Epic Fail at Vodafone.ie

At perhaps the busiest time of the online shopping year Vodafone.ie is turning away all customers, because of a user input validation error. Very few e-mail address are being accepted by the site. I e-mailed them about it last night. It will be interesting to see how long it takes them to fix it. I'd love to know see the hourly online sales figures.

We didn't cover the use of regular expressions for input validation in this module. But many students used them anyway. Here's the code used by Vodafone to validate the e-mail address. See if you can figure what kind of e-mail addresses it will take, any maybe bag one of those Nokia Lumia 800s that they have run out of in the shops.



var EmailTxtBoxCheck = function(controlToValidate) 
{

var RE_EMAIL = /^[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9\_\-\.]*\@[a-zA-Z0-9\-]*\.[a-zA-Z]{2,4}\.[a-zA-Z]{2,4}$/;

if (RE_EMAIL.test(controlToValidate.value))
   {
//HideError(controlToValidate);
return true;

   } 
else 
   {
//ShowError(controlToValidate);
return false;
   }
}

SOFT6008 Class 45 DWEB

We had one last lab class for any stragglers who were still working on the assignment

SOFT6007 Class 45 DWEB ITM

We had an in-class JavaScript exam.

SOFT6008 Class 44

We looked at some of the interesting things you can do with HTML and with the canvas. But we didn't go into much detail.

HIgher Education App Style

The higher education sector is struggling to provide quality services despite fewer resources and governments around the world are insisting that colleges and universities find new revenue sources. What would higher education look like of the sector adopted some business modules from the web and computer companies?

Well first of all a basic university education would be free for everyone. Students could attend classes for free, but if they wanted to actually speak to a professor they would have to pay. These support sessions could be paid for on a single incident basis, or students could subscribe to a premium support service that allowed them to talk to a professor whenever they wanted. Only the basic course content would be free. Students would have to pay to unlock the advanced levels. Good students could earn gold stars by getting good test scores and by attending class regularly. Students could sell their gold stars online and weak students could buy gold stars for cash. Tests would be difficult, but students would be able to purchase power-ups to make them easier. Cheat sheets would be available, but at a price. Students would constantly be bombarded by targeted advertising. But they could pay to make the advertising go away. Professors wouldn’t actually know students’ names, but they would know everything else about them. Their eating habits, reading habits, web surfing history, and social interactions would all be logged and sold to marketing companies. Students could earn extra gold stars by telling all their Facebook friends how great the course is.

COMP6023 Class 44

We looked at the various topics that were set for Assignment 3. I distributed copies of the essays.

This was our last class.

SOFT6007 Class 44 ITM

Students worked on the JavaScript exercises (well some of the students anyway).

Plagiarism

Students are advised to re-read the Institute's regulations on plagiarism. If you feel you may have inadvertently submitted work that was not entirely you own, you are free to withdraw it and submit again. The resubmission will incur the standard late penalties.

Any student wishing to withdraw his or her submission should do so by e-mailing Colin before Monday 3 December.

SOFT6007 Class 41 & 43 ITM

Students worked on JavaScript. Some were a bit distracted though.

SOFT6008 Deadline passed

Hi

Altough the deadline was 1000, I took a copy of the dropbox at 1316. If you got your work in before then and sync'ed then it will be considered on-time.

Please leave the folders shared. I hope to use them for feedback.

SOFT6008 Dropbox Closing

I'll be taking a copy of the dropboxes in a few minutes. So sync up what you've got now.

COMP6023 Class 43

We looked at the various topics that were set for Assignment 3. I distributed copies of the essays. There are spares in F1.2

SOFT6008 Assignment Deadline

The deadline for the assignment is 1000 this morning. However for practical reasons it will be closer to 1200 by the time I capture the state of the dropboxes. I will post a note to the blog once I have done that. Students may continue to work until the last minute if they need to.

Students who submit late will have the standard -10% penalty applied. But this penalty is applied up to the first week. So if you miss the deadline today take the whole week to improve the work to try to make back the marks you lost.

A number of students asked for confirmation that I received their submission. If the dropbox was set up correctly there is no reason to believe that I did not get it. I asked students to set up the dropboxes months ago. There was plenty of time to test them between then and now. I don't plan to reply to each students. Students were welcome to view the contents of the folders in the labs. Many did. Many did not.

SOFT6008 Class 43

Students worked on the assignment

COMP6023 Class 41 & 42

Students worked on the blog analytics summary

SOFT6007 Class 41 & 43 DWEB

Students worked on the JavaScript exercises in preparation for the exam

SOFT6007 Class 42 DWEB ITM

This lecture was canceled because I had to attend a meeting.

