Joe Whitten Blog : Theology, Rants, Photography, Politics, Denver, Colorado

JQuery is a wrapper for javascript. It combines multiple javascript commands making it much easier to traverse the DOM on web pages. Creating dynamic menus, image presentations and other similar tasks is made much easier due to fewer lines of code being necessary. With JQuery you can dynamically change styles by reassigning classes from your CSS, hide and show elements (blocks, div, p etc…).

JQuery syntax may seem a bit strange when you first look at it, but I found that after working with it for a few hours it is not that difficult to grasp and it is very versatile. JQuery provides multiple routes to an object. Objects can be accessed by the div element they reside in, by the ID of the object, by the class of the object and so on.

An example of hiding a div element on the mouseleave event…

The above code is applied to all div elements with the CSS class menu_body assigned to them.

I placed a Simple JQuery Menu Example here for you to see and the Style sheet and HTMLzipped if you want to download it and have a look. I’ll try to post some more later. I do most of my development with .Net. In the next post I’ll have an example of the menu in an ASP.Net page.

If you want to know more go to the official JQuery Site and read all about it. You can download JQuery free and use it in your own pages. The JQuery site also contains excellent tutorials to help get you started. JQuery will be a part of the next release of Visual Studio.

Software development is stressful. The day doesn’t end for me when I leave the office. Details of the projects I’m working on are always on my mind at some level ranging from a complete domination of all of my thoughts to a lower level that merely interrupts my other thoughts keeping me somewhat edgy and non-attentive to other elements in my environment.

When new project begins and I am planning how I will approach it, I am happy and optimistic. The vision of a completed product and the smiling face of the end user is a motivating image. I look for new technologies that will aid me in creating something better than anything I have created before. My goal really is to deliver something useful and valuable to the customer. Outlines are created showing the work flow, classes to be created, functions to be reused, GUIs, and so forth.

After a couple of weeks there is usually something to show the customer; a starting point or base from which to build. I look forward to presenting, gathering feedback, learning what the customer likes or doesn’t like. I want to have a positive relationship so that the product can make it from conception to delivery in a package that everyone is happy with. Occasionally I work with customers that share this approach, most often I don’t.

People tend to see a website and think they would like one just like it. It should be easy, it’s just some images, a few links, some forms to accept info, maybe a shopping cart and ability to take credit card payments online. Shouldn’t take more than a week or so. In my case, I work for a software development company. I don’t give the customer the estimates, someone else does. So i get stuck trying to finish a project in someone else’s (frequently unrealistic) time frame. This situation is not limited to me or the company I work at. It seems to be endemic in the entire software industry. The largest manufacturer of software in the world, Microsoft, gives bogus estimates and delivers late. When they do finally deliver the software is usually buggy. I spend a lot of time fighting the bugs in Microsoft’s development tools. I don’t think many sales people or project managers allow time for this type of thing in their estimates. It seems that the industry at large has just accepted that this is the way it will be and we (developers) should pride ourselves in finding ways around the bugs rather than being annoyed that we wasted countless hours on it.

Ok, so at this point it seems that I am not happy with what I do. Strangely though I am. Despite wanting to throw my computer out the window some days; wanting to fly to Redmond and scream at Microsoft employees for intentionally releasing software with annoying bugs in it that suck up my valuable time; listening to people complain about fonts, colors, minor differences in the way various browsers render pages (or the way IE is almost completely non-compliant with accepted standards); feeling like I will lose my job and have to live on the street if I don’t get projects completed on time, I love software development.

Writing code, creating web sites, helping friends understand how to use the internet to their advantage…all of these things give me a great feeling of satisfaction, despite the obstacles I sometimes encounter while working on these tasks. I do have requirements when it comes to offering assistance. If you don’t know how to create a folder on your pc, don’t call me for help; I will probably yell at you and hang up. I worked at Microsoft for almost three years doing mostly phone support. I had to quit because it was becoming almost impossible to contain my ire when some dufus called me and asked something so stupid that a six year old could have read it in the manual and figured it out, then complained about having to hold for thirty minutes to ask me the stupid question they could have found on their own in ten minutes or less. Hey, I have to really dig deep quite often and figure out some really perplexing issues – figure out how to make fonts bold in Word or how to divide the numerical contents of two cells on a spreadsheet and show the result in a third cell on your own. If you can’t do at least one of those on your own, then just go watch television.

And don’t tell me that you “just don’t understand computers” – that line don’t cut it any more pal; computers are part of our lives. If you can figure out how to set your VCR or TiVo to record the wrestling match or monster truck derby, you can figure out what CTRL B does. It’s more about motivation and priorities. Exercise your brain a bit.

I bought my first PC when I was 36 years old. I became fascinated by the simplistic Paint program available for DOS on my 286 computer. I never had any issues reading instructions and figuring things out. (Well not many anyway). Computers are incredible. The things we can do with them are incredible. I have the advantage of having grown up without computers. Because of this I believe I appreciate them more than the current generation that views them as a given and not a gift.

I love Photoshop because it is the greatest photographic tool ever invented. I have been a photographer most of my life. In the past I had a darkroom in my house and sometimes spent days working on one special image. I can do more now than I was ever able to do then in an hour with Photoshop. An hour is a really detailed piece of art. Most tasks take a couple of minutes.

I love studying the Bible and current software packages make studying it much easier and faster than the old way which was reading a line at a time, taking notes, marking pages, and going to the Strong’s concordance when one needed some help understanding something.

I love e-mail, the WEB, shopping on line, sharing my photos through this site, being able to complain through blogs like this one and have it available to the entire world in a minute. This is a huge advance. Just twenty years ago only a few people could make their thoughts widely available in less than a week. Wikipedia is one of the greatest tools ever available even though it may have had a rocky start. Almost anything known to man can be found somewhere in the WEB. All this said I have to admit I am not really to fond of social sites like Twitter, Facebook, and the like. Between those and television the ratio of zombies to humans is growing at an alarming rate.

In short, I love computers. I love being able to make them do things. I enjoy working with intelligent people and most software developers (except me maybe) are intelligent people. I love overcoming challenges, being able to do something most people have no inclination or desire to do.

So, why am I an IT Professional?
Being stressed and grouchy makes me happy.