Revolutionary Technology

Every once-in-a-while an amazing piece of technology appears. The Sixth Sense is definitely one of these items. Check out the link to the video where Pattie Maes demos the work of Pranav Mistry.

The Sixth Sense uses the information of the Internet along with a camera and portable display projector to truly put information at the user’s fingertips. Look-out iPhone!

Supply - Part 2

In order to supply a product, a combination of land, labor, capital, and entreprenurs must come together. This combination between the factors of production and the output of goods and services is addressed by the theory of production.

The theory of production is usually divided into periods known as the short run and long run. In the short run, it is assumed that this period allows only the change in the variable known as labor, while the long run allows producers to change quantities of all of their resources (building new factories, producing new product lines, large-scale retraining, etc.). Read more

Supply - Part 1

While demand looks at the consumer and their willingness and ability to purchase an item, supply looks at the producer. Supply is based on the voluntary decisions made by producers as to the amount of an item to offer for sale at any given price. Supply is defined as the amount of a product that would be offered at for sale at all possible prices that could prevail in the market.

The Law of Supply has a direct relationship between quantity and price, unlike the Law of Demand which has an inverse relationship. The Law of Supply states that the higher the price, the more supply will be offered and the lower the price, the less the amount of supply that will be offered. This should not be surprising, it is a simple matter of profit seeking. Read more

Tables & Frames - Part 1

Both tables and frames provide the ability to organize not only information on your Web pages, they can also be used to layout your entire Web page. Today we’ll look at a few of the basic HTML tags necessary to create tables.

To begin a table, we use the <table> tag. This tells the browser that we are starting a table. When the table is finished, we close the tag like so, </table>. Read more

9.7 Trillion and Counting

The stimulus package the U.S. Congress just passed, brings the amount of money spent on bailout programs to more than 9.7 trillion dollars. This figure is enough to pay off more than 90% of the U.S. home mortgages. Where is it going and how can we afford to pay off our Federal deficit?

With the debt at $10,772,378,548,982.35 (each person’s share is about $35,083.39) and several more trillions of dollars being added by the current financial crisis, when does it stop? How does it impact our standing in the world? Is the U.S. in danger of collapse? What might happen if the U.S. declares bankruptcy? Is China a threat?

These questions dominated class today and many of them did not come with ready made answers. It’s true that China is somewhat linked to the U.S. financial locomotive, however, because of their size and ability over time to create new partnerships with other countries, they are still going to be a growing, competitive and dominant world power.

Objectives:

• Analyze the elasticity of demand for a product
• Understand the factors that determine demand elasticity

Homework: Study for tomorrow’s chapter 4 quiz.

Demand - Curve & Diminishing Returns

Demand is often represented as the desire to have or own a certain item. Using this definition, anyone who would like to own a car could be said to demand one. In order for demand to be counted in the marketplace, however, the mere desire for a product is not enough.  This desire must coincide with the ability and willingness to pay. Only people that meet this criteria can be said to truly have demand. It is these individuals who will compete with others that have similar demands for the available products.

To illustrate demand we have two tools, the demand schedule and demand curve. The demand schedule is T-chart that shows quantity demanded at a given price. The demand curve uses the values provided by the the demand schedule to create a chart plotting the quantity demanded versus the price. While gathering precise data isn’t always easy, these tools provide a powerful method of analyzing the type of consumer demand for a product. Read more

Forms - Lists & Menus

Lists are scrollable boxes from which a user can choose multiple items. This can be useful when there’s a long list of choices and you want to save space on your Web page. Using checkboxes for a large number of items is not very user friendly. Using a list allows you to contain the items within a small box and still give the user full access to all of the choices through a scroll bar. You can also choose to have any one of the items in your list as the selected item when a form is loaded into the user’s browser. To do this, add the the selected attribute to the option you want selected.

< select name=”cars” size=”4″>
<option value=”audi”>Audi</option>
<option value=”dodge”>Dodge</option>
<option value=”toyota” selected>Toyota</option>
<option value=”vw”>Volkswagen</option>
</select>

A menu or a drop-down menu, is a drop-down box from which a user can choose only one item. When an item from a drop-down box is selected, the box disappears while displaying your selection. Read more

Form Elements - Part 1

A form is made up of many individual elements, including areas in which to key text and buttons to trigger the form submission. In this post we will examine basic text boxes, radio buttons, and check boxes.

