Chapter 1: Programming Challenge 1

Step 1: Clearly define what the application is to do.
Purpose: To calculate the area of a rectangular space
Input: Length and width of space
Process: Multiply the length and width
Output: Display the total area

Step 2: Visualize the application and design its user interface.


Step 3: Make a list of the controls needed.

Type	Name	Text
Form	(default)	“Carpet Calculator”
Label	(default)	“Length”
Label	(default)	“Width”
Label	(default)	“Total Area”
Textbox	txtLength	“ “
Textbox	txtWidth	“ “
Textbox	txtTotalArea	“ “
Button	btnCalcArea	“Calculate”
Button	btnClear	“Clear”
Button	btnClose	“Close"

Step 5: Make a list of methods needed for each control.

Method	Description
btnCalcArea_Click	Multiplies txtLength and txtWidth values to find txtTotalArea
btnClear_Click	Clears txtLength, txtWidth, and txtTotalArea
btnClose_Click	Ends application

Step 6: Create a flowchart or pseudo code version of each method.

Drawing

Have you ever wanted to tell your mom about something, but can’t find the right words? Want to give a gift you’ve made all by yourself? When words don’t work or you want to make something special, try drawing! Although your drawings might not be perfect or dazzling the at first, your parents are sure to love them. In some ways, drawing can even help you do better in school!

Stuff You Need

Before we start we need to find some things from around the house. Open all the drawers, check all the shelves, and get to know where all the materials you need are usually stored. Who knows, you might find the candy drawer or other hidden goodies while you’re searching! If you’re having trouble finding what you need, I’m sure your parents would gladly help you.

Something to Draw With

You could start off with colors, picking up the first crayon or colored pencil you see. However it’s best if you use a pencil. A number 2 pencil is good to start with because you can find it easily.

An even better pencil is the mechanical pencil. It looks much like a pen except when you click it lead comes out instead of ink. They don’t need to be sharpened and sometimes come with padded grips, which make writing and drawing easier. However, the lead is very thin and breaks easily. Mechanical Pencils come in four standard sizes: 0.3, 0.5, 0.9, and 2.0. The numbers are the thickness of the lead in millimeters. Use a 0.7 or 0.9 lead if you break mechanical pencil leads a lot. Also, keep in mind that a mechanical pencil will not work right if you load a lead other than the size written on the pencil.

Something To Draw On

You might want to keep a stash of paper near a large flat table or desk. Also remember that they can be found in many sizes, colors, shapes, and can be thick or thin. Graph paper has lines that go up and down as well as left to right while notebook paper only has lines that go from left to right. Printer paper has no lines on it, so it’s best to put your final drawings on this type of paper.

Something to Get Rid Of Your Mistakes

Erasers are squishy objects (usually made of rubber) that are used to make pencil marks disappear. Most pencils have erasers attached to one end, but they don’t last very long. There are many other types of erasers that work just as well or even better! Test each eraser you find on a scrap piece of paper first. If you end up tearing the paper, then the eraser is too stiff. Also, the eraser shouldn’t leave any marks on the paper, unless they are smudges that are easily erasable.

An eraser cap is a small eraser that you can put on the non-pointed end of a pencil. If you find that you the eraser on the end of your pencil is disappearing, but think using a separate eraser is too much work, look for these.

A large eraser is also good have, especially for large mistakes. These erasers come in many colors and shapes and are also are less likely to tear your paper. The Pink Pearl erasers are famous for their excellent quality.

Getting Things Down On Paper

When drawing, hold your pencil between your first finger and thumb as shown in the drawing to the left. Your other fingers should curl under the pencil to keep the tip pointed slightly downwards. This is called the drawing position. Holding it this way keeps your hand off the paper, preventing smudges. You can also make the quicker and longer strokes required of gesture drawing with this position.

Step One: Finding Shapes in Things

First make a gesture drawing to put as much information about it on paper. A gesture drawing is made up of ovals and lines that show the general shapes of the object you are drawing. You use light, quick strokes that follow the core and general shape of whatever you’re drawing.

