark a-going, so it's time to plug in and plug away!

HTML/CSS

      The first thing up is font-weight. This is a CSS tag, and I can't believe that I haven't used it before. Now, this is actually more complex than it appears. Unlike some CSS tags, the title that goes to the right of the colon has more than just one or two options. So, as I do when it can be a wall of text, go to Mozilla and they have all the goods that you need.

      Next up! The wonderful attributes for links! Usually you have a{ some code} and that tells the CSS how to style the links, but you can also do some sweet sweet CSS magic to make the links react to things like being clicked on and such. Here are some examples that I will then tell you about:
a:hover{
   color:white;
}
a:visited{
   color:blue;
}
a:active {
color:red;
}

     The titles are pretty easy to understand. a:example means that anything with 'a' in the tag is going to have this applied to it. Which of course, means that a link will have it applied to because, as I'm sure you're aware, a link in HTML looks like this: <a href = "example.com"></a> and since that 'a' is all alone, it's our target! Hover is when the mouse hovers over the link, visited is when the link has been visited, and active is when you click on it. See? pretty easy.

And now, I'm going to hit you with some links because I need sleep, but you need to read more.

First, this one has FREE(legal) programming related books that you can download:
http://it-ebooks.info/

This one is free .js books. See? said that I would have more. Here ya go: http://jsbooks.revolunet.com/

For those of you that need to know thirty different things all at once that would be great to have on a laminated pamphlet, there is this:
http://www.visibone.com/

For a more advanced .js blog, this guy has some great stuff:
http://zenscript.wordpress.com/

Not only is this one funny, in a cussy sort of way, it's also pretty useful with the knowledge gainingness:
http://programming-motherfucker.com/

And here's music to listen to while you do some light reading:
http://grooveshark.com/#!/writhem/broadcast

     With that amazing link dump, I am out! Here's to hoping the Friday post is done earlier! See y'all then!

--Martin

Yeesh In A New Tab!

     Yeesh! This is sooo late! I did a lot of things today; it was crazy! I reeeaaalllyy wanted to say that I didn't feel good and that it's St. Patrick's day, but that was just an excuse, and those things suck when the next day shows up and you realize you didn't do what you were supposed to. Today, I'm working on a HTML/CSS project with Udemy.  It's actually pretty neat, you can make "websites" and use files on your computer to move around. Like, contact, home, and whatnot. Obviously, no coffee. It's almost 11pm... But, I've got Groovshark going, with the instructional videos cutting in every now and again. So, it's time to plug in and plug away!

HTML/CSS

     Yup, a website! The coolest things that I learned shall be brought forth into the light of your computer! First up is opening something in a new tab. I love it when a website opens something that I might just be checking out, but isn't a main feature, in a new tab. What you put is this:

<a target = "_blank">

  and that's it! It's super easy! And so freakin useful! Good thing I know about that now!    

 Next up is the redirect. If you want to show a warning, a statement, you don't want people to hang around, you use this! You set the time that the computer will wait, and then boom! Redirect!

 <meta http-equiv = "Refresh" content  = "12; url = http:www.bing.com"/>

 The number '12' refers to how long you want the client to wait before they go to the url.
     The next thing up is how to have a link go to a specific page on your website. Let's say you have a long article, and you want to be able to point out a certain area. Using this will open the link scrolled down to the area that you want them to see. You see this employed in FAQs and READMEs all the time.
     You give the section you want to go to with a tag like this: <a name = "example_name">

And then to call it, you use tags like this: <a href ="Example_page#example_name">Example</a>

Also, a good place to see a lot of other tags is to go here and just cruise around. It's w3; if you don't know what that is, look it up. Definitely worth knowing.

I just looked at the HTML version of this article. That was cray cray. Turns out it IS a good idea to do the html title thing in HTML because then you don't end up with a looott of completely unnecessary spans and divs. Anyhoo, back to the subject at... mouse? Not too sure what to call it when it's online.
The only thing left is: the different ways to call CSS, because; there's more than one way to do that! crazy, right? But, instead of me telling you, I'll let this guy do a better job than I could!

SO! That's going to do it for today, folks. I know, no .js. But never fear! I shall have some! At some point. I'm working with the HTML right now, but the class will be bringing in .js and PHP and some other cool stuff, so don't go crazy. I'll have some when I get some. See y'all on Wednesday!

--Martin

All-In-One Flip!

