In this article we're going to look at seven common HTML5 mistakes that people make when creating layouts. Since HTML5 is a new standard, many of these issues will cover obsolete syntax, which is discussed at length, here.

Over Spring Break, a group of Chemical, Biochemical and Environmental Engineering students, Aaron Gibson, Dagmawi Tilahun, Kevin Tran, and Don Wong, led by Professor Govind Rao, and accompanied by Dr. Theresa Good and Ms. Geetha Ram, went to India in order to get end user data for a low cost neonatal incubator the team is developing for use in resource-poor environments.

If you listen to the students, they’ll tell you the project started in Professor Rao’s 2011 Sensors class, a senior elective, where students learned that over 340 neonates die an hour in their first week of life, with 99% of those deaths occurring in low and middle income countries. Most of those deaths could be prevented if appropriate technology were available.

Professor Rao challenged the class to develop incubators that would work in these resource limited environments, where electricity might only be available for 8 hours a day, and salaries might be less than $6 a day. A few students from that class have continued to work with Professor Rao on this project funded by National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance which has culminated in the trip to India, where students met with rural health care workers in the Mysore region in Southern India, to ensure that they design a low cost incubator that will meet the needs of the local population. They visited several rural health care providers and have now partnered with an incubator manufacturer (Phoenix Medical Systems) and a health care provider (Karuna Trust) to take the concept to reality. Of course, we couldn’t leave India without seeing a few famous wonders of the world – the trip to the Taj Mahal was a gift from Professor Rao to the students and his colleagues. It was breathtaking.

Orbis Technologies, Inc. is currently seekingseveral highly motivated Software Engineering Interns to work at our corporate office in Annapolis, MD.  This position will provide an excellent opportunity to work closely with other developers and company leadership.

Overview/Responsibilities: This position will gain experience in development, implementation, and test of semantic technology solutions for commercial and government clients. The position will assist in developing semantic applications using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) and Open Source software to create custom solutions for our clients. Potential Applications include: MapReduce programming and Semantic Text Analytics.

Qualifications:

• Pursuing a degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering,  Electrical or related field
• Graduation date expected between December 2013 and December 2014
• U.S. citizenship and willingness to obtain a DoD security clearance
• Strong interest or experience with programming, preferably in Java
• GPA 3.0 or higher on a 4.0 scale (4.0 or higher on a 5.0 scale)
• Demonstrated leadership experienced gained through extracurricular activities or associations.
• Required traits: Self-driven, highly motivated, strong work ethic, avid-learner, team-player, detail oriented, agile, adaptable, and creative at solving problems.

 Program Highlights:

·       Interns gain practical hands-on experience through working directly with cutting-edge technologies and senior management on real-world business and technical problems.

·       Interns are provided a comprehensive overview of the skills needed to operate in a world-leading company through a multi-disciplined structured learning environment that includes weekly presentations by company leadership.

·       Professional training and skill-building in a variety of corporate positions.

·       Many interns are offered the opportunity to work full-time after successfully completing the program and completion of their academic studies.

Compensation: Hourly rate based upon education and experience. 

Application Instructions:  Interested candidates should send an email with the following:

·       Cover letter

·       Resume

·       Current transcripts (unofficial will suffice)

·       A least one letter of recommendation from previous employer or professor (two letters are preferred)

Orbis Technologies, Inc. is a growing technology company based in Annapolis, MD with offices in Warner Robins, GA, Jacksonville, FL and Orlando, FL.  Our company is focused on providing high end Strategic Technology Services to DoD and Fortune 50 Clients. Orbis provides a variety of professional technology services to assist Clients in building next generation information infrastructures including building analytics and applications directly for our customers. This includes hosting private cloud computing infrastructures for select clients who desire security and additional protection of their data. Orbis is a recognized leader in deploying semantic technology based information platforms, semantic text analytics, cloud based analytics and ontological data modeling.

DoIT is offering Blackboard Drop-in Sessions to assist and help faculty prepare for summer courses.

Face to Face Sessions:

The following F2F sessions will be held in ENGR 025.  A DoIT staff member will be available to work one-on-one with users who show up during the designated times.  Please note that this is not a formal Blackboard training class.  Users may show up or leave at any point during these sessions. Additional dates and times may be added as demand warrants.

