Kalamazoo College
CS 400 PROGRAMMING
PROJECT
TIPS
- BIGGEST TIP: Start early and ask for help when you
are stuck!!! Programming is an experimental science and rarely do
programs work on the first try!!! If you start early you will have plenty
of time to see me or the TAs to ask questions.
- Programming is a time consuming task. Leave ample time for typing and
debugging. Expect to spend as much (or more) time on each programming
project as you would writing a lengthy term paper. Also, in order to get
help you must start early and not try to do the whole thing just
before it is due.
- If you are writing HTML code in NotePad, you do not need to go
through Composer to test your changes. You can look at the file
directly using Navigator (the browser); just click on Reload after
making changes to read in the changed file. If you are familiar with
"joe," the editor on henson, you can also just make the changes to the
file right on henson using joe and click on Reload in the browser to
view your changes.
- FLOPPIES GET CORRUPTED!
Save copies of your files on two different floppy disks, and also put a
copy on henson.
You can get copies to henson either by publishing (see Lab #2) or
by using FTP (see Lab #1 instructions on sending your resume).
- If you do not pass your form name as an argument to a function,
then you may need to access your objects by using the word
"document" before the form name.
For example, to access the information in a text box that has been
named
namebox in a form named formname, use
this command:
document.formname.namebox.value
- If your program doesn't seem to be doing everything that you expect
it to do, type javascript: into the location field of the
Navigator window (the colon at the end is important!).
This will open a new window containing a list of anything in your
program that JavaScript couldn't make sense of. Often the cause will
be a missing close quotation mark or curly brace, or a mispelled word.
Each time you run a program, any errors that JavaScript finds are
added to the end of this list. After you fix the errors, you may
want to clear the list by clicking on the "Clear Console" button,
so that the next time you run your program the list will only contain
new errors. Notice that only certain types of errors will be listed -
if no errors are listed, it means that JavaScript can run your program,
but it doesn't mean that the program does what you want it to!
- The point of creating web pages is to make them visually attractive to
their users. Thus, you should add a background, some graphics and text to
each project to make it easy to use. The page should have some directions
and each object on the form should have some descriptive text. Experiment
with adding words and <BR> (line breaks) to your objects.
Remember to check the
Announcements and Late-Breaking News
for CS400 frequently for updates, tips, etc.