     There's new things! Olé! Well, new(ish). The other day I sort of had a break through. I'm still figuring out if it was good or bad, but that's not too big a deal. I was perusing the internet, as is my wont, and found many amazing places that do .js bootcamps, tests, free books. Many amazing things! And what they all told me is that I have seen a lot of lessons, but haven't really retained as much as I should. Which is sad. So, to combat this, I'm going to start creating stupid little program that use all the things I should know. The main problem is, I know what they are, I know what they do, but I haven't used them in anything besides following instructions. So, I'm going to create some small script things, and figure things out! So, what you'll see on here is stuff I came up with, if it's overtly simplistic, that's because (as the title says) I'm a total newb. I don't have any problems with that, but I don't want to be a total newb for too long. That would mean I'm not learning anything. Which would be sad. For today, I'm going to do the .js, HTML and the CSS all on one thing. I know! Crazy, right? I found a couple lines of code that make text flip around. If Blogger was able to use CSS as well as HTML I would show you and it would be awesome! But, instead, we shall look over the code in this all in one special! It's a Friday, so I'm at the coffee shop, I've had my coffee, Grooveshark is going, time to plug in and plug away!

 JavaScript&&HTML/CSS 

      The first thing we need to do is look at the code, obviously. So, here's the HTML: 
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Hey, wassup.</title>
    <script type = "text/javascript" src = "script.js"><!--script for the .js -->

    </script>
    <link rel = "stylesheet" type = "text/css" href = "thing.css"/>
     
  </head>
  <body>
      <!-- put whatever you want to here. -->
<p>Hey, this is a line of text with a border!</p>

<div class="flip-container" ontouchstart="this.classList.toggle('hover');">
    <div class="flipper">
        <div class="front">
            <!-- front content --><span>Hey,</span>
        </div>
        <span class="back">
            <!-- back content --><span>do you even <a href = "http://www.google.com"><g>G</g><o>o</o><t>o</t><h>g</h><l>l</l><e>e</e></a>, bro?</span>
    </span>
  </body>
</html>










Not exactly the cleanest layout, but it does some pretty nifty stuff! The thing with the bunch of tags in a row spells out Google and the CSS makes it turn into the Google colors. A little touch of fun, you know?
Speaking of CSS, here's the CSS:


p{
    clear: both;
    text-align: center;
    border-radius: 50%;
    border: 10px solid black;

}

a{
    text-decoration:none;
}

g{
    color: blue;
}
o{
    color: red;
}
t{
    color: yellow;
}
h{
    color: blue;
}
l{
    color: green;
}
e{
    color:red;
}


/* entire container, keeps perspective */
.flip-container {
    perspective: 1000;
}
    /* flip the pane when hovered */
    .flip-container:hover .flipper, .flip-container.hover .flipper {
        transform: rotateY(180deg);
    }

.flip-container, .front, .back {
    width: 320px;
    height: 480px;
}

/* flip speed goes here */
.flipper {
    transition: 0.6s;
    transform-style: preserve-3d;

    position: relative;
}

/* hide back of pane during swap */
.front, .back {
    backface-visibility: hidden;

    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    left: 0;
}

/* front pane, placed above back */
.front {
    z-index: 2;
}

/* back, initially hidden pane */
.back {
    transform: rotateY(180deg);
}

The code s commented quite nicely so that you may understand it easily. The basic idea is that it's activated by the mouse and once you go below the div, it flips over. 

Now, if you noticed, which I'm sure you did, there was this:  

<script type = "text/javascript" src = "script.js"><!--script for the .js -->

Which my comment tells you about. Yesterday I found something I probably should have known about a looonnngg time ago!
document.write()

It writes to the, you guessed it, the document! Whoo!
So, today, I just did a simple line of text, and a FizzBuzz, because those are fun:

document.write("&nbsp;Hey this is a thing, now! You can write with .js! <br />\
 and have it print out to the webpage.<br /> I knew that was a thing. <br />\
 I just couldn't find it till now!<br />");

 for(var i =1; i<=71; i++){
      if(i%15===0){
        document.write("FizzBuzz <br />");
      }else if(i%3===0){
        document.write("Fizz <br />");
      }else if(i%5===0){
        document.write("Buzz <br />");
      }else{
        document.write(i + "<br />");
      }
    } 

Also, notice the fact that both &nbsp; and <br /> are used in the .js text. Yup, that's right folks, you can use those HTML elements in .js text. Pretty nifty, if I do say. 

     All of this texts makes for a pretty lackluster page with a spinning dealie on it. Told you the scripts were going to be stupid. Expect better each time! Well, that's what I'm hoping. Next time I'm going for a better looking page with more spinning and motion!!
See y'all on Monday!

--Martin

Just Methodical Penguins

     Coffee! It happened! Olé! I've been making it a habit to not go to the coffee shop during the week and have a French press at home when I need the caffeine. However, getting out of the house on occasion is good for me. That's why I come to the coffee shop on Friday. It's good for everyone. I don't scare people/ get ridiculed because of my beard, I save money, I get to sleep longer, win-win really. I wear my +Jupiter Broadcasting  sweatshirt, (which will soon have a  matching shirt(whoo!)) and get things done! I've got a salad waiting for me when I need a break, I've had my coffee, I have Grooveshark (again. Such a creature of habit.) playing a Piano Guys playlist because I love the cellos and piano together, so it's time to plug in and plug away!


