JavaScript > jQuery

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This week’s assignment was very difficult, and I felt quite unprepared for the task at hand, even with the jQuery Code Academy assignment under my belt. I also noticed that I was prompted with multiple notifications from Codecademy alerting me to jQuery’s lessons being updated this summer — which I’m guessing may possibly link to the fact that it seemed like the lesson was very bug-heavy.

There were multiple instances in the lessons where I struggled to find the answer, and the hints proved to be unhelpful. I hope they fix this bug soon, as it took me twice as long to complete this assignment than usual (and they took me forever to begin with!)

As for the slide show assignment, I felt as if I relied on Googling and researching the answers I’d need to make things work instead of relying on the information we have learned in previous classes. Also, I still did not feel comfortable enough to use jQuery to complete parts of the JavaScript assignments, so I stuck with JavaScript to complete it and even then I found many parts of getting the slideshow to work challenging.

Somehow, I was able to make the slides rotate through, but it was an arduous effort to try and get everything to work together…I’m still not even sure how I was able to get it. Hopefully we can work through lots of people’s work to discuss challenges that I’m sure were felt across the class!

Midterm Preview: I will be interviewing a friend of mine with a extensive developing background, who built a website for a counselor/therapist practice in the Washington, DC area.

JavaScript & jQuery: Still Having Trouble

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This week has been very difficult. I still haven’t fully understood Javascript, and then being pushed into jQuery has been difficult. I feel like I am forgetting things I thought I knew about HTML and CSS since we are moving at such a quick pace. The jQuery assignments on Codecademy were much more difficult and didn’t give you the answer after a few tries so you could easily see what you did and wrong learn from it. I found this to be extremely annoying, and unhelpful.

As far as the assignment goes, I am not pleased with my performance. I spent an enormous amount of time on this assignment as well as Codecademy and still haven’t been able to get through them easily, or with understanding. I could never get my code to work completely for my slideshow, and found that very frustrating.

For future classes, I am hoping that we really go through what we need to know for assignments. I felt as though I still wasn’t able to complete this because I wasn’t completely sure of the right things to be plugging in. I understand it is a learn-as-you-go type of class, but I still think that we are going at too fast of a pace to really learn-as-you-go because of the turnaround on assignments and lengthiness of the Codecademy homework. Unfortunately with a full-time job and weekend part-time job I am unable to give this homework the attention it needs. However, when signing up for this class I didn’t realize that the “introductions” were going to be so fast paced and I would be continually spinning my wheels to try and keep up. I hope that in future classes now that we have at least kind of gone over the “basics” we will be able to move slower.

Assignment on GitHub: https://github.com/alliefoard/Gallery-

Nothing Simple About This

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At this point, I have not finished the jQuery tutorial. I also have not managed to put the slideshow together. Despite doing all I can to clean and improve my code I have had very little success. All this time I thought my CSS was incorrectly linked to my HTML because I never saw any of the changes go live. Today I remembered JSFiddle and saw my boring white background turn blue. Victory, yes but still a small one since the title is still justified to the left.

I’m trying to build the slideshow code but even after extensive Googling and doing the courses I’m still having trouble just starting and not copying what w3schools has done. I understand the purpose and uses of jQuery and agree that it can is useful. For the parts of it I understand, I like and can probably write on my own. These lessons did a great job of forcing us to start the code from scratch. It could have been because the structure required for JavaScript, CSS, and HTML are not necessary here.

This week, my post will be very similar to those of my classmates. I do have to say that the class discussion forum has been very helpful. More so than Codeacademy. There is a notification at the top of the lesson that says they will be updating the jQuery lessons. I desperately wish these updates would have happened before we started this course but, oh well. The structure is  dramatically different, the hints are even less helpful, and there is no way to get the code and start again. Sometimes even when there are problems with the code it allows you to advance to the next step.

Developer interview:

For the midterm I interviewed a developer who is relatively new to the field. Tiffanie Johnson works for Forum One and is currently striving towards becoming a subject matter expert in Angular and Drupal 8.

The Challenges of jQuery

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This week, I started out with completing the jQuery exercises for Codecademy, which was really challenging because it didn’t provide the code. I had to really concentrate in order to find it. I worked on it for 8 straight hours.  What is rewarding about code is that when you get it, you feel so accomplished, but what is frustrating is the process. It feels never-ending. I have more respect for web developers’ patience the more that I code.

I am currently on the search for a web developer. I had a lead but he just went out of the country, so now I am scrounging Linkedin for some possible people. I would love to speak with a developer from a major news outlet like the Washington Post or NPR, because they are working where I would love to work.

Completing the slideshow exercise is no easy feat. It took me at least 3 hours on Saturday night to try to make a file on Sublime, especially since I had to miss class Wednesday. Luckily, my classmates helped me out by reminding me I have to put the photos in the same file to link the images. I’ve been depending on W3 to help me out with code and while I have started the file on Sublime, I’m still trying to figure it out which will unfortunately take me a little longer than I thought. Learning web development sometimes tests my patience and it’s frustrating because I like things to happen fast. Hopefully, after I speak with a developer and keep practicing, I will become better at this with hard work and drive.

