CST 336 Week 8

Week 8

This is our last week. We have wrapped up our final exam and completed the last assignment for the course. The assignment this week only added one new bit of information, however it required knowledge from previous weeks to complete. This week the class learned how to upload files to the server and store them either in the database or in the file system on the server. The idea is pretty simple, but can very easy to mess up by keeping track of the files in the session.

Overall, this course has been pretty simple for me since it's in my line of work. I've really enjoyed how structured the professor is and haven't felt like there were any surprises this course (aside from the slightly off first week). I also like his structure of teaching. I have always felt I learn tremendously better by implementing the concepts rather than just reading or listening to the material.

Below is my final assignment for the course.

• http://hosting.otterlabs.org/mazzabrittanyn/CST336/labs/8/login.php

CST 336 Week 7

Week 7

This week we went through W3 Schools AJAX Tutorials. The assignments this week were focused on using AJAX to retrieve data and JavaScript/JQuery to update the DOM with the retrieved information. This week has been pretty nice for me. This week I was requested to do a quick video demo of my assignment (each student is asked once at a random week in the course). I decided to try the Jing software. The software worked fine, but I ended up having a difficult time trying to convert from their SWF to anything else so that I could put it on YouTube. Everything I tried either didn't work, just had audio, or was watermarked. I ended up using the site that they basically force you to use. I guess that's fine for this demo, but it's likely I won't use that software in the future. As far as I can tell, flash is on its way out (thank goodness!).

My completed assignments for this week are below.

• http://hosting.otterlabs.org/mazzabrittanyn/CST336/labs/7/
• http://hosting.otterlabs.org/mazzabrittanyn/CST336/assignments/4/

Assignment demo: http://www.screencast.com/t/959tgD36J

CST 336 Week 6

Week 6

This week we were assigned to read through the lecture material and watch several videos from Atomic Learning's JQuery & JavaScript Basics Training course. The workload was much lighter this week, so that we can focus on the practice exam. This works out well for me, since I'm out of town this week and partially into next week. We only had one assignment, which was practice with JavaScript and JQuery. The JavaScript and JQuery intro has been very simple so far. They're doing their best to distinguish between JavaScript and JQuery, but I imagine that the line is pretty blurry for some of my classmates since they were both introduced the same week. It also doesn't help that the lab used primarily JQuery. I think it would have been beneficial to do two separate assignments (one using only JavaScript and the other using JQuery) to help solidify the idea.

My completed assignment for this week is below.

• http://hosting.otterlabs.org/mazzabrittanyn/CST336/labs/6/

CST 336 Week 5

Week 5

This week we learned about storing user data in sessions (specifically for logging in and out of a website). It was a very quick intro and very simple. We were assigned reading from chapter 12 (titled "Working with Cookies and User Sessions") of Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL, and Apache All in One. The lab assignment was nice this week since we just added a log in to the website we did last week. I'm glad it ended up being short because it allowed me to spend more time on the team project.

I think my team has gone beyond what the assignment detailed, which is good, but it also meant that I have spent time on certain functionality that didn't meet the assignment requirements. So, this project has taken longer than I was expecting.

Below are my assignments for this week.:

• Lab: http://hosting.otterlabs.org/mazzabrittanyn/CST336/labs/5/
• Team Project: http://hosting.otterlabs.org/mazzabrittanyn/CST336/team_project/1/