All posts tagged ‘tutorial’

File Under: JavaScript, Multimedia, Programming
Feb
15
2010

JavaScript Tutorial – Lesson 1

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Interactivity, shminteractivity. Most web pages that claim interactivity really mean you can click on hyperlinks to go to new pages. Even web pages that have CGI scripts behind them don’t really seem all that interactive: Fill out a form, hit the Submit button, and wait. It’s more like throwing bottles into an ocean and hoping for a meaningful reply.

Happily, we have JavaScript. With JavaScript, images can swap when you move a cursor over them, form elements can influence each other on the fly, and calculations can be made without having to resort to a CGI script. There’s none of this submit-and-wait stuff — everything happens on your web page while you’re playing with it.

One of the best things about JavaScript is that you can do a great deal with very little programming. You don’t need a fancy computer, you don’t need any software other than a word processor and a web browser, and you don’t need access to a web server; you can do all your work right on your own computer.

Even though it’s simple to work with, JavaScript is a complete programming language, so as you learn more complicated JavaScript, you’re also learning the basics of computer programming. If you want to move on to other programming languages, like Perl, C, C++, or Java, JavaScript is a great introduction.

Enough hype about JavaScript. On to hype about this tutorial.

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File Under: Programming
Feb
15
2010

Set Up IMAP on Your Mail Server

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My friend remarked the other day that if a life can be said to have a killer app, peer-to-peer file sharing is his. Well, e-mail is mine. It is the key conduit for my work, entertainment, hobbies, relations with family and friends, and all sorts of other activities. But as I come to rely on it more and more, its shortcomings are magnified, and my patience for them diminished.

I am endlessly irritated by the inelegances of POP e-mail. When I’m forced to use other people’s computers, or just when I switch from one laptop to another, I want all my e-mail, fifteen years’ worth, received as well as sent, to be right there at my fingertips, neatly categorized. If I have to stop in at a public web terminal and send an urgent message to my date for the evening, I want the message I send to be archived with the rest of my sent mail.

A year or so ago, I decided I had had enough. The old method of checking e-mail with a POP client at home, and stopping in to use Mail2Web or another public, on-the-road interface just wasn’t doing it for me. I wanted a central repository for all my e-mail, accessible easily from anywhere. After a perusal of the services that were available, I reached the conclusion that the amount of storage space and the functionality I desired would incur too high monthly cost. I took matters into my own hands.

Using an old Pentium box I had lying around, I tried out a few different configurations and possibilities, and eventually wound up with the system I wanted. Now, with that machine (which I named Potto) as a mail drop, I can access my e-mail — all my e-mail through history — from anywhere, using any mail client I like. There is also a handy web interface for checking e-mail from public terminals like the Apple store. And I even hacked together a hybrid interface so I can call up and have a Stephen-Hawking-a-like read me my e-mail over the phone! But that’s another story, and shall be told another time.

What follows is the story of how I changed my e-mail life, and the e-mail lives of several friends, by hosting my own e-mail, and theirs, at home. In a broom closet! And how you can do the same.

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File Under: Frameworks, Programming
Feb
15
2010

Build a Microblog with Django

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Thus far in our introductory Django tutorial, we’ve installed the open-source Django framework, set up a blog and beefed it up by adding some extras like semantic content tags, some handy template tags and a list of our bookmarks from delicious.com. If you haven’t been following along, now would be a good time to go back to Lesson 1 and catch up.

However, what we’ve created is not much different than what one could do with WordPress or another out-of-the-box blogging tool. That’s OK for a learning project. But now we’re getting close to being experts, we are going to explore some territory beyond what we can do with pre-built tools.

Let’s build something a little more advanced. Let’s build a microblog.

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File Under: HTML
Feb
15
2010

Refresh a Page Using Meta Tags

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Childhood, as far as your basic cheese selections go, was easy. In your typical middle-class family, you had one of three choices:cheddar, Monterey Jack, and those precious, flat, sandwich-sized slices of American. That’s what all the cool kids ate. I had to fight my mother to get those into my lunch. She used to make sandwiches with these huge slabs of cheddar cheese that looked like they were hewed from the side of an orange glacier. Although I lost the Wonder Bread battle, I didn’t give an inch on this one. For some reason, Mom couldn’t see the simple beauty in a perfectly proportioned square of processed cheese food.

The problem with childhood is that we never appreciate it while we have the chance. As I grew up, I developed more mature needs and tastes. Like many young adults lost in the hype of ’80s mass cultural wonders like Molly Ringwald and Oingo Boingo, I began to experiment. I told myself that I didn’t have a problem, but a little brie here, and a bit of Chaumont there, and before I knew it, I was hooked.

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File Under: UI/UX
Feb
15
2010

Information Architecture Tutorial

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Information architecture is the science of figuring out what you want your site to do and then constructing a blueprint before you dive in and put the thing together. It’s more important than you might think, and John Shiple, aka Squishy, tells you why.

Squishy first looks at how to define your site’s goals, shedding light on the all-important art of collecting clients’ or co-workers’ opinions and assembling them in a coherent, weighted order of importance. He also shares his scheme for documenting everything so that all parties can keep up.

The next step is figuring out who the heck your audiences are going to be. Once that’s out of the way, you can start organizing your future site into pages of content and functions that the site will need to have.

Next, Squishy gets into creativityland, where you start to build the beast:form a skeleton, pick your metaphors, map out your navigation. Then it’s time to break out the graphics program, come up with layout grids, design sketches, and mock-ups, and get ready to build!


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