Mike's Notes

After the last post I thought I’d better just check that the global education directory site was still up and running, and when I did it looked wrong.

Jqueryui had changed their library, and my code was picking up whatever their latest was, and it didn’t work anymore. I didn’t have time to work out why, but was able to down load the previous version and change so the site now hosts and uses that.

So

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://jqueryui.com/latest/jquery-1.3.2.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://jqueryui.com/latest/ui/ui.core.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://jqueryui.com/latest/ui/ui.draggable.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://jqueryui.com/latest/ui/ui.resizable.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://jqueryui.com/latest/ui/ui.dialog.js"></script>


became

<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery-1.3.2.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jqueryui/ui.core.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jqueryui/ui.draggable.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jqueryui/ui.resizable.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jqueryui/ui.dialog.js"></script>


It was probably not a good idea to rely on a the latest version of a remotely hosted library to always work. there is an argument to use javascript hosted by Google or similar to save it having to be downloaded separately for every site that needs it, but for now what I’ve got works and can’t be broken by a new version of jqueryui being released. Might resarch options later.

I wouldn’t have noticed this without having blogged and then gone to check what I’d just blogged about, so blogging is worthwhile fo rme so far.

The charity website that I’ve been developing is now up and running (has been for a while actually), plenty of things I can think of to improve it, but pretty happy with how its turned out.
http://www.globaleducationdirectory.org

Was enjoyable little self contained project to work on and good opportunity to brush up my css and xhtml skilz and also do a bit of javascript and my first use of jquery. I was really impressed with how easy jQuery is to get started with, I’ve experimented with mootools and dojo previously, but jQuery seemed much more intuitive to use. Maybe the likes of dojo are more powerfull if you spend the time to learn the framework … but not sure what exactly it would do that jQuery and associated plugins wouldn’t.

Did do a little bit of listening to Boagworld and reading the odd web design article to get some ideas of what to do and what not to.

Things I learnt included

• Web deisgners go on about fonts quite a bit. One thing I read/heard whas that sans serif fonts are for the web, serif fonts are for print, so I used arial which is a sans serif font.
• Text content should be in narrow columns (45-75 characters) and use em’s for specifing text size, and have line height of 1.5em. I learnt this from here
  http://www.thedesigncubicle.com/2009/11/typography-is-the-backbone-of-good-web-design/
• Stuff should line up, sounds obvious but easy to forget, or not bother with, not sure I completely achieved this. I learnt that from my brother, who learnt it from a book (I might put a link to it here).
• How to use divs instead of tables, basically the “clear: both” style on the first div after floating divs was the eureka moment. I still keep forgetting which is which with padding and margin, but once I’ve got that it tends to work as expected
• Instead of underlining links use border-bottom – means that characters like ‘g’ don’t have a line through them, making them more readable, and also consider display: block for links to have a bigger clickable area.

So that’s post number two done, better start thinking of another one.

So I thought it was time to give blogging a go, I’ve installed WordPress, had a look at some wordpress “themes”, and had a think about what I should write, written this post and saved it as a draft for a month whilst being distracted by other things.

I suppose theres two things to write about really.

1. Notes on stuff that I come accross in my work (and hobby) writing software, with the idea that it will be useful for me to look back on and might be usefull for others occasionally.
2. Things that make me look good.
3. Maybe some links to stuff thats funny on the internet and my photos on flickr

So that’s the first post done, think I need more jokes, I’m pretty slow writer, lets see if I keep this up.