As you can see from the drawing to your left, it looks quite messy, but you can still recognize that it represents a hand. I have drawn blue lines to show the middle of each finger and outlined them in red. If you wish, you can do this with colored pencils or crayons while you’re practicing. Just keep in mind that they will not erase if you’re planning on finishing the drawing.

Step Two: Make Sure it Looks Right

After you have everything you want down on paper, take your pencil and hold it horizontally in front of you. You then measure the height of a small portion an object to the whole. In the hand drawing, for example, you can use the height of the top section of the middle finger to measure the rest of the hand. You can also use that same section as a reference for measuring the width of your hand as well. As you can see from the lines I drew, the hand is five fingertips high (to the base of the palm) and roughly ten fingertips wide. This is why graph paper is really good to start with.

Step Three: A Continuous Line

Next you draw the contours of the object (in this case the hand) as accurately as you can. To do this, follow all the lines in your object. Take your time and make sure that you catch all the little dips and creases. Follow the line inside the object as well when you can. If you can, try to draw the whole contour without taking your pencil off the paper. The contour should be done in a heavier line, but a lighter line will be easier to correct if you make mistakes.

Once you’re finished, darken your lines where they meet shadows, and lighten it where you meet light. This gives it a 3D look and makes it pop out of the page a bit. You can then erase your gesture lines to give your drawing a more finished look.

20 Questions for my Audience

Identity and Needs

Who is my primary audience? Who else will read the document?

My primary audience is children between 8 and 12 years old. My teacher and possibly my classmates may also be reading this document.

What is my relationship to this audience?

My relationship to my primary audience is as a benevolent mentor. They don't know me personally, but may think that I'm an expert on the subject.

How will my document be used?

My document will be used to teach children how to draw and what tools to use when appropriate.

How much is my audience likely to know already about this topic?

My audience is likely to already know what a pencil and eraser is and basic geometry (circle, square, triangle, rectangle)

What else does the audience need to know?

My audience also needs to know how to read for one, and also how to change the pressure they apply to their pencil.

What main questions are most readers likely to have?

Main questions my readers are likely to have are:

•          How do I make things look right? (i.e. make them proportional)
  
•          What type of pencil should I use?
  
•          Do I have to have special paper?
  

Attitude and Personality

What attitudes or misconceptions is the audience likely to have toward the topic? Are they likely to have any objections?

Attitudes and misconceptions my audience is likely to have toward the topic are that drawing is hard and only for the talented.

What attitude does the audience seem to have toward me?

The audience seems to have a...

How receptive to new ideas is this audience?

The audience is very receptive to new ideas as they are very young.

Who will be most affected by this document?

Young children with no prior knowledge of, but some interest in drawing will be most affected.

What do I know about the user's personality?

Low attention spans with a focus on pictures and explanations.

What reaction to this document can I expect?

Either they’ll think it’s too wordy, or they will immediately start drawing over everything…including the walls.

Do I risk alienating anyone?

Maybe those who are reading this that already have more knowledge than most children.

Do I face any constraints?

I cannot use anything wordy or any big words without defining them.

Expectations About the Document

Has the document been requested or am I initiating it?

This document has been initiated by me because of my interest in the subject.

What length will the audience expect and tolerate?

The audience will expect a short document with lots of pictures and a large, readable font size.

For this audience, what kinds of details will be the most important?

The most important details are that drawing is easy

How would they expect the piece to be organized?

They would expect it to start at the beginning of a drawing and end with a finished one.

What tone would this audience expect?

My audience would likely expect a calming tone that’s to-the-point.

What is the document's intended effect on its audience?

The intended effect on the audience is to enlighten or teach.

Process of Prewriting Essay 2: Writing to Informalyze

Instructions

List three possible topics, along with their target audience and why you chose each one.

Answer

One possible topic is teaching a child how to draw the human figure. I chose this because I have been considered a rather good artist by some. Another topic would be to write printing instructions for the computer illiterate (elderly, foreign, children). The reason I chose this one is because I've been working on the printing instructions for the computer lab in the library recently.