SOFT6007 Class 41 DWEB

Students worked on the JavaScript exercises

SOFT6008 Class 42 WEB

Students worked on the assignment that's due Wednesday

SOFT6008 Class 42 & 43 COM

Students worked on the assignment that's due Wednesday

SOFT6008 Class 41 DWEB COM

We had a tutorial class. Students brought their own machines and I helped them debug

SOFT6007 No lecture on Tuesday 27 Nov

I have a meeting at that time. However the labs will go on a usual.

SOFT6008 Class 40 WEB COM

We had a tutorial class for students who are having problems with the assignment.

Apologies to students who didn't get the message about this in time.

COMP6023 Class 40

We looked at Search Engine Optimization

There will be no classes in Week 12

SOFT6007 Class 40 ITM

Students worked on their assignments or experimented with JavaScript

SOFT6007 Dropbox

This is how the Dropbox looked at 1705 today. If your folder isn't there by now, you have a problem.

SOFT6007 Class 37 & 39

Students worked on the assignment due tomorrow

COMP6023 Class 39

We looked at search engine optimization. But we didn't get to the juicy parts just yet.

COMP6023 Class 37 & 38

Students worked on the essays.

SOFT6007 Class 37 & 38

Students worked on the assignment. A number of students who are finished already studied some JavaScript.

SOFT6007 Class 37 WEB ITM

We looked at the JavaScript code for the slot machine.

code: dom-slots3.html

SOFT6007 Assessment Reviews Tues 4/12 1100

Spotkanie na 11 we wtorek zostanie anulowane. Proszę wybrać inny termin.

SOFT6008 Spec modified

I have modified to assignment spec to relax the phone number validation. It wasn't hard, but was fiddly. Those of you who worked on it will earn bonus marks, so it wasn't wasted. But the minimum requirements are now easier to meet.

SOFT6008 Class 37 COM WEB

We concluded our look at the tile game

SOFT6008 Class 36

We took a look at the tile game. It's an interesting example of how to fit pieces of code together to do something fairly complex.

SOFT6008 Dropboxes

These are the dropbox folders that have been shared with me so far. If you do not have a folder listed here you need to take action or you might not get your work in on time.

SOFT6007 Dropboxes

[image deleted]

These are the dropboxes that have been shared with me so far. If you do not have one here you need to take some action, or you might not be in a position to submit your work on time.

COMP6023 Class 36

We took a look a video compression using HandBrake

http://www.miracletutorials.com/how-to-encode-video-for-web-iphone-ipad-ipod/

SOFT6007 Class 36 ITM

Most students continued working on assignment 2. Some tackled a bit of JavaScript.

SOFT6007 Class 35 ITM

We looked at forms and validation

SOFT6007 Class 33 ITM

I was missing for most of this class.

SOFT6007 Validation

In order to have your pages validate at validator.w3.org you will need to start your html documents with this:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
        "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">

SOT6008 CDATA

To validate your webpage you may need to use CDATA to get the JavaScript through the process.

http://javascript.about.com/library/blxhtml.htm

COMP6023 Class 35

We continued our look at video compression.

In tomorrow's class we will look at the effects of different coding parameters. Students who want to join in the fun should install the software available for free at handbrake.fr.

At the end of class we had a brief (off-mic) discussion on plagiarism. I feel like I have had enough of those conversations already. But to summarise: if you copy and paste off the web, that's your problem right there. It's not about how much you change things around after that!
Some plagiarism resources:
http://www.plagiarism.org/plag_article_what_is_plagiarism.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism
http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/plagiarism.shtml

COMP6023 Class 33 & 34

Students worked on various things. Many worked on stuff unrelated to this module. That's fine.

I met with each student (except one who left early) to discuss the progress for Assignment 3

SOFT6007 Class 36 WEB

We looked at the HTML for forms

samples:
soft6007-form.html

SOFT6007 Class 35 WEB

Students worked on Assignment 2. A few took a look at JavaScript

SOFT6007 Class 34 WEB ITM

We looked some more at JavaScript

examples:
rollover
coins

Assignment reviews

Students will be expected to meet with me and talk me through the work they have submitted. The extent to which students can explain their code will form part of the assessment process. The audio of the meetings will be recorded, but will remain private, and will be deleted once it is now longer needed.

Students received an e-mail with an invitation to chose a time that suits them. Please select a time slot. I propose to meet up to three students per time slot. I can't give each student an exact time, but I generally allow 20 minutes per student and this has worked well in the past.

SOFT6008 Assignment 2 Spec update

The phone number part of the spec was vague so I tightened it up. Check the spec ->
again.

0211234567
(089)1234567
(089) 123 4567
087-123-4567

Are all valid phone numbers. You may assume that the customer has an 021 / 083 / 085 / 086 / 087 / 089 number.

The replace method will come in handy for stripping out the unwanted parts

Accounting for
+353871234567 is not required.
But it would make a nice extra