I’m putting together some new pages for my ReviseICT.co.uk website. These are pages that will help keep the content organised into topic areas now more and more games and activities are appearing.
However, I wanted to add a small function to make a random computer related animation appear on at the bottom of each topic screen (just like the one above). I’ve done this in the paste such as on the Neale-Wade website and it was just a simple little piece of JavaScript. Easily done.
Or so I thought. What I’ve found is that as I’ve become so focused on using Flash, I kept making mistakes in the JavaScript. Nothing major, but missing out an apostrophe here or a speech mark there makes all the difference. Just as Actionscript has its foibles and characteristics, so does JavaScript. Once I got the random image JavaScript working on Firefox I then tried it on Internet Explorer to find it failed. More trouble!
I don’t really hate JavaScript. It is an incredibly useful scripting language that I use on nearly every webpage I create. I guess I just got a little hacked off as I’ve become so used to Flash and so used to the little tricks to get things to work. I suppose the lesson to learn is that once you become to focused on the use of one program, you then lose skills with other programs or scripts.
Having said this, I could just have used Flash for the random image feature - but I wanted to use JavaScript to keep the page as ‘light’ as possible without additional downloads. I just wish that JavaScript had been more friendly today - I’ve ended up taking an hour or more to create something I thought would take 5 minutes.
I suppose it could also be down to the fact that I’ve got a dreadful cold and have lost my voice! 