There's no question that on sites with lots of JavaScript, you need a strict organizational pattern to keep everything making sense and the code approachable. I've mentioned in the past I like grouping things into individual files each containing a functionality-specific object literal. Taking things a wee bit further, we can be strict about this pattern and make sure we group together all sectors in one place, all "init" functions in one place, all event binding in once place, and have the rest be little well-named mini functions that do very specific things.

I wonder though, is this too organized?

I have little doubt that on a large heavy-JavaScript site that strict organization like this is of huge benefit. But on smaller sites perhaps not so much.

I recently needed to fix up some JavaScript here on CSS-Tricks. Since I've been writing so much JavaScript in the object literal pattern I thought I'd convert it over to my regular format. CSS-Tricks is not a JavaScript heavy site. The vast majority of the JS is in one global.js file. I saved the JavaScript in its "before" and "after" states so we could take a look and discuss.

The "Before"

The dependencies are up top. They get minified/concatenated into the final global.js file. The rest of the script is wrapped in an IIFE so that variables aren't global. You can just kinda read it top-to-bottom as it's just section after section of functionality. All the code that deals with that functionality is all together in those blocks, separated only by space and a brief comment.

// @codekit-prepend "jquery.fitvids.js"
    // @codekit-prepend "placeholder.js"
    // @codekit-append "prism.js"
    
    // Protect global namespace
    (function($) {
    
    
      // Make videos fluid width
      $("article, .photo-grid, .single-video-wrapper, .gallery-grid .grid-5-6").fitVids({
        customSelector: "video"
      });
    
    
    
      // IE 9 placeholders
      $('input, textarea').placeholder();
    
    
    
      // Search stuff
      var openSearch = $(".open-search, #x-search, #refine-search");
      var body = $("body");
    
      function toggleSearch() {
        if (body.hasClass("show-nav")) {
          $("body").toggleClass("show-nav");
        } else {
          $(".search").toggleClass("open");
          $(".open-search").toggle();
          $(".close-search").toggle();
        }
      }
      openSearch.on("click", function(e) {
        e.preventDefault();
        toggleSearch();
        setTimeout(function(){
          $(".search-field").focus();
        }, 100);
      });
      var searchParts = $(".search-parts > a:not(.x-search)");
      var searchForm = $("#search-form");
      searchParts.on("click", function() {
        var el = $(this);
        var newActionURL = el.data("url");
        searchForm.attr("action", newActionURL);
        searchParts.removeClass("active");
        el.addClass("active");
      });
    
    
    
      // Small screen navigation stuff
      $("#show-hide-navigation").on("click", function(e) {
        e.preventDefault();
        $("body").toggleClass("show-nav");
      });
    
    
    
      // Code highlighting stuff
      $("pre.lang-html, pre[rel=HTML]").find("code").addClass("language-markup");
      $("code.html, code.lang-html").removeClass().addClass("language-markup").parent().attr("rel", "HTML");
    
      $("code.javascript").removeClass().addClass("language-javascript").attr("rel", "JavaScript");
      $("pre[rel=JavaScript], pre.lang-js, pre[rel=jQuery], pre.JavaScript").attr("rel", "JavaScript").find("code").removeClass().addClass("language-javascript");
    
      $("pre[rel='CSS'], pre[rel='LESS'], pre[rel='Sass'], pre[rel='SASS'], pre[rel='SCSS']").find("code").removeClass().addClass("language-css");
      $("code.css, code.lang-css").removeClass().addClass("language-css").parent().attr("rel", "CSS");
    
      $("pre[rel=PHP]").attr("rel", "PHP").find("code").removeClass().addClass("language-javascript");
      $("code.php").removeClass().addClass("language-javascript").parent().attr("rel", "PHP");
    
    
    
      // Comments Stuff
      $(".comment.buried").on("click", function() {
        $(this).removeClass("buried");
      });
      $("#view-comments-button").on("click", function(e) {
        e.preventDefault();
        $("#comments").show();
        $(this).hide();
      });
    
    
    
      // Illustrator links
      var timer;
      var illustratorLink = $(".illustrator-link").hide();
      $(".deals-header, .almanac-title, .videos-title, .snippets-title, .demos-title, .gallery-header, .forums-title")
        .mouseenter(function() {
          timer = setTimeout(function() {
            illustratorLink.slideDown(200);
          }, 3000);
        })
        .mouseleave(function() {
          clearTimeout(timer);
        });
        
    
    })(jQuery);

The "After"

Dependencies still up top, only I moved out the whole chunk regarding code highlighting into its open separate file, since it required no binding and created no variables.