Essay 1

Dear Class,

If you were to ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, you would encounter quite a bit of silence. I might frown, stare blankly out in space, squint up at the ceiling, or quite possibly do all three in an attempt to drag a simple answer out of a complex web of dreams, memories, and distractions. After a while, I would mumble something about dual majoring in computers and business and hope you would go away or change the subject. The thing is that I’ve had dreams of becoming an author since the eighth grade. From then on I’ve been writing short stories and evolving my concept of plot, character design, and setting.

For my first story, my mother suggested that I write about our dog and how the squirrels outside drive her crazy. However, I had been reading So You Want to Be a Wizard by Diane Duane at the time and couldn’t help but add something more than ordinary to it. In the end, the story was about a girl who learned of magic from a squirrel in her backyard. I later added seven other children, each inspired by my brother and six cousins, and a hallowed out redwood tree in the forest near their grandmother’s house. I also played with the idea of giving them different powers and associating colors, stones, and symbols according to order of birth.

A year later, I wrote yet another story, but in screenplay format. This time it was about five year old twin boys with psychic powers. One could move light objects with his mind, while the other could see a short way into the future and past. In that particular scene they were playing a game of tag around a table while a mysterious metal orb watched them from the shadows. This, of course, would take place long after that first story and the boys are probably the decedents of one of the children.

A journal from my sophomore year contains a paragraph about a mother and her nightmares concerning her husband’s death. Of course this wasn’t “ordinary” either as it was set aboard a space ship. Also depicted was a concerned teenage daughter who it seems had been through a lot because of her father’s death and her mother’s despair. This was a part of an idea to change the locale of the eight children on a universal scale and have them spread out across it. Later I wrote a paragraph about a tyrannical emperor and his wife who later divorced him and ran off with one of her twin sons.

The last school-related story I wrote was about a little girl who stole an apple from the castle kitchens during an attempt to run away. Noticing that the cook had found out, she stopped and explained that she was taking it to someone, although now that I think about it she didn’t have the time to stop and if she did, she wouldn’t have stolen it so hastily. Anyway, this little story was originally set the 1650’s near the end of the Golden Age of Pirates. Thus, the concept was that the little girl, born to the rich Blake family, was running away to live the more adventurous life of a pirate.

It was not until I started writing this that I realized all these scattered chapters could be combined into one or more novels. I’d have to add chapters between the ones I’ve already written and revise it a little so that it would make sense, but I believe I am capable of doing such a task. I also created a prophetic poem and have a few written descriptions of some of my more vivid dreams, so I wonder if I could incorporate those as well. However, I doubt they will mesh well as they’re a bit more fanciful that what I planned on putting on paper. My problem was that I was spending so much time on the prewriting process that I couldn’t focus properly on actually writing the story. Because of that, however, I now have a good understanding of how I want my story to progress.

I believe that a good book is written by an author with many diverse experiences under his or her belt. You won’t get a good fight scene without knowledge of how to swing a sword and a rudimentary knowledge of the physics behind each swing. Even in a fantasy setting you need to know what rules you’re breaking so that you can break them consistently and logically. This is also pertains to history and mythology as many books are about a past, present, or future version of Earth. Even books not set on Earth are based off of an author’s perspective on our history.

To gain this knowledge I don’t need a language, history, or writing degree; it might help, but it’s unneeded. This is because I can study the history of a place or person, learn a new language, and refresh my understanding of various mythologies on the internet alone. Of course, some things are better learned by experience such as human movements, emotions, habits, and psychological pressures under various situations. Most of this can be done by watching people or changing your mindset to do as someone other than yourself would do.

At any rate, making a good book takes lots of effort, planning, and research that with my busy schedule might take years to complete. It will take more than one draft and countless revisions before I will be completely happy with it. Even when I feel I’m happy with it, I have to meet the standards of publishers, editors, and other proofreaders before I will allow it to go public. Even then it might not sell very well and would definitely be very hard to live off of. However, I write not for the money, but for the joy of writing and knowing that others enjoyed it as well. Hence the reason why I chose business and computers majors over a literary major.

