lewro’s blog - 2.1 - web designer beginner

Life has been extremely busy during the last couple of weeks. So I have decided to check if I am on the way to my targets. As I wrote at the beginning of the year I have specified 8 targets for this year so lets see how am I doing.

Learn PHP

I sign up for PHP Course in City University as I wrote before and it has been perfect experience so far. I have got about 7 lessons behind me but I have already realized how much I could do once I learn only the basic stuff. The course is very interesting and I enjoy it a lot. I am already able to create simple web application with user registrations, querying and updating data from the database. Server side validation. Working with functions etc. I have decided to take the advance class once this one is finished. When I finish my new blog I am going to be building my first PHP application. It will be project management tool where I will organize all my projects, including related tasks and so on. It is going to be very clean, “CODA type” interface.

French language.

I have been listening to my French audio podcast 3 times a week. I have managed to go true 3 lessons only but I am quite happy with that. Slowly, slowly. There is no rush. This task is not that important as the other one. The most important thing is that I have not stopped.

New design for my blog

I have spent quite some time on this task. I have got all the templates designed in the Photoshop and I have already build 2 templates. There are about 5 more to go. This is quite time consuming but I hope I will get this done very soon.

Part time projects

I have had a time to start a new part-time project and I still have one open. I will probably reconsider this task and might just finished the open one. If there is a time at the end of the year I might take one more but I am not sure because the time is very tight.

Sport

I am doing just fine on this one. The gym is going well during mornings but I should start running at least 2 times a week because I promised to take part in half marathon in February 2009. The weather was nice couple of weekends so we went to Hyde Park roller blading several times. I am sure we will spent lots of time there this year.

Holidays

We still have not decided where are we going to but we are considering nice countries with sea like Croatia, Portugal, Italy. It might be a last minute shot.

Organic garden

This task is not going well at all. I have just recently moved to different house and It looks like we are going to be moving again soon. So this all depends on the new house. If there is a place for my plants I will definitely continue with this project. So far it has been put on hold.

Photography

I have made couple of “OK” pictures in our small weekend holiday in Torquay and I hope I will do some really good one during the summer holiday. If I do not forget to charge my camera battery like last time I might shoot some photos in the London as well :o).

So thats about it. It is going pretty well and there is still half year in front of us to reach all the targets. Wish me luck and I hope after all this moving and school extra busy times I can post more articles about CSS, HTML, JS and PHP.

I have discover one really cool CSS technique I want to share with you. It is about changing 2 background images at the same time on hover. It is very impressive, looks like java-script but no, pure CSS, just need to find time to write about it.

What is subversion? Subversion is a software which allows you to create archive of your source code where you can clearly see what and when has been changed and If you need to you can still use previous versions of your code.

Why and when it is useful?

It is mainly used by developers working on the same project who need to access the same source code files. Every developer can access the actual version of every file. Whenever the changes has been made the developer commit the changes to the source so the other developers can access the code including his changes. You might be asking, what if I work alone on my project? That is actually my case here. I still use subversions because it allows me to go back in the history of my code and see changes which has been done and if something goes really wrong I can use the previous version of my code. Another advantage is that your different versions of the code are your backup files as well.

What do I need?

• Subversion software (software which keeps track what has been changed)
• Subversion user interface (it is not necessary but it is lot more comfortable then using command line)
• Repository - the place where you store your files (versions of your code)

So here are the simple four steps which has to be done.

1. Install subversion 1.4.4. http://homepage.mac.com/martinott/
2. Instal svnX which is GUI http://www.lachoseinteractive.net/en/community/subversion/svnx/download/
3. Create account in Google Code http://code.google.com/
4. Fix the certificate problem with SVN list. Use your user name and psw from google repository when executing this command in command line
   

   svn list https://whatever.server.com/repository

There might be a new version of SVN when you read this article so take the most recent one. User interface - SVNX I am using here is beautiful application with easy to use interface. Repository - I have chosen here the Google Code as my repository. We could chose different free server but I use google applications a lot so I am going to stick with google.

Everything installed, what is next?

1. Create working copies - path to your projects on your computer
2. Commit everything to the repository. Just double click on working copy and click Commit. If it does not work try to create the folder in the repository yourself and drag and drop the files from you machine into the repository window (in the bottom section directly into the folder). You might need then remove the files from your machine and press update to get the actual version from remote server (which is at this moment the same so nothing will be lost but to be absolutely sure make a backup….just in case)
3. Whenever you change a file it should appear in the working copies. Just press Commit and file will be updated in the repository

How can I see what piece of code has been changed in 2 different versions of my code?

You can check the changes in the SVNX or directly on google code web site. If you just want quickly scan and check 2 versions of the same code go to the google code site and you will find that you can see 2 windows next to each other and the changes are highlighted with colour so it is very easy to spot the difference.

If you want to have some idea how it looks you can check my repository on google code - http://code.google.com/p/lewro/source/list, you can see all my new blog source file and the changes I have made. It is also a good source of information for new developers so you can learn from other people’s code.

At the beginning of this year I wrote that I am will learn as much PHP as possible. It has been officially confirmed by City University that my PHP course is starting 22nd of April.

I am so looking forward to this new challenge. I am always up for new things and can images to stop learning. As I have already said I think that anyone can learn anything. It is just a mater of time. Some people can learn really quick and others can not. But who cares. If you really want to learn you will get the knowledge. I do not really know how long it is going to take me to learn PHP properly but what I know is that I am going to enjoy the process of learning. I have already started to read PHP 5 & MySQL book and I am half way true (700 pages uff). I will bring the review of the book with a full description in the new version of my blog where the book section is going to get massive face lift.For you guys who have been following me since beginning where my HTML and CSS knowledge was close to zero I want to say thank you for your support. Here comes the next step. Server side programming language. You can follow my progress true this blog. You probably know that the engine of this blog Wordpress runs on PHP which means that whatever I learn I can try straight away right here.

Hopefully I am not going to break the whole blog with trying different PHP ideas :o)