HTML / Java Scripting: Teaching an old dog new tricks.

Surprisingly for a self confessed web savvy IT geek, i have never bothered to learn html coding and java scripting. I've always concentrate on the hardware side of things after my nightmare of working with programming languages from my college days. Thinking back to the countless numbers of sleepless nights trying to code and debug the programming assignments for my comp science course is enough to send shivers down me spine.

Most will argue that web programming is still much simple compared to application programming. Well, as far as i am concerned any form of coding is a death sentence to me. I like opening boxes of new IT toys; hook 'em up, set 'em up and run 'em, not sitting in front of a PC typing thousands of lines of codes.

The opportunity to drab myself in web programming / designing came about when MyRAWK guys decided to expend our web preference by running our own website and domain. Me being the resident head IT geek, was tasked to lead a team consisting of Alvin (a fellow LFC supporting and Momo Sissoko loving IT geek), Danny (our LFC loving and gracious web host) and Jeremy (web designer, programmer and developer). Things started out with a flier as everyone was eager to get the whole thing up, but as time went by and burdened by workload (hey, we got to earn a living), the web development pace was left crawling.

To cut things short, we left it literally to the last week before the roll out date to actually do the domain registration, domain ip setup and the web programming itself. We got access into the preliminary website that was designed earlier on last Thursday and decided we need to make substantial changes - queue major coding work ahead. Numerous long nights and countless phone calls followed before we were satisfied enough to have a "soft" launch of MyRAWK's new home in cyberspace - www.my-rawk.com. The green light to proceed was given only hours before our dateline.

As i speak, the site development is still on-going and the look of the site will improve daily as we add more contents and features. We're gonna launch something that will allow everyone to interact in a much better way soon. The whole site will be fully functional and standardized by the game against a certain mortal enemy.

This brings me back to my coding experience - i have never touch, let alone bothered to learn html coding and java scripting. I was on a one way collision / crash course to learn to do it in literally a couple of hours. Alvin, sorry mate to have to call and bug you to no end and thanks for doing the hard coding work before i came in to add those more simple contents and features. WYSIWYG editors with click and drag features can only do so much, so i still have to get me feet wet and into the deep end to do some debugging by looking at the pages of codes. Thank goodness after wondering for a few hours i finally managed to catch enough coding lines to understand what was going on.

Irregardless, please do not ask me to help program a website. I'd be happy to give you pointers and tip and some basic designing rules. Coding wise, i'd suggest you to get hold of one of those WYSIWYG html editor that will allow you to cut and paste stuff much like Ms Words and allow you to view the actual look of the web page without the need for you to type a single line of code. For bloggers, stick to blogspot or some other blog sites that has user friendly setup interfaces that allow you to customized the basic look and colour along with giving you plenty of flexibility to upload pictures. They work well and simple enough.

Looks like there will be more coding to be done in the days ahead...... and more things to learn. Who says ya can't teach an old dog new trick? Must be someone not from the information age!

-JonC-