All selectors are up top, grouped together. All init functions are together. All event binding is together. All "actions" are mini well-named functions.

// @codekit-prepend "jquery.fitvids.js"
    // @codekit-prepend "placeholder.js"
    // @codekit-prepend "highlighting-fixes.js"
    // @codekit-append "prism.js"
    
    var csstricks = {
    
      el: {
    
        body: $("body"),
    
        allInputs: $('input, textarea'),
    
        searchForm: $("#search-form"),
        searchOpeners: $(".open-search, #x-search, #refine-search"),
        searchSections: $(".search-parts > a:not(.x-search)"),
        searchField: $(".search-field"),
        search: $(".search"),
        openSearch: $(".open-search"),
        closeSearch: $(".close-search"),
    
        videoWrappers: $("article, .photo-grid, .single-video-wrapper, .gallery-grid .grid-5-6"),
    
        navToggle: $("#show-hide-navigation"),
    
        illustratorLink: $(".illustrator-link"),
        headerAreas: $(".deals-header, .almanac-title, .videos-title, .snippets-title, .demos-title, .gallery-header, .forums-title"),
    
        buriedComments: $(".comment.buried"),
        viewCommentsButton: $("#view-comments-button"),
        commentsArea: $("#comments")
    
      },
    
      timer: 0,
    
      init: function() {
        csstricks.bindUIActions();
    
        csstricks.makeVideosFluidWidth();
        csstricks.polyfillPlaceholders();
    
        csstricks.el.illustratorLink.hide();
      },
    
      bindUIActions: function() {
        csstricks.el.searchOpeners.on("click", csstricks.handleSearchClick);
        csstricks.el.searchSections.on("click", csstricks.handleSearchPartsClick);
    
        csstricks.el.navToggle.on("click", csstricks.mobileNavToggle);
    
        csstricks.el.headerAreas.on("mouseenter", csstricks.openIllustratorLinkArea);
        csstricks.el.headerAreas.on("mouseleave", csstricks.closeIllustratorLinkArea);
    
        csstricks.el.buriedComments.on("click", csstricks.revealComment);
        csstricks.el.viewCommentsButton.on("click", csstricks.revealCommentsArea);
      },
    
      makeVideosFluidWidth: function() {
        csstricks.el.videoWrappers.fitVids({
          customSelector: "video"
        });
      },
    
      polyfillPlaceholders: function() {
        csstricks.el.allInputs.placeholder();
      },
    
      handleSearchClick: function(event) {
        event.preventDefault();
        csstricks.toggleSearch();
        setTimeout(function() {
          csstricks.focusSearchField();
        }, 100);
      },
    
      mobileNavToggle: function(event) {
        event.preventDefault();
        csstricks.el.body.toggleClass("show-nav");
      },
    
      focusSearchField: function() {
        csstricks.el.searchField.focus();
      },
    
      handleSearchPartsClick: function(event) {
        var el = $(event.target);
        var newActionURL = el.data("url");
        csstricks.el.searchForm.attr("action", newActionURL);
        csstricks.el.searchSections.removeClass("active");
        el.addClass("active");
      },
    
      toggleSearch: function() {
        if (csstricks.el.body.hasClass("show-nav")) {
          csstricks.el.body.toggleClass("show-nav");
        } else {
          csstricks.el.search.toggleClass("open");
          csstricks.el.openSearch.toggle();
          csstricks.el.closeSearch.toggle();
        }
      },
    
      openIllustratorLinkArea: function() {
        csstricks.timer = setTimeout(function() {
          csstricks.el.illustratorLink.slideDown(200);
        }, 3000);
      },
    
      closeIllustratorLinkArea: function() {
        clearTimeout(csstricks.timer);
      },
    
      revealComment: function(event) {
        $(event.target).removeClass("buried");
      },
    
      revealCommentsArea: function(event) {
        event.preventDefault();
        csstricks.el.commentsArea.show();
        csstricks.el.viewCommentsButton.hide();
      }
    
    };
    
    csstricks.init();

How do they compare?

Regarding "before", I like how you can read it top-to-bottom and everything related is grouped together. Since each of those groups only averages about 10 lines, it's fairly readable. If things got more complicated, I'd worry the file would become harder to manage.