Sincerely,

Heather Kushion

Prewriting Essay 2: Writing to Informalyze

Listing: Topics I'm an "Expert" On

1. Printing troubleshooting
2. Calligraphy
3. Draw a human figure
4. Make a complex fictional character
5. Marching commands and positions
6. Play a Clarinet
7. Write non-fiction
   
8. Back-up your computer
9. Basic Akido
   
10. Basic tap dancing
    

Brainstorm: Delta College Printing Troubleshooting

• Didn't print
• Right printer
• Didn't click Print It on pop-up
• More than one copy
• More than 32 pages (16 double-sided)
• Wrong printer
• Pod A135
• Pod E
• Computer A-07
• Looks wrong
• Blank
• Printing from website PDF
• 
  
• Cut off
• Adjust margins
• Change page size to letter
• Non-Color
• Specific computers
• Computer B-01
• Computer D-??
• Attached to scanner
• Tiny writing
• Font too small
• Computer Glitch
• Restart computer
• Move to different computer

Brainstorm: Making a Fictional Character

• Description
• Age
• Type (Old, Young, Elderly, Teenage, Child, Youth, etc...)
• In years (recommended)
• Birthday (optional)
• Eyes
• Color
• Shape
• Size
• Kind (piercing, watery, red, etc...)
• Hair
• Color
• Length
• Thickness
• Shape
• Curly
• Straight
• Wavy
• Skin
• Color
• Marks
• Scars
• History
• Birthplace
• Childhood
• Current Residence
• Name
• Nationality
• Race
• Named by whom (mother, father, grandparent, self, etc...)
• Psychology
• Personality (Fun, Kind, Gentle, Evil, Good, Comical, etc...)
• Role Models
• Protective of...(people, things, ideals)

Freewriting: Printing Troubleshooting

People who would find printing difficult to understand would be the computer illiterate (elderly, foreign immigrants, children)

Reflecting on Writing Essay 1

From 11:00 AM to 1:30 PM I worked on finishing essay 1. Most of my inspiration for the last paragraphs came from how much work writing a novel is. I looked at the wikipedia sites for J K Rowling, J R R Tolkien, and C S Lewis in an attempt to find out how much of a background they had before they started writing. I would have looked up more of my favorite authors (Piers Anthony, Tamara Pierce, Anne McCaffrey, Orson Scott Card, etc...), but I didn't have the time. However, I did find the blog site of Scott Berkun who had some beginners tips for writers.

When I was done with the last paragraph, I started from the beginning and began reading my essay. I found a few things that needed to be changed, but when I got to the half-way point I realized that I had only half an hour to get down to the Red Brix Cafe, grab something to eat, and then head for class.

The Process of Writing a Draft

So far I have four paragraphs, the first of which serves as more of a hook to draw people into reading. The following two paragraphs state my experiences with writing stories. The last paragraph is about my new idea to combine the chapters I've already written into one novel. After that paragraph, I hope to get into how I can improve and combine them.

While I write I'm also revising and rereading it to make sure it sounds right. This is why it's taken me an hour to write two paragraphs. In fact, it took me about that long to tear myself away from re-revising the first paragraph. Originally I had included extra details about other careers that I avoided because of their financial instability. However, I saw that they were unneeded and started to steer my draft off-topic.

A Reflection on the Process of Prewriting

Today I was told to list ten jobs I could see myself doing in five years. He also told us to write a list of ten beliefs, but I didn't do it. It took me a while to think of ten jobs, but I did it by the end of the time he gave us. At first I chose the librarian as my first freewrite, as it was the first job I remember ever wanting to do. When he told us to pick another, however, I was drawn towards the tenth job on my list: the author. I see the author as the least stable job on my list and more of a dream that probably wont come true (or at least the way I want it to). I also listed some questions I have about the job and made a cluster with the word "Author" in the middle. He also told us to brainstorm, but I haven't done that yet either.

All of the methods I used got me thinking about the subject in different ways. In the freewrite I thought my first exposure to the jobs. While clustering I thought about specific authors I liked and the perks to being a well-known author. However, the questions got me thinking in more than the usual ways about becoming an author. I starting thinking about my preconceptions and things I really want to know. Even though I was given a limited amount of time to prewrite, I know that I tend to make paragraphs out of simple questions and freewrite naturally without getting too off-topic.