Another trying week

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This week was a culmination of putting a lot of the languages we’ve touched on together. And it went poorly. The slideshow project was an interesting take on putting all the pieces together but it still felt overwhelming.

I’ve found that learning all of these concepts has been hard because we haven’t really gone through them together. In a different class I took last semester, Data Journalism, we went through a lot of technical platforms like SQL and Python, but we went step by step together. Only then did higher level concepts start to make sense.

It would be really helpful if we had class time where we went through things like how to make a slideshow step by step, so we could see how something came to fruition, before we are expected to create one on our own. Like Greg said in class, teachers do teach you how to write a sentence, but they don’t release you into the wild to then write an essay. To take that metaphor we had in class to its logical conclusion, you’re leaving out important building blocks like essay structure, paragraphs, and thesis statements. I feel like we only cover abstract concepts in class, only to have questions moved past because we don’t really go over assignments or take a look at the building blocks we need.

While some could say that Codecademy is what bridges that gap, I’ve continued to have problems with that as well. Currently the interface seems to delete sections I’ve done or doesn’t add a check mark to things to say items have been completed. That’s been really hard, especially when I’m trying to figure out why some lines of code are right or wrong.

I understand why a lot of the class is geared towards making sure we can figure out how things are broken on our own, but I feel like I’m operating at a huge handicap every week because I don’t quite understand what the best practices are to begin with. It would be really helpful to work on foundational things in class so that way outside study can be used to hone things, not figure out what square one is.

As for my Midterm, I will be interviewing Matt Callahan. He works at The Washington Post as a designer, but mostly does what we call “enterprise” templates. These templates are for our bigger stories and are always custom designed using jQuery and JavaScript.

 

jQuery, more like jDisaster

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This has been a very frustrating week to say the least! While I was able to complete the jQuery Codecademy lessons before the last class, I have been unable to follow along with how to create the slide show. I felt unprepared. My current code doesn’t work, at all. I’ve spent three days trying to figure out how to do this, so I’m hoping someone can look at my jQuery/JavaScript code and help me out! I think the hardest part was finding out where to start because it wasn’t as straight forward as some of the other assignments and wasn’t part of the Codecademy lessons. That being said, I went into this assignment thinking I had a good understanding of jQuery (not JavaScript), but now I feel as confused and behind as I did when we learned JavaScript. I’m not sure what the missing pieces are that I don’t understand, but there are definitely a few. Something I kept asking myself in researching guides on creating a slideshow was if I should put the images in a list or not? Everyone seems to do it differently. The captions were there when I initially ran the code, but are now hidden. AHH!!! It was not a successful coding weekend this weekend. I’ll have to give it a try next week and hope that things start to make better sense and get easier! (And I hope next week doesn’t involve 9+ hours of work!)

Midterm: For my midterm, I will be interviewing Lauren Soni who is the Webmaster and web developer for HHMI’s research campus, Janelia Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia. I don’t work directly with Lauren and our paths only cross during team meetings since HHMI has a webmaster and web developer for our own site. Lauren has been a web developer for about 3 years and is also in the process of completing her Master’s degree at Northwestern University Online. Through our interview, I want to learn a few things—1) learn how Lauren transitioned her career from Biomedical research to web development, 2) her advice for learning different types of code, where to practice and how to begin, 3) talk about her involvement in creating a responsive site for Janelia and other major projects.

Not Jiving in JavaScript, Yet

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I found this week’s Codecademy lessons on JavaScript (JS) and jQuery quite difficult. I got lost a lot because each new step built upon the last, and the lessons didn’t (unlike previous lessons) do a great job repeating each step over and over so it could sink in. Also, the building blocks of the language weren’t as simple, straightforward, and intuitive as I found those in HTML and CSS to be. The data types and console.log statement seem easy enough, but once we started building in operators and functions, arrays and loops, I got lost. I found myself needing hints and cheating to get the code… it was very frustrating.

Also, for the first several lessons I kept wondering how this language would jive with what we have learned in HTML and CSS. I think I would have preferred to have the JQuery lesson first, then the others to follow. That last lesson did a good job explaining how to link JS to the DOM and how they interplay with each other in real time on a website. Because I wasn’t able to attend class last week and missed our initial discussion about JS, I did some research on my own and found what I think are a couple good “Intro to JavaScript” resources others might find helpful:

  1. w3schools.com — https://www.w3schools.com/js/js_whereto.asp
  2. dummies.com — http://www.dummies.com/web-design-development/javascript/javascript-and-html/
  3. betterexplained.com — https://betterexplained.com/articles/the-single-page-javascript-overview/
  4. htmldog.com — https://www.htmldog.com/guides/javascript/beginner/

Questions for the week are: what is the recommended order for developing HTML, CSS, and JS?; could we inspect a couple webpages to see how they are using JS?; if I wanted to create a rotating image block, is that done using JS?; and is an RSS feed JS? Also, would one ever code JS in CSS?

I look forward to working through some examples in class on Wednesday and spending some more free time practicing all three languages!

