Code anyone?
I’m finishing off my marking (almost done!), but came across the following site for those who might occasionally have less-than-friendly thoughts about speed cameras — not that I approve of the following of course.
http://www.speedcam.co.uk/gatso2.htm
Just sharing… now where’s that red pen….
I’m a happy subscriber to the SitePoint techtime newsletter, and the lastest one gave me a solid but enjoyable bit of reading this evening (after following the links in the newsletter).
Emil Stenström : Levels [0 to 6] of CSS Knowledge
(11th Jan 2006)
http://friendlybit.com/css/levels-of-css-knowledge/
0. “CSS? Isn’t that a multiplayer game?”
1. “Yeah, I use it to remove underlines on links sometimes”
2. “No, I don’t like divs; tables are much easier to work with”
3. “Yeah, I’ve heard it’s good, but I can’t use it because…”
4. “CSS? Oh! Yeah, I use divs for all my layouts”
5. “I use CSS for design, it’s better than tables because of…”
6. “What version of CSS? Yes, I do. Did you read my book about…”
(133 comments… good, bad and obvious… I find it funny that some people in comments and trackbacks don’t realise the 0 to 6 levels == 7 levels, but hey, coders know about 0 indexes so that’s okay… :~).
It written well enough (+grain salt) but this one really got me starting to think about teaching, learning and where our students may be at with web dev and CSS and how we reach them. (I’ve now got Blooms taxonomy levels and everything else zooming in my head after that one.)
anyway, that last post then then inspired …
Roger Johansson : Levels [0 to 6] of HTML Knowledge
(30th May 2006) http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200605/levels_of_html_knowledge/
The levels have headings like “HTML LEVEL 3″, but the typical quotes are nice…
0. “Age-tee-em-what?”
1. “HTML? It’s those tags you use to make text bold or italic.”
2. “The controls I drag and drop in my IDE work fine in Internet Explorer, so why should I have to even look at the HTML?”
3. “Yeah yeah, I’ve heard about those fancy new ul and h1 tags, but I’m doing just fine with my trusty old table, img, and br tags.”
4. “How can I create a data table with divs and spans instead of tables?”
5. “Hmm. I wonder which type of list is the most semantic way to mark up this part of my document.”
6. “I think the HTML 4.01 and XHTML 2 specs are too semantically limited, so I am working on a new markup language.”
(178 comments, although #comment94 is a kicker… :~)
I like the writing style, and the points are very good but again some of the points (and especially the quotes i just listed) may not be understood properly unless the reader is somewhere down the list of levels and they know when to engauge “sarcasm” or “smug” mode while reading. Mind you, third paragraph is …
This is all written in a tongue-in-cheek way and is just my personal opinion. Please don’t over-react if you don’t agree or think some of the descriptions are a bit harsh. Try laughing instead.
Good advice for lots of post. I am always amazed when people go balistix on peoples post, like its their duty to correct the injustice of the world… from their point of view. Anyway, i’ll just start ranting, so on to…
Joe Clark : Levels [0 to 7] of Accessibility Knowledge
(2nd June 2006) http://blog.fawny.org/2006/06/02/niveaux/
Headings are just “Accessibility Level 3″ etc, so here’s my take on his points…
(I’m just trying to capture the points, not make my own)…
0. User level, not developer. Use common (MS) products, and don’t really think about how disabled users might go
1. Developers (FrontPage) who know that alt value = tooltips. Knows blind people will ask to “feel you face” (’cause that’s what they always do on TV).
2. Developers who know enough to be even more dangerous …
3. CSS is so good you don’t have to worry about poor HTML layout. Owns GoLive4.
4. jab at someone (who doesn’t “do” what they “preach” aka hypocrite issue?)
5. jab at someone (who doesn’t evangelise enough?)
6. jab at someone (who networks with publishers/people, suffers from 4 and 5, and looks down on mortals?)
7. jab at .. self? (interested in obscure subtopics, grating personality quirks… X in village).
No comments (doesn’t want them?). Eloquent writter, but my interest fades with my comprehension, so I get/smirk at most of the early points, but don’t see the point in wasting electrons for the rest - and I’m pretty sure Joe would think the same about my take - doesn’t care if i get it because it wasn’t meant for me. Hey, maybe that’s the subtle accessiblity point… :) nope. I still don’t get it.
Roger (Levels of HTML) then also inspired
Dean Edwards : Levels [1 to 6] of JavaScript
(2nd June 2006) http://dean.edwards.name/weblog/2006/06/levels/
Written in JavaScript of course! I had to repeat this one…
alert(“Hello World”);
var WORLD = “World”; function hello(who) { alert(“Hello “ + who); }; hello(WORLD);
<button onclick=“hello(WORLD)”>Say Hello</button>
<button id=“hello”>Say Hello</button>
var button = document.all.hello; button.onclick = function() { hello(WORLD); };
var button = document.getElementById(“hello”); button.addEventListener(“click”, function(event) { hello(WORLD); }, false);
var Hello = new Binding({ greet: function(who) { alert(“Hello “ + who); }, onclick: function() { this.greet(Hello.WORLD) } }, { WORLD: “World” }); document.bind(“#hello”, Hello);
On a related note, has anyone else tried FireBug with Firefox for js debugging? Giving it a burl now… hmm. http://www.joehewitt.com/software/firebug/
Look again… more changes, feedback welcome (positive/negative/observational)…
http://www.byteclub.net/blog/index_comments.php
I haven’t linked in and checked the external blog comment feeds - i’m working on it and get it happening i promise.
Still think the count of post/comments is too high? Let me know your opinions.
Would really like to be able to sort comments by “post” (thread)? Let me know (pretty easy to do now).
Runs like a dog? Probably cache issues (but i did have to restart apache tonight… dunno what the deal is).
All feeds (blogs or comments) are cached for 10 mins, but I think there may be other proxy+chache issues causing havoc… it would be great to see things quicker!
Please have a look at my latest attempt at the byteclub blogroll…
http://www.byteclub.net/blog/index_comments.php
Keeping in mind that its a work in progress, but I’d love some feedback at this point.
I haven’t tested in IE, so please don’t fry me for that yet - i’ll do my best for IE once I know what we *really* want.
I don’t have the comment for the external blogs yet either - i’ve got to check the different feed formats. From the presentation you might be able to see that i’m thinking of using CSS/JS to hide details and show on demand… what do you think.
lots of plans still, but there it is for now…
google’s great - but one *has* to be asking the *right* question. eish!
I wasn’t. Wasted lots of time. boo!
As many of you know, i’ve been know to play with php/rss/feeds for the byteclub blog list. I’m using the nice MagpieRSS code for getting feeds. I kept having nasty ?? instead of nice ‘ etc in post and titles… not happy, tried to fix, so, the short version/solution was to add…
define(‘MAGPIE_INPUT_ENCODING’,‘UTF-8′); define(‘MAGPIE_OUTPUT_ENCODING’,‘UTF-8′); define(‘MAGPIE_DETECT_ENCODING’,false);
before include the rss_fetch.in file. I’m posting code snippet more for my reference but i’m sharing ’cause that’s blogging. (oh yeah - i changed the html meta charset to utf-8 also…)
*but* my point: i spent a lot more time than i wanted/thought i needed to on this “little” issue (right zooba!) simply because i didn’t know the “right” question to be googling… urgh! Okay, rant over. i feel better now, and the results of the other changes i’m making to the blogroll i hope will make our byteclubbers happy too.
Some of the more enlightened bloggers/visitors i’m sure already known this fundamental “ask the right question” principle of the universe…