In contrast, the clustering brought out the more trivial things that I can't research very well. I like to have things organized, and a cluster seemed to be lacking just that. Something that goes with one thought bubble had just as much a right to the other and if I connected them I'd have a mess of crossing lines on my paper. If I had a web that worked like the genealogy trees on MyHeritage, this problem would be solved. However, there is also knowing when to stop pre-writing and get down to writing. This becomes hard for me as I could ramble on a subject for quite a while without knowing when to stop.

A Writing Adventure

When I first realized how short this class was going to be, I worried about getting my work done on time. To my surprise, I found that the tight schedule actually helped me focus on my work. However, this didn’t stop me from gradually spending less time and effort on my work. Of course this meant that my first assignment was revised much more than the others. Although it could be because it was the only fictional assignment, and thus the one I enjoyed writing the most.

This first assignment was called Two Voices in which I was to write two papers on one event, each on a different point of view. One paper, Insanity and Brilliance, was written in a formal style while the other, A Pack of Liars, was written in an informal style. I spent more work revising those two papers than I did with my other assignments. I changed existing words to suit the style I was told to emulate. I also changed the order of my sentences to better lead one idea from the next. I even added a fragment or two into A Pack of Liars just to make it look more authentic. For example, “Devil creatures from hell in the basement.” Indeed, the greatest strength of that assignment was how authentic it seemed.

Conversely, the greatest weakness of the paper was that, in making it authentic, Insanity or Brilliance was too wordy and A Pack of Liars was too repetitive. Although the informal had a few mistakes such as, “To darn greedy…” the formal was devoid of spelling and grammar errors. What is lacking in was a decisive conclusion as is stated, “…I conclude that I shall look into this more carefully….” The reason for this was that I had revised the rest of the paragraphs three times already by the time that I had gotten to the final paragraph. By that time I just wanted to finish it.

The next assignment was my descriptive essay titled The Perfect Gift. In this paper I described my walk through a bazaar the day before Mother’s Day. The first draft on this paper was incomplete and lacked smooth transitions from one thought to the next. Upon finishing it everything had smooth transitions and a good sense of emotion, leading the reader successfully through the bazaar. Unfortunately, I had switched from present to past tense two paragraphs in. There were also some spelling errors, but the inconsistent tenses were the predominant mistake throughout.

The third assignment was one I had already encountered before in the 2007 Fall Semester: the Isearch paper. Unlike a research paper, an Isearch paper follows your personal journey towards discovering an answer. You give the dead ends and failures just as much weight as your successful attempts to gather information. My paper, A Major Dilemma, was written in an attempt to answer the question, “Should I dual major in Accounting and Computer Sciences?” The greatest part about this paper was that I solved a problem that had been dogging me ever since I started going to Delta. However, I barely revised it and only half of it was peer-read so many spelling mistakes were found.

My last assignment – not counting all the journals, in class writing, punctuation exercises, and this final exam – was a cause and effect paper I named The Effects of PC Gaming on My Life. This was a subject I was truly interested in, yet I couldn’t get away from my distractions long enough to write it well. I admit that this was the paper I spent the least amount of time on and most of it only completely revised once. Since it I made that paper so quickly, I suspect that there were a handful of spelling mistakes that I missed. However, it had a good introduction that had the human elements described in Chapter 21 of Writing Well. I took into account what my proofreaders suggested and hopefully made it satisfactory.

In conclusion, I learned a few tips on how to better my writing and perhaps guide others towards the right direction if they ask. This accelerated class also kept me from failing a second time and taught me that not all non-fiction writing is boring and dull. In fact, it helped me see writing, as a whole, in a new and better light. I may not become a famous author one day, but I will know the difference between a good writer and a bad one.

A Word's Voice

I knew that good sentences have a rhythm to them before reading On Writing Well; however, I call it the flow of a sentence. I refer to it often when looking over the creative writings of others. On the other hand, I don’t always know what to change it to. When I write I use the thesaurus within Word at least once every two sentences. It’s quite easy to access, although it doesn’t have the versatility or features of Roget’s Thesaurus. It can’t tell me what adjectives, adverbs, and verbs go best with a noun I’ve looked up. It doesn’t tell me if I used the wrong spelling of a word. However, it does give me to tools to correct it myself without flipping through a bunch of pages trying to find a word.