Cheers,

Jane

JavaScript — Difficult, But Not Impossible!

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The JavaScript assignment this week was complex, yet simultaneously the most logical for me to follow. One of the Codecademy lessons pointed out that a lot of the JavaScript functions are very straight forward statements – “if” something then do [blank], otherwise, do [blank2]. The logical of that set-up, for me, is much easier to internalize than some of the CSS or HTML code (such as the difference between a class and id, still unclear why those need to be separate). Similarly, I found a lot of the functions to be relatively understandable. With if/else statements, for example, depending on the variable, the function will run though “if” “else” or “else if” statements until it finds the correct variable and then execute the appropriate statement.

Where the confusion, for me, came in was actually executing the code. Reading the Codecademy explanation, and reviewing the code provided by Codecademy, while time consuming, made sense after I read each line a few times. I struggled, however, when trying to recreate the code for a new set of variables, specifically when we got into functions.

Last week, my inability to execute the code would have been very concerning for me. However, this week I realized that my understanding of HTML and CSS has already greatly improved. I was able to build a new homepage with different fonts, colors, pictures, sizing, and overlapping images in a relatively short amount of time, which took me numerous hours last week. Thus, I am hopeful that with time and practice I will gain a similar familiarity with JavaScript.

I am excited to learn more about JQuery as I think that will simplify a lot of my confusion be de-cluttering the code. Sometimes I think I get lost in the numerous statements, variable, numbers, etc. I have a feeling I am overcomplicating the code, but I think the introduction of abbreviations will help me understand where I can cut back on wording.

Also, as a final side-note, I am interested to discuss in class how everyone’s slideshow is coming thus far. I feel relatively confident that I have built the CSS and HTML blocks correctly for the slideshow, but am struggling with (as mentioned above) actually executing the JavaScript code and wonder how others progress is coming along.

JavaScript: Even More Difficult than I Thought it Would Be

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Echoing the thoughts of some of my peers, I found this week’s Codecademy lessons to be the most difficult to really understand. In particular, the lessons on functions, arrays, and looping really confused me, and I needed to go over practically each hint to figure out the correct code.

I think what I am struggling with most in learning JavaScript is understanding the purpose behind some of the pieces of code we are learning. I am still not exactly sure what a function does, which is the main thing I am struggling to understand, but I also don’t quite understand the purpose of elements like .pop() and .push() – why not change the initial array to include or exclude the items you specify in .push() or .pop()? I think seeing more real-world examples, like we did last week, will help me now that I’ve gone over the basic foundation laid out by Codecademy.

Another thing I struggled with was understanding how to correctly write pieces of code inside of code. Codecademy would ask me to write a for loop inside of a for loop, and I would have no idea how to set that up or where in the code to begin. It also made it hard to differentiate where one element of the code ended and another began.

As we go along, I am interested to learn more about how JavaScript, HTML, and CSS can work together. In Codecademy, it was really cool to see how you could use all three to make elements clickable or make them disappear. I know we went over a real-world example in class, but I’m excited (and slightly scared) to delve into making the gallery for next week’s assignment. I think it will be the best way to help me understand what I’ve learned. I am also looking forward to learning more about JQuery, since anything that can make JavaScript easier to understand and execute will be a big help. 

JavaScript – Help!

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The past two weeks, I’ve spent most of my time attempting to learn the building blocks of JavaScript and JQuery. This is by far the most difficult part of Codecademy thus far and has taken me the most time to comprehend and complete. I was able to conquer the first two lessons of Codecademy with a little difficulty; the thought process behind variables made sense. Once we began adding in Functions, strings, and loops, I started to lose the literal connection between JavaScript and a functioning website. I learn by doing and through visualizations.  In order for me to comprehend something, I have to be able to see what the end result is of something…and is the reason why science has never been my strong suit. I am hoping that in the next class, we can take a step back and look at the building blocks of JavaScript from the beginning. While I valued the time you spent teaching Java Script from the w3school code, I think I need to start from the beginning, looking at the big picture and then at each individual piece, because it all builds on each other.

In an effort to not fall behind too quickly, I found a few resources that I thought were helpful in learning more about JavaScript. You can find them linked below. I hope they are of use to the class as well! Please let me know if anyone finds any other helpful resources.

Additional JavaScript Resources:

  • HTML Dog
    • On HTML Dog, they have different lessons and pages that go through similar content that we learned on Codecademy. I appreciated how easy it was to follow along and didn’t feel as lost as I did when going through the Codecademy lessons.
  • YouTube Tutorial
    • I found it helpful to see someone else in action writing the JavaScript code and connecting it back to how it works on a website. That being said, it isn’t the most thorough video.

The second half of the week, I started working on the midterm interview by searching on LinkedIn for potential connections with web developers. Would interviewing a web developer from HHMI’s sister research campus be too close of a connection? I am nervous about this assignment. I haven’t interviewed anyone for a story since college and know that my journalism skills have fallen flat since then. I’m looking forward to the challenge and what I’ll learn from someone who has made a career out of web development.