Lesson 4: CSS

On the fourth lesson of Infocomm Studies, I learnt about CSS. It stands for Cascading Style Sheet. It helps to style a website like the background, the web format etc. The CSS are subdivided into three groups. They are internal, external and inline. Inline and internal styles are the same, just that Inline style is a very limited format. For our lesson, we concentrated on external style sheets. External Style sheets are separate documents from HTML. It enables us to link several HTMLs to one style sheet so that we do not have to repeat the process of designing the pages of the website. We need to link the external style sheet to the HTML by putting 'link rel=stylesheet  type=style.css  ahref=(file name).css'. The style sheet must be in the same folder as the HTML. CSS must start with a declaration. Example:  !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN". For CSS, the terms ends with ' ; ' and { } For more detailed information,
visit: "http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp"

That is all I have learnt for my introduction to CSS. I am looking forward to future lessons...

Lesson 3: HTML

On the third lesson of Infocomm Studies, I learnt about HTML. Basically, HTML is a command box to tell the internet on what to do. Even pages like this decent blog is equipped with this. To view it, just go to page, click 'view source' then wait for it to start up.
Now to explain it in more detail. HTML stands for "Hyper Text Markup Language". It makes use of the program "notepad" under any computer's accessories. HTML is easy to learn. It is made up of a few commands as a skeleton. Here...(everything is in < and >)

html
head
title
/title
/head
body
/body
/html

This is quite easy to understand. The HTML always starts with a command which is html and ends with to show that the content between them is HTML. Why the slash? This is because slash in a command points to an end of a command. So, /html stands for the end of the HTML. Next comes the head. This contains the webpage infomation at the top of the page. title contains the title of the page found at the top of the page.
body contains the main pages and texts.

Next for miscellaneous things. 'p' stands for paragraph.'img src= (webpage)' is to insert a picture.'alt' is alternative text should the picture not be shown due to software compatibility. 'border' means the border thickness of the picture. 'height=(no.)' is the height of the picture while 'width' is the width of the picture. 'br' is page break. 'hr' stands for a horizontal line. 'h1' stands for the biggest font size while 'h6' is the smallest. 'a href= (webpage)' is to give a page link. 'a' comes together with 'a href' to show a text with a link. 'em' stands for emphasised words, 'b' is a bold word while 'u' is a n underlined word. Well, this concludes the basic HTML. For more advanced settings go to: http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp.

Usually, HTML comes with CSS, which I will learn in the following.Till then...!

Lesson 2: Forum Discussions on Social Media, IP and Blog/Website

In lesson 2, I firstly learnt about the difference in blogs and websites as well as their usages. For blogs, it is quick and easy to create and use but difficult to chang a major part of the blog. We must know how to poeraae a certain software to do it. A website is the stark opposite of a blog. It takes a long time to create it but easier to change major parts of a website. Both have a similarity, however. Both take hard work to earn money from the 2 sites. Secondly, I have learnt about Intellectual Property (IP) and its can or cannot do list. I also learnt about the consequences of infringing IP , which carries a $20 000 fine or a 6 week jail or both for first timers. Lastly, I have learnt about the social impact of new media, how technology will improve to be eventually better than the human brain and to obey the owner's every command

The First Lesson of Infocomm Studies: The Internet and & the World Wide Web

On the first lesson of IS,  I learnt about the services provided by the Internet like news, e-mail, blogs etc. in the most convenient way. We can now access the Internet anytime and anywhere. Connection is established as long as the computer is turned on and that there is a cable modem, Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) or others. I also learnt that the Internet was created because. Scientists were finding ways to share information from all over the world without travelling. However, it was not the same as in the present. Dial-up connections were commonly used. It was the connection of a standard telephone line. It was very slow (as compared to morden-day broadband connections). The Internet can only be accessed when connection is established. I now know when to use what kind of broadband when I am in different places. For example, if I am in a rural house, it is best to use a satellite connection. I remember roughly how data is displayed on our computers. I found out what a domain name really means. It is the text version of IP (Internet Protocol), which is a unique number that identifies a computer connected to the Internet. There are nine basic types of websites. They are portals, news, informatic, educaional, business/marketing, entertainment, advocacy, blogs and personal websites. I also recall what the different Top-level domain names of websites, which identifies the kind of website, such as: .com for commercial, .gov for government websites and .edu for education. Next, I learnt what the World Wide Web is. It is a worldwide collection of 200 million and counting host nodes. There are different website addresses called URLs. There are also different Internet servers, called browsers, that allows us to view web pages. I understand how browsers display home pages. A home page is up to the user's decision, for the user's convenience. It is the first page that the browser displays and that it provides connections, called links, to other websites. To identify a link, the cursor should turn into a small hand and that the text is underlined and in a different colour. Nowadays, Internet can be accessed from a handphone using a microbrowser. It is mostly text and the phone must be web-enabled. Downloading from the World Wide Web means retrieving infomation from the Internet and saving it in a file in the computer. If in doubt on a website's URL, serch engines come to save the day! Just enter keywords or phrases called search texts. I learnt about the different graphic formats(e.g.: jpeg). A thumbnail is a smaller graphic to increase the web speed. I also learnt about multimedia, audio and others in the same category. I know how to publish a website and the meaning of E-commerce (business traction over the net). I learnt about FTP which is File Transfer Protocol, standard for download/upload files.I properly learnt about newsgroups, message boards and mailing lists. For other internet services, I recalled learning about chat (real live written conversation), instant messaging, internet telephony and most importantly, nettiquette, which is do unto others what you want others to do unto you. Finally, I learnt about Web 1.0 and 2.0, as well as the difference. Web 1.0: the host has to do everything by himself while others only watch. Web 2.0: The host gets help from its followers through comments. Well... it was a really enjoyable lesson! I can't wait for the next lesson to start!