This update is all about slowing down and sticking to the plan. My past updates have mentioned my propensity for jumping around and trying to learn too much too fast. I have been kind of been blowing off JavaScript to a certain degree and just focusing on JQuery and I believe this to be an error. JavaScript is a core element that needs to be learned well. With that said, I have laid aside my JQuery books. First things first and I think a solid foundation in JavaScript is the proper order of things. I am going through each page and doing all the examples in my Head First JavaScript book. This has been a challenge and is going slower than I would like it. I have ZERO programming experience and it is showing in my understanding of JavaScript. So, it’s just plugging along, example by example and trying to make sense of everything.

JavaScript is an extremely powerful language and the more I learn the more I am impressed. Just for fun check out James Padolsey’s blog entry on the game of Pong. James has taken his pong game that he had to write in Java for a computer science class and turned it into JavaScript, you can look at his very clean code and play the game yourself. I would love to be able to write beautiful clean code like James one of these days!

I’m going page by page through the Head First JavaScript book and am really enjoying the examples. I hope to put some of them up on cliff538.com to just show them off and let you see what to expect from buying the book and jumping into the JavaScript.

A big part of this slow down and trying to learn things well, is that I do not want to be a cut and paste kind of web developer. The goal is to truly understand the tools (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JQuery, AJAX, PHP, etc.) and be able to take what is in my head or on the paper and truly make it work by my own skills using the tools provided. I don’t want to be the guy searching the web for just the right plug-in or code-snippet to make my page work. Will I ever achieve this lofty goal? good question, but the fun is in the journey, I am truly enjoying shutting off the T.V. and opening my book, firing up MAMP, Coda, and three different web browsers and playing, I mean learning.

Now, does this mean I’m not jumping around anymore? NO WAY! It’s in my blood, I love learning and playing with new stuff, so along side my deep concentration of JavaScript I hope to put my examples of JavaScript up on cliff538.com and I have purchased ScreenFlow and would like to try making a few screen-casts on some of the basics of all this web building. Installing MAMP, working with Coda, installing a new WordPress site, etc. Still looking for a good microphone then we’ll see if I’ll consider it good enough to put up on the web site. One last thing, it’s about my problem of having no programming experience, at all, nada, none, ZERO. The thought process and structure is very foreign to me and I thought along side the JavaScript I should dabble in Python to help get my head around some of the basics. Head First is coming out with a Programming book in December that deals with beginning programming and Python. So I would like to start into that book as well.

I’ve rambled on enough….. Back to the books! Never Stop Learning.

This past week I have been trying to narrow my focus or more narrowly define my subject learning order. I feel comfortable with my basic knowledge of HTML and CSS and the basics of getting a web page built and online. My WordPress Blog is up and running smoothly. So I have had trouble defining the next steps and have been spending small pockets of time with PHP, MySQL, Ajax, JavaScript, JQuery, YUI, MooTools and various other side tangents…… I mean who doesn’t want to write an iPhone app these days! ; ). But it seems like the proper order would now be to focus on JavaScript and one or two frameworks. With this decision made, I am now diving into the books Head First JavaScript and Learning JQuery 1.3. The plan is to now get a basic and comfortable knowledge of JS so I can work on cliff538.com and make it a more interactive and alive web site then move into Ajax/XML/JSON and more of the back-end stuff so my web pages can “communicate” with my server and access information without a page refresh from the users end.

Along with reading my two books I have been watching a video series by Jeffery Way over at In the Woods called JQuery for Absolute Beginners and doing all of the examples on my MAMP development server. Books can take you only so far then it’s nice to see it being done then jump on in and do it yourself!

I think it’s very important that you get a development server up and running on your computer so you can read or watch something then go try it and experiment with different options, you can learn more about this reading my blog entries about MAMP. JavaScript has an incredible amount of power and a very wide breadth of tools that you can use to interact with your CSS and the web page DOM. You have to dive into your books and videos so you can get a good grasp on how this all works. I have decided to narrow my JavaScript Framework to JQuery and it’s many plug-ins. So the goal is now to take my static web pages over at cliff538.com and implement some JavaScript using JQuery and use two plug-ins called JQuery UI and Cycle. JQuery UI has some really nice built in features that you could use on just about any web page and Cycle is a plug-in for dispaying a series of pictures or text boxes, you’ll see on the web page that it’s mostly used for pictures but you could use anything in place of the pictures, let your imagination and creativity run!

And to just top it all off I have been reading about HTML 5. I believe my next web site will be made using the new standard, I can’t see any reason to not jump in and start using the new updated standard. Here are a few links that I have found very useful in getting a grasp on the new features: Dive into HTML 5, HTML 5 Doctor, and finally a video by Google called Video Introduction to HTML 5.

