This is a great application and service, which provides both a browser based rss feed reader (like google-reader) and a downloadable application for use on the desktop. Both can be sychronised and new tweets are easy to keep track of, and the built in browser works well

Game Tracker

Userful web application for finding game servers from all over the globe, with a huge number of games, predominantly, but not limited to first person shooters. Great for finding servers through specific searches, where in game trackers sometimes fall short.

Australia & NZ Snowboard Hub

A relatively new application, available as a widget style application for desktops. It provides a series of feeds, such as news, photos, competitions etc. Recommended for a look to any snowboarders, but it is still new, and gaining more content.

On wednesday my prize arrived, a brown Clint Allan signature jacket and pants,  and they are awesome, feel great, have about 6 billion pockets, and go with my new boots (birthday present from my better half)

When i got home tonight, i found that my page would no longer write to my xml file, and in fact seemingly took no action whatsoever when my button was pressed. I spent hours trying to remedy this problem, but in the end decided to start anew, using the example given to us in class, and adapting it. At first even the example did not behave as it should, but when it finally did, i saved a copy as backup, to return to in case the same problem occurred.

Sure enough, at around 11:30pm some additions i had made to one of my copies seemed to have stopped it from working, so, i removed them, but still nothing. Next i returned to my backup, and opened it in my browser… WTF! Nothing, no errors, but also no script, nothing new in the xml, no changes to the text areas, no alerts. So once again I’m stuck with a seemingly static webpage, and no idea as to how to make it work, or even why these intermittent problems are occuring.

Both applications provide browser based front end editing applications, which behave much like their microsoft office counterparts, require minimal downloads, and very little hard disk space as they do not require installation.

Some of the differences between the two are:

File Types:

Google Docs – allows a specific list of file types, including .docx, .ppt, .txt among others

Microsoft Office Live Workspace – allows every type of file, except for those which are blocked, due to security reasons

User Storage Size:

Google Docs – 5000 documents, 5000 images and 1000 spreadsheets

Microsoft Office Live Workspace – 500MB of total storage space

both applications allow for batch uploading, as well as single file uploads, file sharing and group collaboration, however, while Google’s collaboration may occur in real time, Microsoft’s works on a check in-check out system.

Minifying is the automated process of minimizing the number of characters used in each action to the smallest amount, then used by JQuery. The resulting code will have the same functionality as the previous code, but load and run faster, and is often easier to understand.

JQuery has an inbuilt function :

$(document).ready(function(){ // Your code here });

which allows scripts to be run after the page has been loaded. In regular javascript, this type of action would require use of the onload attribute, often within the body tag. While this would require multiple lines of code, the built in ready function needs only one.

another useful part of JQuery is its chainability, meaning that actions previously spanning lines of code may be seperated by full stops in order to have each action follow on from one another.eg:

$(“p.surprise”).addClass(“ohMy”).show(“Slow”);

first finds any paragraphs named “surprise”, then adds a class to these called “ohMy”, and finally displays the content slowly

 $("a").click(function(event){   event.preventDefault();   $(this).hide("slow"); });

with this code, as far as i can tell, it works when the specified link is clicked on. It stops the link performing the default action (opening the location), and instead hide the link slowly.

To do this, AJAX uses the XMLHttpRequest object, which queries the specified server for the information to be updated. Internet Explorer and Firefox both handle these objects differently; while IE requires it to be called as an ActiveX object, FF allows the XMLHttpRequest to be an object in its own right.

To check the progress of these requests, and perform actions based on it, there exists the property “readyState”. This can have a value from 0 to 4, corresponding to the states from initialized to complete. Using this property, functions can be set to run, for example, when the process is at state 2, or when it has been sent.

It can be seen that the XMLHttpRequest is a powerful tool for web development, allowing for faster loading, more efficient and powerful web pages and applications.

document.GetElementById(“Div1″).innerHTML = “this text”

would select the element with the id “Div1″ and change the text it contains to “this text”. Following this, exclusive to IE, DOM, enables the use of document..all”Div1″) to select all of the objects below “Div1″ in the heirarchy.

Events can be used within scripts in objects, to provide user interactivity, and to access other elements of the DOM. Events such as OnKeyPress, and OnKeyDown allow such events (as user presses keys) to run scripts within the HTML. The difference between OnKeyPress and OnKeyDown, is that while OnKeyPress will trigger an event repeatedly as long as the key is held down, OnKeyDown will trigger only on the initial keypress.

Event Bubbling is a function performed within the DOM process, which occurs when events are triggered by the user. If an event is triggered by an element, but no associated process is included within the object, the event is shifted up the DOM heirarchy in a ‘bubbling’ process, until it reaches an element which can process the event.

Source:

MSDN: About the DHTML Object Model

Using the twitter service, users can also “follow” other Twitterers to keep updated with their recent activities.

In short, it behaves partly like a scaled down blog and rss reader.

in addition, because of the small size of the tweets, it is possible to recieve sms updates through your mobile phone to follow your friends.

As much as i enjoy it, i managed to turn my scorecard from -2 par to +6 on the final hole of my last game.

between the opening and closing tags, there is typically text, asking the user to input or select from some data, along with the code allowing this process to occur. For example

<input type=”textfield” name=”UserName”>

to allow the user to enter their name into a text box.

Three important attributes can be entered within the opening tag:

Method: Such as “GET” or “POST” which dictates the method that is used to handle the data in sending it to the webserver

Action: The URL to which the data is to be sent

Enctype: The format in which the data is sent, whether as plaintext, ciphertext etc.

Sources:

http://www.topxml.com/xhtml/xhtml_tag_form.asp