For those of us who braved the weather tonight, we were treated to JQuery, the focus of tonight’s class. The way I can get JQuery to land solidly in my brain is to think of it as a language of JavaScript shortcuts – a library that allows you to have cleaner, leaner code.
For those of you who are lost already, I like to think of it a bit like shorthand – hacks out there might even still use this ol’ fashioned technology (it uses a pen and paper):
The Teeline alphabet
Thanks to Eric Lee for reminding me of the precise Teeline shorthand alphabet.
Shorthand is another language which has a logic to it, and similar to JQuery, it also has a ‘library’ of commonly written symbols. The only difference is that you can hack at Teeline shorthand, as often it is only you who has to translate it. Ah those were the days…
Anyhow, to make JQuery work, you need to have a copy of the JQuery library on your server, then include your .js files where your code is housed in the header of your html document. Then you use id (#) – remember only one id per document is allowed – and class (. ) selectors to attach functions that can do a vast array of things to your webpage.
When I say vast I mean vast – it’s difficult to get your head around what is available by downloading the library and having a look at it. So maybe start at the beginning if you’re interested – here’s the JQuery starter kit we used in class for an introduction.
So it’s knuckle down time for my final project – Viveka and Oanh gave us some good tips for writing up the final report that is due alongside the project: remember to consider the assessment criteria that is in the course outline. I’m going to do as recommended and place each assessment criteria as a heading in the final report in order to give my document some structure, then write over the headings (or make more user-friendly headings) in the final draft. Remember to be reflective, and if some parts of the project haven’t manifested, then justify (or explain) why this has happened.
Oh, and we have to finish building the site before presenting to class in two weeks. That’s fourteen days, and the clock is ticking.
