Wednesday, May 2, 2007


Sometimes,listening to music or enjoying tasty food to relax and indulge myself is so nccessary !

Learning Journal----CSS

After acquiring a deeper understanding about XHTML I focus my study on CSS which is another technology I plan to use in the project.
CSS is the language that can define the display/presentation of the web page. I think if XHTML is the technology for building the basic and essential frame of the web page, CSS is the technology for decorating the frame with creativity and imagination. Same frame can be decorated in different ways.
After learning XHTML , CSS is not quite difficult to understand. It’s related to XHTML closely. One very common type of selector is the HTML tag. Through referring to the tag I can let the browser know which part of the file (heading? a paragraph ?) I want to be displayed in this way. Class selector is also easy to understand and use. When I want to give some of the text on the pages specific attributes which make them different from others, I can simply create a customized HTML tag ---a style class. So all elements sharing same styles/attributes can be included in a common style class. ID selector is associated with a specific element in HTML file. After understanding the relationship between selectors, style property and value, the structure of CSS file and how CSS influence HTML file become much clearer to me . Then to me, learning CSS amounts to finding out style properties, understanding how to write them and assign a proper value to them. The more style properties I find out, the more deeply I realize that how powerful the technology is. By now I’ve just known limited style properties ( such as about defining font, colour , position, margin, padding ) , but I try to learn more about this to design my project in a free and creative way.

Friday, April 27, 2007

The link to my technology ayalysis is
http://students.mim.iml.uts.edu.au/users/10516692/Technology%20Micro%20and%20Macro%20Analysis%203.html

Taking four subjects in one semester I always can feel the stress and the strain.

Learning Journal ----XHTML

This week the subject has moved on to the client-side technologies ----PHP and SQL. I think it is the time when I should summarize my journey of learning and exploring the two technologies that I selected in my learning contract---- XHTML and CSS.

XHTML
During the process of writing ‘Technology Micro and Macro Analysis’ I started to know more and deeper about XHTML. What this technology is? The differences between XHTML and HTML? How to use this technology to build the structure of a web page?
Reading books is necessary and effective approach to learning a new technology. I’ve read most parts about HTML in the book ‘SA SAMS Teach Yourself HTML and CSS in 24 Hours’.This book is easy to understand and I followed the examples to do some practises. Everytime after I followed the example to type some codes in the text editor I always felt curious and suspicious about whether the display of the web page would be changed as the way the book wrote and showed. Then if it did I would be excited and if it didn’t I would feel frustrated. Many tags and attributes introduced in the book are related to and will be used in my project, so I think they are quite useful.

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Reflection on Lecture Two

I increasingly realize that this subject is challenging to me – a student without any background knowledge about HTML, CSS and Java script.
Frankly speaking after the class of this week, I was not sure what I have leant but quite sure that I didn’t understand some concepts and technologies introduced by Tim. I even didn’t know clearly what HTML is used for , and how is related to a website. Two hours lecture covers too much content to me , it’s hard to digest the all the knowledge Tim mentioned in last class. What is especially difficult to me to understand is the abstract of the concept. I know it’s impossible to explain every concept with a concrete example in a short lecture , and moreover lots of my classmates who have been well equipped with the knowledge in this area expect to learn something sophisticated, so I realize that I have to do extra work to catch up and fully understand the knowledge covered in every class.

I searched for some suitable online tutorials designed for HTML and CSS , Java script beginners , then I found a quite ideal online resource. The tutorials are divided into three levels (Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced ) . http://www.htmldog.com/guides/


The beginners’ HTML tutorial covers some easy steps of using html ( from page titles to forms) , and for each step teaches me how to achieve a specific task in detail. For example , it teaches how to use text editor (Notepad) to type some codes ,and then I can see how it affects the appearance of the website. Through doing this exercise I started to understand the function of html and how it’s applied in a website.

CSS beginners’ tutorial is also easy to be understood through simple , clear explanation and practical exercises . Through reading this tutorial I have a basic idea about how to change the colour , font and style of the text.

If you are a beginner in this area as me , try to read these online tutorials, you will find it is quite helpful.