CPod Format

To address the original question, yes, we did make a small change to the header, which moves your username/sign out link and a few other small links.

Also, the "Me" section has become "Home."

I'll be writing a blog post about these small changes (and some other planned changes we've already discussed) next week.

Sorry, off topic. My Chinesepera-kun doesn't work well after upgrading it. Some characters show translations, but some don't. How are yours?

And finally JavaScript, since we are at it.

JavaScript was a simple add-on programming language to allow dynamic effects in the browser.

Starting with Netscape, JavaScript was one of the differentiators between browsers - so a website "programmed" for one Browser did not show all its shininess in other Browsers.

Since JavaScript became more standardized (better - some smart people found ways develop an abstraction layer for all browsers (this means, a programmer can write a JavaScript and all browsers do the same)), programming in JavaScript became more and more universal.

JavaScript, for example makes the lesson vanishing animation when we mark a lesson as studied.

How does it work. HTML defines the elements. JavaScript can access each of the elements by using its identifier, its class or by searching it in the structure of the website. Then it can change the CSS-properties, for example the property "visible". If a element is visible, you can see it, if it is hidden, well, guess what... ;) It can also change e.g. size, position, color, ... you name it.

JavaScript became incredibly important with the introduction of the XMLRequest and Google's smart way of using it. This little beast can request stuff from the website after the website has been loaded. Thanks to this important command, Google maps can load map pieces dynamically instead of reloading the whole page when something was clicked, Google mail feels like a real application, because it can just load the mail from the server and show it, instead of loading the complete site again.

And for Chinesepod, the comments can now be loaded, written and further commented without stopping the audio. Thank you JavaScript.

JavaScript is so important that Google wrote their own Browser (Google Chrome) just to improve the JavaScript interpreter. (and boy, they did - if you have a decent computer and the chance to compare google chrome to other browsers, try google street view and just keep pressing the up arrow - its like driving through the streets :)

CSS is make-up for websites. HTML, (hypertext markup language) got a bit messed up in the early days, so that maintaining a website and changing its style became pain in the backside.

So some people invented CSS, stylesheets that define how elements of a website should look like. The intention was to separate content and layout.

Most prominently the font type was previously an item in HTML that could be specified. This was banned from the Standard, since it messed and bloated everything up: Every font change was written into the HTML source file. Secondly, tables were misused for positioning instead for data.

With elements of a website can have identification markers and class markers. With this, consistent styling can be easily achieved.

With CSS, only one file needs to be loaded for a whole web site.

Furthermore, different stylesheets can be defined for different display types - a printer stylesheet would not have any funny backgrounds and would hide the navigation.

In consequence, when Chinesepod wants to change it's layout, it "just" has to change a few CSS files instead of the hundred or thousands HTML files.

RSS has been established as newsfeed format.

Lots of websites offer separate file storing headlines and more or less content of articles in the order of appearance.

Newsfeed-reader checking those feeds regularly and pull the information in.

This is also the trick of iTunes - Podcasts are nothing but RSS-feeds. If something new has been found, Itunes dowloads the audio file or video file given in the article.

Here at chinesepod, everbody has his own RSS feed with all his lesson data (lesson, review, dialoge, pdf) which can be downloaded into the program of your choice.

Popular newsreader are reader.google.com, firefox, (itunes). Modern browsers like Firefox 3.x, Opera and Internet explorer 7 support RSS, most prominently Firefox, as some news feeds are already in as "smart bookmarks"

cascading has to do with priorities of the style information, the way that the page is supposed to look can be provided by different sources (i.e. in html file or separate css file). the most important one goes first, hence cascading.

Thanks chanelle, but that just opens up another question - what is it that cascades?

changye

I don't even know what RSS does!

Real Simple Syndication: format used on the internet to provide users with (customized) content (think about news feed).

I don't even know what RSS means, let alone CSS.

Cascading Style Sheets: way of making webpages look nice :-).

Excuse my ignorance: what is css?

looks like a css change as announced by John (somewhere in the comments)

I also noticed my sign out section changed.

Its just changed again. And the extra space has gone now.