Hello again,

So it’s been a crazy week, I spent countless hours trying to figure out how this whole html5, css, and javascript project thing works.  Who would have thought it would be so confusing, just trying to figure out how to set up a test project?  To only then realize you were foolish for ever thinking it was difficult.  Great, right.  I guess what I am trying to say is things are progressing steadily though perhaps not as smoothly as  I had originally intended.  
    This past week, I scoured the internet for every fragment of information involving coloring to an html5 canvas I could find.  Ah, that reminds me, this week we chose teams for our Worcester Art Museum project; I chose to be on the coloring book team because I thought it would be challenging but fun as well.  I am delighted to say there are a vast amount of web development resources available on the Internet.  I found a tutorial that helped me work through some of the html5 canvas basics, but after detailed study into a few of the subtopics, I opted to change a vast majority of the code I started with.  
    One choice I have made is to avoid jQuery, I know what your thinking why?  jQuery is so useful.  Especially know that I have learned “how all the cool kids call jQuery” a quote taken from some random site, for an idea which they in turn took from the widely known boilerplate template.  Let me explain; it may come as a surprise to some, perhaps not many, but jQuery is nothing more than a javascript file with a vast amount of helpful tools; about ten thousand lines of tools, uncompressed.  However if you only need a very small portion of the library it make more sense to make up your own solution, rather than sacrifice load time.  Or at the very least just take what you want from the jQuery library.  Probably no big deal if your on your own laptop, but everyone browses the internet on their phone know so performance is key.
    Any way now to the progress.  This week, I designed a very simple coloring web page based on html5 css javascript and jQuery, which I later discarded for the homegrown solution, no jQuery.  Thus far, as of friday night 2/8/13 I have a fully functional drawing to app which draws whether you click the mouse or not, functionality lost to the abandonment of jQuery, but soon to come back, …just saying. With a palette of nine colors and an eraser I call the refresh button lol, me and Beto; my team partner a poised to strike a blow in the name of free source code.  
    I must say it is nice to finally work on a project that has a value to the public.  I suppose the only thing that brought my pure jubilation of having a working webpage back to reality, was when I gave it to my daughter to test. Within ten seconds she asked where is the eraser, to which I replied just hit the refresh button and be quiet.  She’s five.

Till next week.

Jason

From the blog jasonhintlian » cs-wsu by jasonhintlian and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

So far our team has decided to look into the possibility of running our app for the Worcester Art Museum on top of a SQL Lite database, after doing some research into how to use and manage a SQL Lite database it seems like it would be a decent idea, so far our concern with this is whether or not PhoneGap will support this type of database. I’ve done some research on the commands for creating and managing the database and it seems like I will be able to pick this up very quickly.

In addition to my research on the database I progressed with my learning of Javascript and ventured into the world of Objects; which thankfully are very similar to Java objects, at least in my mind.

From the blog CS:401 » CS-WSU by dcarlin2013 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This past week, there were some complications. I could not make it to class on Monday due to some car troubles. My car had to be brought to the mechanic, and I did not have another way to get to the campus. I read online that we were breaking up into groups this week, and later on in the week I talked to a few classmates about the database. I feel that I will most likely be joining in with this group. This was not a very eventful week for me, seeing as I could not make it to class. Other than this, during the week I looked at some links that Professor Wurst provided. This coming week will be much more productive.

From the blog bchaban » cs-wsu by bchaban and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Did a little more research and found someone created one using HTML5 and JavaScript to create a jigsaw puzzle for the web. I am thinking the best route will be using JavaScript and HTML5 because like in my last post JavaScript has the snapfit feature which will be helpful for younger children using the application.

If anyone is looking to use PHP (jQuery) in eclipse I downloaded Eclipse Helios PHP which has plugins for those librarys. I looked for plugins for jQuery on Eclipse Juno and was having no luck. I then found they had a Helios version and installed that to try it out. Just if anyone is thinking of using jQuery.

From the blog rwilliams5262 » cs-wsu by rwilliams5262 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This week myself and 2 other classmates selected to work on the Puzzle section for the WAM Idea Lab Application. I started to do a little bit of researching on what it will take and what languages people have used to create similar application features such as puzzles etc. I noticed a lot of people used jQuery, JavaScript, and HTML5 to create this feature. Just going to describe some of the examples I found.

jQuery: After searching a couple different sites, I found that jQuery has a library such as: jqPuzzle. This library within jQuery lets you bring in any image as a .jpg and it will create a sliding image to make a puzzle. It seems pretty straight forward once you call the jqPuzzle library inside the code all you need to do is then apply the class to any image to use theses features. Basically this sort of library will allow you to slide images around inside the square until the image is complete. It is not like a jigsaw puzzle where you can move images anywhere you would like and they would have a snap fit when they are in the correct location.