One last thing, I’ve found a new text editor! Yea, I thought I was done too but when I was watching a screencast I saw the guy using Coda and it had features that looked very interesting so I downloaded it and have been using it for two weeks now and I love it. So I plunked down yet another hundred bucks for software, but I can assure you, you wont regret buying and using Coda. It works incredibly well with your development server. It has a feature called “Sites” where you can play with a multitude of projects. I have a new site for each project, one for JQuery UI, one for Cycle and others for my complete sites that I want to try something new in. I know I’m not explaining it well, but download it and use it free for 30 days, they have excellent documentation and videos on how to set things up. You can switch between your code and browser and between projects so easily you’ll never go back to your other editors, at least not for your development/Learning stuff. I may have to do a screencast or just a blog entry with screen shots on how I use this with MAMP, it’s just absolutely the best way I have found yet! But thats another project for another day, it’s off to work for me tomorrow……. Remember, Never Stop Learning!

This week is a little about organization and a new WordPress Theme that is fairly new with some pretty impressive customization built-in and finally a blog that I think way overdoes the advertising.

I am really finding I need some organization to my learning, there is so much to learn I am bouncing around trying to tackle too much at one time. Between WordPress, PHP, JavaScript, Photoshop, JQuery, MooTools I am spread too thin. Don’t get me wrong, I love it. I enjoy the learning and the challenge of it all but I need to focus more in one area and make a list of priorities.

So, this upcoming week or so will be listing out my areas of focus and signing up for my next class over at O’Reilly School of Technology (one way for me to keep focused in one area is to take a class). I also want to make list of really good starting places to learn the basics. Since this blog is about my learning process into the web I thought I should list some good starting points above and beyond how I started out.

The new WordPress theme that looks interesting is Thesis Theme watch this video and it will show you some highlights of the theme. It looks interesting for somebody who doesn’t want to really learn a lot of CSS, HTML, and PHP. I think they are on to something with there more advanced customization controls, the theme cost $87 bucks for the lifetime. I am tempted to get it to just play as it might be a good learning tool…… going to think on that one for awhile.

Just a side note on good vs bad design, check out the blog of Lisa who did the video on the Thesis Theme. Lisa did a great job on the video but I think her blog/web site is an example of way too much advertising. I was brought into her web site by her video then by the name of her site, 2 create a web site, It has the look and feel of an infomercial. I clicked around looking for some good stuff to share with you but was incredibly put off with all the ads. The feel is that it’s more about making money than it is the quality of the content. The feel of her site drove me away not deeper into her site. I would think that great content brings more visitors which brings increased advertising rates. Just my opinion.

Have a great week and start learning something new!

This week has been full of playing with WordPress and tweaking my current theme. I see pro’s and con’s to working with a theme, the good is: that you have a fully functioning wordpress site up and running, you get to study somebody else’s CSS to see how they do things, and while your inside tweaking settings to your liking you get to see and interact with the PHP that wordpress is built on. The bad is: your dealing with somebody else’s way of doing things some of which you may not understand. I wanted to start with a very simple theme and dig into the source to see how it all worked and be able to customize the theme to match my current web site cliff538.com.

I started with minimalism 1.0.3 by Christian Genaehr and have been very happy with it. I’ve been able to structure things the way I want and have learned a lot by looking at how Christian set things up. Now that I’ve learned some I am anxious to make my own wordpress theme from scratch. I’m looking at some basic “wire frame” packages to help you get started and will be commenting later on which one I find works best.

This past week has also brought back my flow of working a few hours in Photoshop every other day or so. Building PS skills just takes time playing with the software. I usually am doing a tut (tutorial) from one of the many PS tut sites or playing with my own pictures to enhance or fix them. The current tut I am doing right now is here I am really liking this one, learned some new tricks and am hoping to incorporate it into my web site. I am always amazed at the power of PS.

Still have to dive deeper into JavaScript, have been doing some reading but I think I’m going to sign up for the JavaScript class over at O’Reilly School of Technology. The structure of it is good for me I think. I tend to jump around, with so much to learn in so many areas I spend just small amounts of time in each one and really need to slow down and focus on a smaller list. Which brings up the questions how much do you learn in each area? How much time do you spend in an area of learning? Which things should you focus on? Well, so much depends on what you want to accomplish, right? I am slowly starting to think that I will never be a programmer, the time involved in learning is monumental and I’m not even sure I have the smarts to figure it all out! Right now the goal is to just learn how to take somebody else’s programming and incorporate it or apply it to your own web site. Learning how to use and maybe slightly modify JavaScript and PHP for wordpress is huge in it’s own right. I have been playing with JQuery and the Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI) there is a steep learning curve on how to implement these into your own site, I’ve been using my MAMP Web Server on my macbook pro and it’s been working great. If you haven’t set up a web server on your computer using MAMP give it a try it really is a time saver in experimenting and learning all this new stuff!

Well thats about it for this week, If your new to all of this and are just learning or your making your first web site drop me a note I’d love to check out your work and learn something from you!! back to my Photoshop tut……… Cheers!