Dear TAs,

Morgan is working on Lab 3 right now with a little bit of advisement from me.  We're going to practice using JavaScript to manipulate UI controls on a page.  As we saw in the staff meeting, it's a "pimp my text" page where a textarea's text is styled in various ways.  We'll give them some skeleton HTML and all the CSS.  (They won't have to write any CSS this week.)  I think the basic outline of the lab will be something like this:

- add a few UI controls to an existing skeleton page
- link to an initial .js file that alerts "hello world"
- make it respond to a few simple events
 (italic/bold checkboxes, font radio buttons)
- start adding trickier events
 (obfuscate checkbox) -- possibly majors-only

The most current version of Morgan's lab 3 solution is here:

https://webster.cs.washington.edu/mdoocy/lab3/solution/pimpmytext.html

At the start of lab, I want you guys to tell them about JSLint.  From the course web site it's under Links or under the Homework section. (We'll also put a link to it on the lab writeup.)  I'd like you guys to urge the students at the start of lab that they should seriously use this tool to figure out what is wrong with their JS code.  Tell them that if they raise their hand and you come over to help them, you're certainly going to ask them the following two things:

1. Does Firebug say you have any errors?
2. What does JSLint say?

They should probably check both of those things before they ask for TA help.  You guys should maybe also go play with JSLint for a minute or two tonight and see what it does.  Paste some JS code into it and run it with the recommended options and just try intentionally breaking things and see what it says.

Another thing you may want to point them to in lab is the lecture code I wrote today.  It's on the web site and illustrates a lot of the kinds of things they have to do.

Morgan and I will send more news as we have it.  Thanks for your patience.


Marty



Dear TAs,

Lab 3 is now up.  We had a minor crisis because Morgan's house lost its internet connection before he was able to upload the finished lab, and only just now has he been able to communicate with the outside world (not his fault at all).

The lab is posted and matches what we talked about in our meeting. First they'll make a "Bigger Pimpin" button that sets a font size, then they'll make a "Bling" checkbox that sets styles on a text area.  Then they'll do a "Snoopify" button that modifies the text using split and join.  Lastly is some tricky stuff for majors that Morgan came up with such as a "Malkovitch" button.

Sorry it comes at (literally) the last minute.  Hopefully you can skim it before you go in to lab and everything will be okay.  We'll have to discuss a better system for producing labs in the future since I don't want late lab finishes to be a regular occurrence.


Marty