Web Design – Then and Now

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A long time ago, when I was a young kid, just about to become a teenager, I learned about HTML and how it could be used to create websites. So I took it upon myself to learn HTML. Soon after, I created my first website, TS Aviation, a flight simulation community for Microsoft’s Flight Simulator. I was proud of it. Though, was it better than any other websites I’ve seen on the web? Very much no. The site was made up of tables, only a few images here and there, and little to no feeling of structure. Everything just kind of flowed.

Around when I was 13, I began learning C++ and decided to make a little site to showcase my little programs. The programs weren’t much, but I enjoyed making them. So I “created” TS Software. Sadly, the Internet Archive doesn’t have a complete save of the site with images and everything, but it does have this. The site was a nicely formatted site with a navigation bar, header space, content area, and even a sidebar. Everything had rounded corners and a nice flash animation for the header. I didn’t make it though. I made none of that. I found the site design online somewhere.

Why did I not make the TS Software site? Well, I wanted it to look good, because it was my first little “company”, and I knew I did not have the skills to make it look good. All the “good” websites had rounded corners, nice logos, and other images. I didn’t have that skill. And I still don’t (even though I own Photoshop now).

There was a large barrier to entry to making a “good” website a few years ago. Needless to say, images made your website better. I saw that you couldn’t just make a website with just HTML and some CSS. Images were king.

Now, we have HTML5 and CSS3.  Rounded corners? No problem. Gradients? Done. It becomes very easy to make a good looking site easily. Making tannersmith.me a few years ago would have been impossible for me. I would’ve had to have several images to create the effect. After learning CSS from Ryan Ashcraft and CSS3 after that, making the design was very simple. No images were used in the design itself.

I don’t have to use Photshop or Gimp to make a good looking site. Yeah, it might help with certain details, but it’s not required anymore to produce an original, good looking template.

What does this mean for the web? It means that people can get a good looking site out on the web faster and easier. It means I don’t have to sit down and learn how to use yet another product after I’ve gone through the hardships of learning HTML and CSS.

The web should be somewhere anyone can easily create a site to publish to the world. With HTML5 and CSS3, it’s easier to make a good looking website which means more people can make websites resulting in a web with more content.

Developing an Online Student Response System

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Last week I started my second year at Georgia Tech after taking some humanities and social sciences over the summer. This meant taking an entire new set of classes including the exciting upper-level computer science classes. The new school year also meant something else; Georgia Tech was transitioning to a new personal response system (PRS).

What is a PRS you may ask? I didn’t know too much about them as I have never had to use one in my previous semesters at Georgia Tech. A PRS is a device that allows a presenter (such as a professor) to get feedback from an audience on what they think on a topic or to quiz on their understanding of material. Most PRS’s use a small hardware device for students to send their response, something that costs around $50.

A friend and a fellow teaching assistant of mine, Ryan Ashcraft, thought that it was really neat that you could get live feedback on a class’s understanding of material – something we really thought would be useful for seeing if our recitation understands the material we are discussing. However, we couldn’t force the students in our recitation to go out and spend $50 on a device. We still wanted some way to get feedback from our students during recitation and asking for people to speak up isn’t really cutting it – rarely anyone does it or it is a select few who always speak up.

So what are two computer science majors to do? Build their own system of course. We weren’t going to make an iOS/mobile app or a Java app, though. This system requires a more platform-independent solution – and we are going with a website. I have never worked on a web-based product before, but I’m excited for what it will offer for me as a developer. It’s about the easiest to build, run, and about every device that connects to the internet has a browser that should be able to use our site. And we’re calling it Class Response.

Now you can go out today and do a bit more Googling to find some already-existing personal response systems that use a web app or mobile app. However, almost all of them cost money. We’ve already made a decision that ours will be free. We’re also planning on eventually opening the source on GitHub (because git > subversion).

We realize that our system may not be the best in the world with all the whiz-bang features. We just want something that simple that is targeted specifically for the classroom. We’re hoping it will be a really good, free alternative to Georgia Tech’s expensive PRS.

We’ve still got a ways to go before it will be released. I’ll be posting more updates as our development advances. I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

Cross Country Flight Path Map

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Some time ago I had a cross-country trip from Lawrenceville, GA to San Diego, CA. When my Uncle and I went on the trip, Dad bought us a Spot Satellite GPS Messenger for safety and tracking reasons. Using the Spot, we could report our position to the appropriate authorities using the GEOS International Emergency Response Center or have the Spot upload our position to Spot’s servers every 10 minutes. While we did not have to use the “help” button, we did use the tracking functionality. The tracking functionality let us keep a record of our position along the flight and also have our semi-realtime position uploaded online for friends and relatives to track.

When the trip was over, I archived the position data from the Spot so that if the data was deleted, because our Spot subscription expired or something, I would have it. Sadly, on the way back from the trip the Spot died for mysterious reasons – Dad, Uncle and I think its because of the heat, though Spot disagrees. Due to this, we don’t have complete data for the flight back; I just have data from Ramona, CA to Deming, NM. I excluded this data as it pretty much replicates the flight out to California.

Recently, I rediscovered the data and decided to make a Google Map of the data out. Bit of reading on the Google Map API and I had all the data in a map with info windows stating where we stopped to sleep or refuel. Very cool.

If you want to play with the map, click here.