Because scouring the job boards on an almost daily basis has become a habit of mine the last few months, I’ve found that there are a few technologies I have yet to master. One of those is Ajax. I’m on a mission to change this ASAP so I went to the bookstore and purchased an instructional book from O’Reilly’s Head First series.
Why Head First? Well, mostly because I’ve had a few recommendations for them. These books can be compared to The Complete Idiot’s Guides or the So You Wanna Learn [insert skill], Huh” series (the latter is how I learned HTML way back when and is what introduced me to web design).
What’s Ajax? What it’s NOT is a completely new programming knowledge. It’s a way to make your web pages more interactive and allows for asynchronous requests (requests that run in the background). Ajax uses existing technologies such as XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, the DOM, and others.
If you want to learn Ajax, I suggest that you become comfortable with XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript first. It will make learning it so much easier.
Halfway through the book I decided to stop and sharpen up my JavaScript first. Yes, I’ve seen JavaScript before but I’m not exactly an expert. And because I want to understand and become fluent in Ajax, this also needed to change. To remedy this I got myself a JavaScript book this morning.
Needless to say, I haven’t seen much sunlight this past week. But it’s all going to be worth it. I’ll have my websites “Ajaxed” in no time! And hopefully by then I can author a post or two with live before and after samples.
Until then ..
I moved Raych’s (from raych.com) website from a Blogger platform to her own self hosted site using WordPress. In the process, she got this pen and watercolor redesign:
It looks like the folks over at Blogger are addressing one of the biggest complaints by users : the inability to add static pages.
If you’re unfamiliar with the terminology, this basically means that you can add separate “About Me,” “Blogroll,” and “100 Reasons Why I’m A Catch” pages (they currently allow up to 10 pages).
Granted, this was possible before, but you had to create a blog post and link that blog post in your layout.
The new way is much, much easier. Here’s what you do.
- Log in at Blogger in draft (http://draft.blogger.com)
- From the Dashboard, click the “Edit Posts” link
- Click the “Edit Pages” link
- Click the “New Page” button
- Enter the Title and Body of your new page and Publish
- Select where you would like your pages to appear
- Save and Publish
It’s that simple!
Keep in mind that this feature is still new (which is why it is still only accessible via Blogger in Draft) and therefore likely to change AND be full of bugs. In fact, I wanted to try this out and include screen shots of the entire process and different options, but I ran into a bug. Once officially released, I’m looking forward to providing a full post on this feature.
I finally finished the WordPress theme for this website and launched it minutes ago.
What’s going to be on this blog? For now I intend on using this to keep readers updated on all web design, graphic design, and art projects that I am working on (both personal and professional). In the near future, I’m hoping that I will be able to commit time to include articles that fellow web designers will find useful.
Stay tuned!
If you are running Windows 7 and install XAMPP on you machine, you are likely to run into problems running Apache.
Maybe.
The issue is that there is no specific issue and therefore no specific fix.
I scoured the Web for answers and only found user solutions in various forums. For some, the problem was fixed by changing Skype settings. Others were fixed by installing Apache as a service. Others changed the port that Apache listened to by changing the configuration files.
Well, guess what? None of those things worked for me. I grew impatient trying to find my specific solution and instead opted to try out a different WAMP until the next version of XAMPP is released (see more on Wikipedia page).
Today, I finished up a Blogger template over at Lucy In Da Sky With Diamonds. Here’s a screenshot:
![Lucy In Da Sky With Diamonds [screenshot]](http://blog.rachelsprague.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/ss1.jpg "Lucy In Da Sky With Diamonds [screenshot]")