The text box form element is a box into which a user can key text. Text boxes are good for accepting data when a user must enter a value such as a name or address. To create a text box, as well as many of the other form elements, you will use the <input> tag. For a textbox, you will need to supply values for the type and name attributes. The type attribute should be set to text and the value supplied for the name attribute should be descriptive, without spaces.

<input type=”text” name=”lastName”>

Radio buttons are a form element that allows a user to choose an option from a series of choices. The user’s choice is mutually exclusive, meaning that only one item may be selected from the choices presented. As with text boxes, radio buttons are created with the <input> tag. The value of the type attribute is set to radio. The value of the value attribute, should match the option available to select (Nov, Dec, etc). Finally, the name attribute is EXTREMELY important. The value of the name attribute should be descriptive with no spaces. All selections that belong to the same group MUST have the same name.

<input type=”radio” name=”birthMonth” value=”dec”>

Check boxes are similar to radio buttons in that they provide a set of predefined choicesrom which the user may select. Unlike a radio button, with check boxes the user may select more than one option.  The type attribute is set to checkbox and the value attribute should match the option available to select. As with radio buttons, all check boxes that belong to the same group MUST have the same name attribute.

<input type=”checkbox” name=”musicGenre” value=”punk”>

The w3.org’s explanation of forms.

A quick, concise tutorial on forms.

Today’s Objectives:

• Identify the different kinds of text boxes
• Explain the uses of radio buttons and checkboxes
• Place text boxes, radio buttons, and checkboxes in a Web page.

Classwork: Lesson 6-1 and vocabulary.

Prep Questions:

• The <form> tag has several attributes, among them the method attribute. Explain the options that the get and post values provide for the method attribute.
• Can more than one form be placed on a Web page? Can a <form> tag be nested inside another form tag?

Chapter 3 Quiz & Unit Review

Today we took the chapter three quiz. Following the quiz, we reviewed the objectives from unit one (chapters one through three).

Objectives:

• Demonstrate mastery of chapter three objectives
• Review Unit one objectives

Homework: Study for unit 1 exam, Monday the February 2.

Forms - Form Tag & Attributes

Forms are used to collect information over the Internet from a user. Forms are essential for communication between the user and the Webmaster. They can be utilized for many purposes. Some forms may be used for logging-in to a website while others may be significantly more complex allowing the user to shop or send Web mail.

In the following posts, we will look at the common form elements, their purpose, how to organize forms, and provide an opportunity to practice building simple, as well as more complex forms.

Let’s start with the first tag necessary to create a form, the form tag (<form></form>). All elements of a form must be placed in-between the opening and closing form tag. If a form element is not between these tags, it will not function as a part of the form.  Although a Web page may have more than one form tag on it, it is not recommended. Even though multiple forms may exist on a page, they must not be nested (one inside the other).

The form tag has three attributes that are important to understand. The first being the name or id, the second the  method attribute, and finally the action attribute.

The name or id attribute is used to identify one form from another. The value used should be descriptive of the forum and its purpose. It should NOT contain a space or reserved characters.

The second attribute that is rather important is the method attribute. The method attribute specifies the manner in which the form data is sent. There are two possible values the the method attribute can use: get and post. Get appends the form data to the URL of the page to which the data is sent. This is a severe privacy issue if telephone numbers, social security numbers, or other sensitive data is part of the form.

Post on the other hand, does not append the form information to the URL. Data is sent behind the scenes along with a request for the new Web page. Since the data is not visible in the URL, post is more secure than with the previously mentioned get method. In addition, post allow a larger amount of text to be sent to the corresponding action page than the get method.

The final attribute of significance, is the action attribute. This attribute specifies the action that will take place when the submit button is pressed. A form may accept user data, it cannot work alone. It needs a another file that will accept the data and process it in some way. The easiest way to process the data from a form is by giving an email address as the data’s destination (mailto:farmer@dairy.com). While this is easy, it is not practical for large amounts of data. Not to mention, their is no way to rapidly sort the data. This requires a database. The more practical solution is to select a Web page that is a .php or .asp script file.These programming languages can process the form data and properly insert it in a database.

The w3.org’s explanation of forms.

A quick, concise tutorial on forms.

Today’s Objectives:

• Understand what a form can be used for
• List and explain the purpose of the name, method, & action attributes (for the form tag)
• Place a form into a Web page

Classwork: Lesson 6-1 and vocabulary.

Prep Questions:

• A tool that accepts user data from a Web page.
• A text box designed to gather short bits of information.

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