Science Tony

By McDonald, T.   | Date 14th of August 2020 If you want to be a coder, you will need to know about objects and how to interact with them. Have you been watching teach yourself videos and reading teach yourself blogs? Are you feeling a little bit lost with the jargon? I will show you that the jargon around objects in JavaScript is not as confusing as it first sounds. What is an object? An object can be thought of as a thing that can be represented in the real world such as a car or a shop. The car has attributes sometimes called properties, for example colour or model, and protocols sometimes called methods such as peddles or stirring wheel. The attributes describe the characteristic of the car while the protocols are how to interact with the car. You can have many objects and they can all have a different state. First let’s look at the structure of the object. Object creation: objectName = {}; The above creates an empty object. objectName = { objProperty_1 : “va

By T. McDonald | 2/07/19 The data pipeline is one way of handling data. This involves acquiring data from a source, or sources, preparing it for use, analysing it, and presenting what was discovered during the analysing to an appropriate audience. Subsequently, there are four stages to the pipeline, which I will outline in this blog: Acquisition Preparation Analyse Presentation Acquisition Before you can do anything, you will need to find some data and determine if it is suitable for the task. This involves legal issues surrounding the data such as its licensing: are you allowed to use it and if so, what are you allowed to do? There may be limitations on the use of the dataset for example. Furthermore, files come in different formats such as CSV or JSON for example. exampleFile.csv Or exampleFile.json   Meaning of the extensions: CSV = Coma Separated Values JSON = JavaScript Object Notation The above are just two examples and there will be other types.

By McDonald. T |  July 29th 2018 If you are thinking of learning how to code, the number of different types of programming languages can be a little daunting.  Putting it another way, there are languages such as PHP, HTML, CSS, Java, Python, C++ and many more, so where do you start?  Almost every day I hear someone asks the question, 'Which is the best coding language to learn first?'  This is not a straightforward question to answer because it depends on what you wish to achieve.  In other words, different purposes call for different languages.  Subsequently, it is not enough just to learn how to code; a programmer needs to know what language to use and for what purpose.  To learn about programming languages start with a visual language to understand the basics of algorithms then look at HTML and CSS to get started with web technologies. Start with a visual language to learn the basics of algorithms.  By a visual language, I mean a language where the programmer uses visu

 By McDonald. T | Updated November 28th 2018 Building a website may seem daunting if you are new to web design. The truth is, however, that building your own test website is so easy it will embarrass you! You just need the correct tools to do the job. Brackets and xampp can be used on Mac, Windows or Linux, but in this blog I will focus on Mac. What is a test website? A test site is a site that you can create without the need for a server or a web host. You can create the test site all on your own computer and play around with it until you are happy with it. This is a really good way to learn HTML5 and PHP in a safe environment. 1)  Install Brackets  Brackets is an editor that will allow you to code and test files. Brackets is simple to use and has a nifty little feature, called live view, that allows you to view the code in a web browser as it would look as a webpage. In other words, it translates the code into a webpage. Brackets is free and open source softwa

By McDonald, T . | Date: 6th of December 2017 Almost everybody likes to use the internet for a varied number of reasons. With the increase in disability awareness and the mobile market, every developer needs to think carefully about accessibility from the beginning of the design process. It is a top priority it to consider the needs of accessibility for legal reasons, and because of the mobile market. Accessibility and the law Accessibility needs is a top priority for a developer for legal reasons. Some users will be using assistive technologies to access the internet, for example, screen readers used by people with sight impairments. Subsequently, HTML has attributes in image anchors such as alt and longdesc, which will allow the reeding aloud of a text description of an image or graphic by a screen reader. This is, however, only one example, so it is good practice to involve people with disabilities throughout the design process to get a better understanding of individu

By McDonald, T. | Date 1st of December 2017 You may have wondered what goes into building a webpage or thought about becoming a web developer yourself. If so, you may have noticed that web developers and technology businesses encourage workers to volunteering in the community because it can be a valuable experience. Can volunteering in a charity shop improve web development understanding if a shop is thought of like a webpage even though volunteering in one will not make anyone a web developer? Is thinking of a webpage like a shop useful? Shops have services going on in the background such as sorting products much as a website will sort data. The back room is unseen by the shopper, yet remains a crucial part of the service much as a server is critical to a webpage. In addition, shops have a window, which displays the services much as a landing page does for a website. Service users must be able to see what the shop has for sale just as a landing page needs to clearly di

By McDonald, T. | Date: 19th of November 2017 In the previous blog, usability was briefly covered. Usability is about ensuring a site is easy and pleasant to use. This blog, briefly covers accessibility. Considering accessibility will increase audience and avoid prosecution, so it is worth adhering too.  Make a site accessible to maximise the audience . You may be excused for thinking that accessibility is the same as usability since the two ideas do overlap. However, while usability is more about using the site, accessibility is more about accessing the site using assistive technologies. Assistive technologies are things such as screen readers, which read everything on the screen and even read allowed a description of an image or graphic. In order to do this the image or graphic must have a description in the html code within the tag for the image. Before I go any further, it would be good to examine disability. If you go to a shop and it has a door ten meters in

By McDonald. T | Date: 12th November 2017 As the web continues to grow more and more people begin to depend on it. Everyone is using the net for all sorts of things including using it as the new high street. We can shop online, socialise online, book holidays online, study for our degree online; in fact, you name it and there is more than likely a website for it. For this reason, it is good to know if a website is reaching the maximum target audience. This blog is in two parts. In this blog, part one, I will cover usability and in part two I will cover accessibility . Make a site user friendly to maximise the audience and audience retention. Have you ever been to a site and left it quickly or stayed for hours at a site? Why did you do that? People go to a site for many reasons including: looking for information; to purchase something; or to use a service. With this in mind if any of us went to a shop and it did not have what we wanted we would leave, correct