#3

Assignment #3 successfully completed! I think because my job requires that I spend so much time with Excel logic and that I have spent so much time trying to resolve IE CSS bugs, this assignment was (gasp!) fun for me. I kinda enjoy fixing things. It went well. I used the combination of PHP bugs and Firefox Error Console to resolve most issues. The only thing that really held me back was that prior to Wednesday's class I didn't know you could start a PHP tag before "html" and close it after. So I initially thought I had to delete the (seemingly) incomplete tags. I also didn't realize that html opening and closing tags could span across multiple php commands, like the use of "h2" in the assignment. I spent less than an hour on this one. Maybe 30 minutes? I did most of it at the end of class on Monday.
I think I might love PHP.

Lessons 5 and 6

Lesson 5 was pretty straightforward. My only question/confusion is what the necessity of global keywords is. From the example in the lesson it looks like the keywords are just there to say "these are constants and not variables." They aren't being defined, just listed. Do the keywords just serve as indicators that those variables are actually constants and not variables limited to the context of that function? Can keywords be used outside of functions?

I appreciated the Lesson 6 Form video tutorial. Very nice and very helpful. Definitely digging all of the resources in this class. While the amount of information can be overwhelming, I don't feel lost and there are a lot of options for getting answers.

My only question on Lesson 6 is regarding the last sentence of the POST vs. GET section. Confusion in green text:
"The method attribute identifies one of two ways the data can be sent along with the web page, either via "POST", or "GET" Neither of these is not part of PHP, but of the HTTP Protocol."
I think I am just confused by the double negative (neither/not). I assume what is being said here is that POST and GET are not part of PHP, rather, they are HTTP.

Could use a little more info on unset(), which was used in the two form examples at the end of Lesson 6, but maybe it is covered in Lesson 7.

Started reading around 10am this morning. Spent some time with the links, videos and examples. Started the homework in class on Monday. Spent about 30 minutes on it. Just a little further to go.

#2 Complete

Site template busted apart and loaded. The actual work probably took less than 30 minutes. I spent a bunch of time messing around with how I wanted to organize my files and ended up wasting a little bit of time renaming .css and .js file paths and reloading to server, etc.
Unclear from the documentation and class discussion as to whether I need to put "_inc" in each file name.
I think I will get PHP set up on the Mac (locally) so I don't have to bounce back and forth with the server. Will definitely save time.

#2 (cont'd)

Saturday: Finished reading lesson 4 and the book (about 40 min.). Decided to play around with stock photo (artist included the AI file!). Now getting ready to bust it apart...

#2

I started assignment #2 last night. I prefer to create my own templates as I am very comfortable with HTML and CSS. Undoing someone else's code to customize takes twice as long as doing it myself. Plus you could inherit their errors and inefficiencies. I spent about an hour on the layout and kept it simple. Having fun and looking forward to how this unfolds.

Lessons & Other Thoughts

Everything is relatively straightforward so far with the lessons and reading. I have to get used to the php.net format. I find it a little cryptic and not so clear for the beginner. Some of the pages I couldn't make any sense of despite numerous readings. The class textbook, however, lays information out simply and in a manner easy to follow. Php.net seems like it should be helpful, so I'm optimistic that it eventually will not look like Greek.

After reading Lessons 1-3 and chapter 1-2 of the book, I do have a few questions about choosing .php vs .aspx. If based on what the client uses, is this specifically for large clients that will be self-hosting on their own servers and clients that will somehow be integrating their website with their intranet? Most of my clients are small businesses that are solo practitioners, artists, photographers, writers, or small firms that don't have servers and the type of operating system they use may vary. Does it matter what operating system a small client is using? Isn't the primary concern what type of servers the host has? I get the sense that it is only with large corporate clients with in-house servers and lots of integration that this is really a concern. Would be good to have small client/big client scenarios (to the extent they differ) in class discussion and lesson readings.

#1

So far so good. It's been 5 minutes and the blog is up and running. Next stop: Project Plan. Seems like the hardest part will be figuring out how to log in on the class site.