But first, a link: https://developer.mozilla.org Seriously, it's just a good place to go when you need some info on . js, HTML, CSS, and of course Firefox and all those things that they do. Also, Persona. Seriously. Sign up, get the newsletter, it's just a good idea.

HTML/CSS

      So, (again)there isn't much to report on this front. Mainly I'm getting through things and reading a lot of the stuff on Mozilla. So, if you want some HTML for today, head over there and check out some of that stuff. It's always a good idea.

JavaScript

      Now onto methods. Yup. Moar methods! This time it's something that helps us with a lot of things. It's such a long list, just go here and they'll tell you everything. Here's an example of prototype with penguins!


// create a Penguin constructor here
function Penguin(name, numLegs){
    this.name = name;
    this.numLegs = numLegs;
}

// create a sayName method for Penguins here
Penguin.prototype.sayName = function(){
    console.log("Hi my name is " + this.name);
};

// our test code
var theCaptain = new Penguin("Captain Cook", 2);
theCaptain.sayName();

And that means that we can create as many penguins as we want! You can also inherit from another Method so that you only need to add to something instead of creating an entirely new one. Example:

// the original Animal class and sayName method
function Animal(name, numLegs) {
    this.name = name;
    this.numLegs = numLegs;
}
Animal.prototype.sayName = function() {
    console.log("Hi my name is " + this.name);
};

// define a Penguin class
function Pengiun(name){
    this.name= name;
    this.numLegs = 2;
}

// set its prototype to be a new instance of Animal
Penguin.prototype = new Animal();
var tux = new Penguin("Tux");
console.log(tux);

     Notice on the first one that we had to say how many legs it had, but on the second one, we just have the name as a parameter, and the legs are always going to be two, because; well, penguins only have two legs. Unless they lost one to a seal, or something. We can also call tux with <sayName> and it'll do the whole script. Do this:

tux.sayName();

and you get this:

"Hi my name is Tux"

 The reason that happens is because we added it as a new Animal et voila! It does the magic.

     As an aside, this section was so full of bugs it that I am seriously going to need a walk. They just ignore the needs of their students and don't give a <censored> about anything. I'm just glad I'm almost done with them. At least in the .js and HTML area. That'll about for me folks. Don't forget to check out the Mozilla stuff. Seriously, tons of cool stuff over there. See y'all on Monday! If the lessons aren't TOO buggy, I should be celebrating the end of the course!

--Martin

Groovy, Man!/ Friends In Address Books

     Here I am at the coffee shop once again. I've got GrooveShark going. Click the link for the playlist that I'm playing. I've been on this one for a while, and I still like it! Always a solid electronic song going on. I've had a latté, I may get a regular coffee at some point to keep my eyes open. Friday being its usual self, I'd rather get this over quickly, but I need to put some time in. So, time to plug in and plug away!

HTML/CSS

      I'm sorting my friends! It feels a bit like circles in g+. They're even using Google colors. Anyhoo, it's the CSS I'm looking at. they pretty much don't care to teach you how to make a circle border. It's just there. Seriously. Don't just throw things at me, tell me what they are! Good thing ye olde Personal Initiative is still around.
div {
display: inline-block;
margin-left: 5px;
height:100px;
width:100px;
border-radius:100%;
border:2px solid black;
}
And that's how to do a circle border.
Now they teach me something cool. You can have an <id> and a <class> in the same tag. That is definitely nifty! Lots of uses for that. And I finished. That was quick. Looks like we're about to get into this:

I'll continue with that in the next post.

JavaScript

      Isn't it funny how normal it can become that a single letter being incorrectly capitalized eventually is not so stupid any more? It's perfectly logical that the computer would have a binary (heh. I made a play on words) track. It's either right, or it's wrong. There is no such thing as close. That's totally normal for me now! How strange... The Address Book of happening is still happening. I was trying to get it to print out a return on a search and it just wasn't working. It wasn't until I hunkered down and really scrutinized the code that I discovered my error. A lower-case 'l'. How thoughtless of me. I shall endeavour a better attempt at correct grammar today. After smashing my way Neanderthal-style through the lesson I moved on to adding more people in an easier method.
Starting off with this function:

var add = function(firstName,lastName,email,phoneNumber){
    contacts[contacts.length] = {
    firstName: firstName,
    lastName: lastName,
    phoneNumber: phoneNumber,
    email: email
};
It allows for any additions to be done with one line of code like this:

add("Mookie","Chess","example@example.com", 9003006000);

It doesn't print anything, it just adds that person to the address book. In order to see if actually worked, we use this:

list();

If you recall, that was part of the earlier code.
Turns out, it actually has a use.
And project Address Book is complete!

Olé!
Now it is time to bid you adieu. See y'all on Monday!

--Martin