[PLUG] Ready for website creation tutorials

[drew wymore]

John-
You could do this in any number of languages. My personal preference is PHP
because its easy and quick to learn. Most of the books @ Barnes and Noble
are a good fit (O'Reilly especially) .. I'm beginning to learn Ruby which
has built in Ajax support so you could make the site really spiffy if you
wanted to go that route, or python which has a nice web-tutorial so you
don't end up spending any money http://www.diveintopython.org

I'm not sure about the character encoding. I'll do some research and see
what I can come up with :-)

Drew-

On 12/10/06, John Jason Jordan <johnxj at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Some time back I expressed interest in creating a website for students
> to practice Phonetics. Here is a site with various exercises
> illustrating the kind of thing I want to do:
>
> http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/linguistics/russell/138/course.htm
>
> (You have to try out some of the exercises to see what I mean.)
>
> I also want to create a website that mimics the sample editable PDF
> file that I created and posted here:
>
> http://www.web.pdx.edu/~johj
>
> The editable PDF file there did not work because I was unable to embed
> a font for the controls. I used OOo, which sets the font for all
> controls to Helvetica on PDF export, ignoring the font the user set for
> the control. There are no plans to change this behavior. I also tried
> Scribus, but it allows only five fonts for controls, none of which have
> all the IPA characters. Scribus may correct this soon, but in the
> meantime I am thinking that a web page may be a better tool. I like the
> idea of the student being able to click on a "Correct my work" button
> and having the web page give immediate feedback.
>
> So now exams are over and I have some time to learn a bit about web
> programming so that (maybe) I can figure out how to create a site to
> provide students practice in Phonetics. Initially, I just want to
> create two pages: One which will list the features of a sound with a
> drop-down or other means for the student to enter the answer; and a
> second one which will be the same except that instead of a description
> of the sound it will have a link to a sound file. Later I may try other
> types of quizzes and exercises. To accomplish this --
>
> 1) I need to figure out how to make sure the students' browsers can see
> the IPA characters. My browsers on my Ubuntu computer (Firefox and
> Opera) have no problem. But I know that many students have reported to
> me that they do not see the characters I post in PSU WebCT. I think the
> problem is related to ISO-8859 v. UTF-8, but I am unclear how to fix
> it. I need to create a Help button on the web page that will pop up
> instructions for students on how to fix their browser so that it
> displays UTF-8. And if installing a font is required, I need to figure
> that out as well. I suppose I will have to give instructions for IE,
> Firefox and Opera, on the three main platforms, Windows, Linux and Mac.
> If anyone knows of a site or resources to help me get this together, it
> would be appreciated.
>
> 2) I need to learn web programming sufficient to do this project. While
> at the mall today I stopped at Barnes and Noble and browsed through a
> couple books on website creation. They were "for dummies" books. I was
> able to understand them, but they were aimed toward creating a
> commercial site with a shopping cart and stuff. Can anyone give me a
> hint where to start for the kind of site I want to create? Books to
> start with? Websites with tutorials for beginners? And on this topic,
> what kinds of programs do I need to use (Linux, of course)?
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