[PLUG] Ready for website creation tutorials

[John Jason Jordan]

On Mon, 11 Dec 2006 08:56:53 -0800
"drew wymore" <drew.wymore at gmail.com> dijo:
> 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

OK, spent several hours last night at Powell's Technical Books. I
wasn't going for details, just trying to fill in some basics. I still
don't know what "CGI" means or "Perl as CGI," or "GET/POST" (quoting
Eric), nor do I know what Apache does, but at least I have a faint
understanding of the difference between server based v. browser based
scripting. And it appears the reigning server-based tool is PHP, while
Javascript is what is commonly used for browser-based scripts. 

There was a book about Ruby on Rails too. I browsed through it for half
an hour and I still have no idea what Ruby is or does. It went on and
on about what a great "framework" it is. OK, "framework" is a metaphor,
but a metaphor for what? As I said before, it seems to be installed on
my Dapper computer, but I don't know what to do with it. I typed "ruby"
at a command line and the cursor went to a new line, like it launched
something, but no GUI window popped up or anything. If it were a GUI
app I could poke around in it to see what it does. The online tutorial
also left me wondering what it is or does. 

At this point I think I need to make a basic decision: Do I want this
website to be server-based or browser based? I read about the pros and
cons of each, but input from web designers would be helpful here. To
clarify, I want to create a website that will be a place for students
to practice Phonetics and the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
One page will have a list of written descriptions of sounds with a
drop-down or some kind of field to select the IPA character for that
sound. A counterpart page will have sound files instead of the written
descriptions. Another page will be the reverse, the IPA character with
option boxes to select the description of the sound. The latter will be
easier because none of the option boxes will have more that a dozen
features to select from. 

The first and second pages will be much more challenging because they
need to allow the student to enter the correct character, and there are
over 100 of the base characters, plus a dozen superscripts and a couple
dozen combining diacriticals, plus a handful of additional symbols for
marking things like vowel length. That's a damn big drop-down list. In
addition, the number of possibilities is kind of geometric -- any of
the base characters can be modified by any of the superscripts or
combining diacriticals. This is getting out of hand! (In case you're
intereested, for a full view of the IPA chart, go here:
http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/fullchart.html.)

I like Aaron's idea of using an image of the characters to click on
instead of a drop-down select box. This could appear at the top of the
page. When a student clicks on a character, that character is filled
into the field where the cursor currently is. But there are a lot of
characters and the display will take up a good chunk of the page.
Still, this would have a great advantage: Some of the sounds might need
up to three characters; a base character, a combining diacritical, and
a superscript. For example, a [t] pronounced with the tongue against
the back of the teeth (as in Spanish, not as in English) would have the
dental combining diacritical under it, and if it is aspirated it would
have a superscript h after it.

Since this is a site for students to practice, I need to tie it to a
database table with a list of sound descriptions in one field and the
correct character(s) in another field. Or for the second page with
sound clips, the sound files and their corresponding character(s).  I
want the page to display, say, 50 sounds. But I want to create a
database of 2-300 sounds and their character(s), so that the page will
display a random selection of 50 at a time. A Refresh button would
present the student with an endless number of new pages to practice
with. And a Correct button would check the answers on the current
iteration of the page to the database to see if the student entered the
correct character(s). For each incorrect answer the correct answer
should appear, in red or some contrasting color. A nice touch would be
a percentage box telling the student their score for the current
iteration of the page. 

Another consideration is ease of access for students. I am continually
amazed at the computer illiteracy of fellow linguistics students. Does
everyone have a Javascript plugin on their browsers? If not, do I want
to tackle getting them to install one? Trust me, my fellow students
consider me a computer genius, and y'all know what an idiot I really
am. It has to be as plug and play as possible, and I want it to support
all platforms and all major browsers. This makes me think that
server-based would be much better. But what if a student in Lower
Balkistan using dial-up wants to use the site to practice? Is my site
going to be complex enough that bandwidth is going to create a problem?
I don't think so, but some of you pluggers have lots of experience
here, so your opinions are valuable.

OK, now that my goal is more clearly stated, should I use server-based
or browser-based? And which language should I use? Opinions, please.
And re the database, what should I use? MySQL? Something else? I am not
a database expert, but I have used in the past Paradox, MS Access and
the new OOo Base. I'd prefer the latter, because it's open source, runs
great on Ubuntu, and it's a GUI that is easy for me to use. I'm pretty
sure it can export to other formats, but which would be best?

Someone else suggested setting this up to transmit the student's work
to the professor by e-mail. That is something didn't think of, but it's
an interesting idea. For now, I just want it to be a practice site.
After I get the practice site working I should have enough knowledge
and experience to tackle the idea of using web pages for exams and
graded homework assignments. 

Oh, and a final thought. I have no intention of changing careers and
becoming a web designer. I just want to learn enough to accomplish this
goal. I'm a "learn as I go along" kinda guy.

Thanks for the suggestions so far. And if this is getting off-topic for
the list, tell me where to take it.