Regarding "after", it's a bit weird to see all the selectors grouped together. You have no idea why those elements are being selected - but you can see every element on the page that matters to this file and manage them independently of their functions. If you were totally unfamiliar with this file and trying to familiarize yourself with it, does reading the init and bindUIActions functions make that clear? Is it faster to read that than scan the entire "before" file? Is it confusing how both elements and functions both start with "csstricks."?

"After" is also 25 lines longer despite moving a big chunk of code away to a separate file.

I don't have all the answers. I'm still not 100% sure which I like better or if a hybrid approach would be better or worse.

Can You “Over Organize” JavaScript? is a post from CSS-Tricks

DesignModo’s hugely popular set of resources ‘The Bricks’ is available once again through our sister site MightyDeals.com.

Massively popular with designers and developers, ‘The Bricks’ is a UI bundle carefully designed to make your projects run smoothly. When MightyDeals first ran the deal last year the demand from designers and developers alike was almost unprecedented, so we’ve managed to bring the deal back for anyone who missed out first time round.

Why is The Bricks so popular? Well, for starters it’s a very well put together set of resources. Secondly, it’s comprehensive; most UI sets cover one aspect of a site, but The Bricks has comprehensive coverage of almost everything you can imagine, meaning you won’t be left plugging the gaps yourself. Thirdly, the UI elements can all be easily edited, which means seamless integration with your existing design.

‘The Bricks’ is available through MightyDeals.com at a massive 83% discount. That’s a very mighty $240 saving.

Built on one of the most popular setups in the world, the 12-column grid, The Bricks is the ideal way to fast-track a design through to completion.

Broken down into four, highly compatible sub-sets, The Bricks features Words UI elements to help you develop text-based designs;

Elements UI to add consistency to your designs with key navigation elements;

Ecommerce UI set with elements designed specifically with e-commerce sites in mind;

and the Forms UI set, perfect for designing complex forms in a pinch.

The often requested deal is only available for a limited time. So head over to MightyDeals.com and grab this offer right now.

CoffeeCup Mac Web Editor – only $10!

We are living in a world where people work from multiple devices — phone, laptop, and computer – and need access to their files anywhere and anytime. UMBC’s active directory (AD) system serves the campus well but it doesn’t provide the level of flexibility for mobile devices and off-campus access that people need.

The higher education community, through an initiative by Internet2, has worked with a company named Box.com to provide a service that we believe will meet our needs and is secure. Box is an online file sharing system that you can access from multiple devices. Box also allows you to share your files and folders with others easily.

Students, faculty, and staff will now be allowed to have web-based storage that they can use their myUMBC login to access. Files can be easily shared with others on campus and off-campus. You can even send a user a “URL” that allows someone that doesn’t have the Box.com service to access the file.

One of the nice features of Box.com is that is has great support for collaboration. It integrates well with Google Docs and we feel that faculty research groups will love the flexibility this provides in sharing data with other members of their research team.

DoIT will be rolling out this service with a limited launch to departments, faculty and staff that want to be early adopters, after which we will make this service available to everyone, including students. 

During the spring we will also identify departments that need more flexibility for shared file storage than AD provides and transition them over to the Box.com offering.

You can access Box by going to box.umbc.edu.

All Internet users know that once a meme surfaces, more are sure to follow.

And once something is mocked and parodied by memes, frankly, it cannot be taken seriously.

The latest influx of North Korea memes to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and (insert various social media here) have turned the North Korean threat into the North Korean joke.  But why? 

The title of a recent video uploaded to Youtube by The Young Turks  raises an interesting question: “Why Do We See North Korea as a Joke & Iran as a Threat?“

Look around.  There aren’t that many memes on Iran’s nuclear program.  There are however, plenty of elected officials citing reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) detailing Iran’s nuclear violations.  

Even as North Korea tested an intercontinental missile while Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel prepared for his confirmation of office, Secretary Hagel reportedly mentioned Iran more than 170 times while occasionally mentioning North Korea a mere 11 times in his day-long testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in early 2013.

The question remains, why are we as a nation more inclined to fear Iran than North Korea?

Some cite the rise of Islamophobia, while others claim that Kim Jong Un simply cannot be taken seriously, perhaps because of his young age and relative inexperience in international politics, or his notorious high-top fade.  

Is the North Korean threat a legitimate one? Let us know in a comment below. 

by Trishia Domingo