October 27

SQL (Structured Query Language) is a programming language associated with databases. It breaks up into two sublanguages. DDL is used to create and destroy databases and the data within them. DML is used to manipulate and edit existing data. A DBMS can hold and allow an administrator to control several independent databases. There are different tables within a database.

A database is a collection of records or data stored in a computer. The data is organized according to some sort of model.

Filemaker, as I understand it, is a program used to work with databases. Until recently, each table was saved as a seperate file, although several tables can now be saved to a single document. I think it allows the user to drag information and drop it wherever you need it to be, rather than just typing commands.

October 20

Well, I went to Wikipedia to read up about web servers. I generally got the gist of how it works, but I feel like because the Internet is put together by techies who know how these things work a lot of information can be way too complicated for a novice like myself. So I went to youtube where at least if it was complicated, I'd have some visual that might help me understand it. I found this video that's from a Harvard extension school.

I had a lot of trouble finding something that told me what web server applications actually were instead of the different kinds. I ended up reading about APIs, though I'm not sure if that's what I needed to know. What I can gather is that a web server application formulates specific information based on user input, rather than just taking the user to a pre-formulated page (I hope that makes sense).

FTP was equally if not more complicated. It's a protocol, like HTTP. It's used for transferring data between computers. Apparently, you can also use it to hack usernames and passwords. I found a lot about the different FTP clients. I assume that anytime I download something off the Internet I'm using FTP.

DNS translates hostnames into IP addresses. The address I read from right to left in order to find the website. So when I type in the address of my blog (ktlawton.blogbspot.com) it looks for "com" first, which subdivides into "blogspot" which subdivides into "ktlawton1642." So it works from the general (com) to the specific (ktlawton1642). It's difficult to understand that in most cases "www" is the most specific just because it appears before almost everything and in a lot of cases typing in example.com will bring you to the same place as www.example.com.

CHMOD has to do with permissions. I guess this is what is used when you have to register for a site before you can use it. For instance when looking for custom content for the Sims you encounter a lot of "paysites" where you have to donate money to the site before you can access certain files. This was actually pretty easy to understand thanks to this website http://catcode.com/teachmod/index.html.

I'm still very much a novice and a lot of this is still Greek to me, but I think I'm started to get a better grasp on it.

October 6

Alas, one of the things that did not translate from my Dreamweaver 4 book was divs. I couldn't even find it in the book. I ended up going back to youtube to find a tutorial. I ended up using this one:

I've looked at other dreamweaver tutorials made by the same person before. I think he makes it easy to understand for the most part. It's especially helpful to me because I can see where he's finding all the tools in the program whereas if I use a book I sort of have to figure out where everything is for myself.

I decided to try to copy the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab homepage for class (http://www.blackphoenixalchemylab.com/). I used only divs to make the website. Thanks to the tutorial I watched, I found it pretty easy for the most part. I did have some problems, though. When I got up to the main text on the page, I didn't know how to make it in one box that would wrap around the main image, so I ended up making two separate divs, one to the right of the image and one underneath.

I also did not know how to use a custom font as they did on the left nav bar, so I just stuck with a default font. I was afraid if I tried using a different font I would end up with something that can't be seen on all browsers.

On the BPAL website, when you hover over the text in the left nav bar, it changes from gray to black. I also did not know how to replicate this.

For the most part, I think I managed to replicate the site pretty well.

EDIT:

I posted comments on the blogs of Valerie, Ivana, and Brandon.

Sept 29

After a crazy week or so I finally found some time to get to the computer lab with my Dreamweaver 4 for Dummies book and try to translate it to CS3. So far the translation's been pretty easy.

I tried to change the page size, but I can't tell if it actually changed anything.

Then I learned how to put the date and time on a page. I don't know if I'd ever use that on a web page... I guess I just don't see the point on anything other than a blog maybe. Well, I guess you could put "last update: [date]" on your page if you wanted to.

In order to play with text I put a simple nav. bar on top (Home About Us Contact Us Blog Shopping Cart Wishlist). I didn't want to change the format because we were talking about how people make things headers that really aren't headers and they shouldn't do that. I don't really understand why, to be honest. Anyhow, I didn't want to mess with that, so I just played with font, colour, size, and alignment, which might be just as bad, but I don't really know. I made the nav bar text into it's own style.

I played with the page properties. I added a background image. That was terrible. I couldn't read any of the text. I did find an image that wasn't as bad. I kept it for the time being, but I probably wouldn't use one on my own site.

I'm kind of curious to know what a tracing image is and how it works.

I made a table and filled it with images and it looked pretty good in dreamweaver, but as soon as I tried to preview it, it said only the image names where the picture should have been. I tried saving the page to my i-pod (in lieu of a thumb-drive), where the images were saved, but then it couldn't find my page. But it's too late for me to go crazy over it. It's getting late. I'll see if I can get it to work tomorrow, or I'll just start fresh since it was really just an experiment today anyway.