(Ex: <img src = “apple.jpg” alt=”Apple Logo” class=”jqPuzzle”/>

http://www.jqueryplugins.com/plugin/81/

javaScript has a tool called snapfit.js. This tool could be used to snap the image to the correct location when they are in range. All you need to do is set the snapfit on the image. It is a fast and easy way to work with any image. This tool does not  need any other resources to run.

http://www.netzgesta.de/snapfit/

I think theses are some good tools to be used within the code for this feature and I feel that the snapFit feature will be the most efficient for the children using it because when the certain piece they are moving is close to the correct spot the piece would light up green and then snap to the location and if the image is in the incorrect spot it would highlight red and they will have to re try that piece again.

Just a couple ideas that should be thought about. I know we said we be using JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS for this application. But I think we will need to add in some jQuery libraries to be implemented with the JavaScript code.

Will post more when I get in touch with the rest of the group.

From the blog rwilliams5262 » cs-wsu by rwilliams5262 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

If you’ve noticed, GitHub offers three ways to access a repository, two with read-write access and one with read-only access. For this project, each user is granted push-pull access (read-write) so eac of us can contribute code. The two methods which provide both read and write access are HTTP and SSH.

Using HTTP you can download an application and gain access using your GitHub credentials. As a member of the project you’ll be granted write privilege with these credentials (the project is open source and therefore, anyone already has read privileges). 

The other option is to use SSH, which allows you push and pull directly from the command line. In order to do this, however, you need to copy your public ssh-key into the ssh section on your GitHub account. Once the key to your computer is in the settings on your GitHub account you’ll be able to push to the database.

Once I have some more time to sit and work on it, I am planning to provide some steps to accomplish this. I thought having the information now would be helpful for those who would like to look into it more individually.

From the blog CS 401 - Object Oriented Design » cs-wsu by dillonmurphy10 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Hello again,

If you are using a mac and have problems running an HTML5/JS project using the HTTP preview localhost to test internally within eclipse 4.2 Juno, do the following:

1. Choose the web perspective.

2.Create a new Static Web Project.

3.Type your project name and click in the new runtime tab. That should bring another dialog

with a list of servers (HTTP Preview, HTTP server, J2EE preview). The problem I referred to in my previous post was with the HTTP preview, for which there is a fix for another version of eclipse namely Helios. If you want to be able to test within Juno, select the “J2EE preview” and click the “Create a new local server” box, then click on finish.

Continue setting up your project as usual, and you should be able to run and test your app from within eclipse now.

Hopefully this helps.

for another version of eclipse (Helios)

From the blog betoluna » CS WSU by betoluna1 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

After class on Monday our group has decided to look into some of the potential ways databases could be used in this application to set up a framework and allow the client to switch projects simply. In order to do this we thought about looking into SQLite to keep a local database on the ipad, in which case internet access wouldn’t be needed. Before proceeding however, we need to look further into whether or not PhoneGap will allow us to use SQLite in the app.

If we decide as a class to proceed with the idea of having databases initialized to build a template it is crucial to work with some of the other groups in the early development phases as to plan for dynamic content.

There is still a lot more investigating to be done, but our initial thoughts are promising. For more information and documentation take a look at our wiki on github:

https://github.com/CS-Worcester/CS401Spring2013/wiki/Database

From the blog CS 401 - Object Oriented Design » cs-wsu by dillonmurphy10 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

On monday, it is the first meeting for our class. We meet at Worcester Art Museum. We have talk a little about what our app should look like. According to the discussion, the app should have :

home page,

history chapter,

archaeology,

materials and construction

conservation

other example

activities

-Coloring

-Puzzle

Hence, this week, I look at phonegap web and mozilla. And looking forword for more idea next week.  

From the blog zli1 » cs-wsu by zhengjunli and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Tonight after our class meeting, I spent some time practicing with GitHub. I created a separate repository for my group to put up some of the code they start to write to figure out how we can design the puzzle activity for the app. I did not get to looking at code for how it would be developed, but started to get an understanding on how to push files from GitHub to my local machine and then push changes back up. I got it working once to make changes to one file pushed down from GitHub and then pushed back up.

Attempting another push and fetch attempt for a file created on GitHub.

From the blog rwilliams5262 » cs-wsu by rwilliams5262 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.