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Basic Scripting with JavaScript
This week we were shown how to make draw basic shapes in JavaScrit, then how to animate them, and then how those animations react to user input. We were then shown how to send results back to a server to turn it in to a multilayer game, all using JavaScript. During the lecture, it was discovered that there was a way to cheat at the game, and so a fix was applied. Students then had to find other ways to cheat by examining the code running on the page.
Scripting with PHP
The last character in the acronym PHP stands for PHP, making it recursive, which is interesting.
PHP allows user input back to the server just like JavaScript, just like JavaScript, it is a full programming language, with loops and variables.
PHP also allows easy saving of information to a text file, however I have found the most useful thing in PHP is PHP-include. This allows you to write a section of HTML code, Style code, PHP or JavaScript code, and repeat it on any page you like within your website. This means if you have a common header you want on every page for example, you can make changes to it on one place and it will be included in every file when the user requests a file that references it.
Usability and Accessibility
Usability Practical-1 was a card sorting exercise where we had to arrange the content of a web page in to an easily navigable and logical manner. This proved harder than expected because there was no clearly obvious layout, and this showed because everyone finished the task with a different layout.
Usability Practical-2 was about the physical layout of the website (how buttons and content would arrange itself on the screen). This seems like an easy task, however because of the large difference in screen sizes that would view our websites (phones, laptops, desktops, tablets), this was made much more challenging.
The Accessibility practical involved us wearing special equipment to simulate physical disabilities to see how this effected the accessibility of each website. We had to evaluate our own site, and another to see where we could make improvements to it so it was easier to use by handicapped users.