I’ve been asked to proofread things in Word before, but if I don’t limit myself to just writing down suggestions I can’t finish it. I find too many little things to fix and in the end I accidentally loose the author’s original voice. That is if I finish proofreading at all. I have a couple of documents on my computer right now that I promised to proofread, but didn’t finish doing so. With my new knowledge of what not to do I may look them over again and actually succeed in giving it back. It may be months late in coming, but at least it will be done and the writer can finally improve.

The Effects of PC-Gaming on My Life

My father introduced my brother and me to the wonders of the computer when I was four or five years old. Back then there was no mouse, no fancy background to the main screen, just a list of words on a menu that led to various games. Of course they probably led to other things as well, but I wasn’t to know that just yet. When I went to kindergarten a green-screened Apple computer sat in the corner of the room to be used as a learning tool and I enjoyed playing games on the computer just as much as doing a messy project with an easel and paint. To me, the computer was a source of entertainment; I didn’t realize I was learning anything.

The first PC game I can ever remember playing was Goofy’s Railway Express, created in 1991. It taught me how to count, recognize shapes, and follow instructions. At age nine I encountered games with better graphics and bigger ideas such as shown in the various educational games such as seen in the JumpStart and Dr. Brain series. Both are puzzle and problem-solving oriented and made me think through puzzles with logic. My favorite out of all of them was The Time Warp of Dr. Brain. In this game I got to solve increasingly challenging logic puzzles which would pose a challenge to me, even now. Just thinking about it makes me want to look through the old MS DOS games and play them all over again.

This leads me to a negative side-effect of computer gaming: obsession. Most games are very addicting once you become attached to the idea they present. When my parents finally gave me my own computer I barely left my room and I would have forgotten to eat if they hadn’t come in and told me to. In fact, there have been days quite recently where I’ve skipped lunch altogether and played the day away. Fortunately for me, I also had an appetite for watching cartoons so I eventually came downstairs to eat and watch a show.

When I entered middle and high school the games became an hindrance to my work, drawing me away when I should be doing some assignment and leaving me with a distaste for it overall. My grades took a major dive in High School, helped not only by my gaming, but also my reading habits. I’d go to the library and borrow five books each from a different series and then sit down and read them all, one after the other. It soon got to be that I couldn’t concentrate at home, leaving me with rushing to do work while I was still in the classroom.

Now the computer takes up most of my free time, but I have many non-electronic things in my room to pull me out of my gaming addiction. The most productive of these crafty distractions is my fascination with writing and in particular calligraphy. I’ll go downstairs and lay out some paper, ink, paint, brushes, and pens and make something that I later get praise for from my parents. I plan on doing more of these crafty sorts of things during summer, but the pull of gaming is quite strong in my now and will eventually pull me back in to a new game with a new idea.

A Major Dilemma

From an early age I have wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps. He has a good house, an okay job, and a versatile set of skills that lets him help many people in not only our extended family, but the state of Michigan as well. Some of those skills I have no hope in acquiring – such as mechanics, carpentry and, electrical wiring. However, I have picked up on his love for numbers as well as an aptitude for computers. If you were to ask me what my major is I would end up mumbling something like, “Accounting or Computer Sciences I guess.” While this may satisfy the answer, I am left feeling indecisive and unsure about my future. So my major question is, “Which should I major in: Accounting, Computer Sciences or both?” I chose Accounting because it is my father’s primary job since he audits many districts within both Upper and Lower Michigan and files taxes for much of the Tri-Valley Area. This is a dilemma in itself since I’m not sure if it’s truly what I want or what my father has molded me to be. Out of the two Computer Sciences is the one that will keep me perpetually interested. However, I don’t know which branch of computer sciences I am best suited for or will enjoy the most as a job.

My mother and I were sitting on the couch one day after coming home from work and college. Many people have mistaken us as sisters instead of mother and daughter; although she dyes her hair a light blond, while mine was a darker, dirty blond. Back then my hair was longer, cutting off at the shoulders, while hers was the same as it is now, short and fluffed on top. Anyway, I was worrying about my reasons for choosing my major, so I asked her, “I really can’t decide what I want to go into. Should I stay with Accounting, or switch to Web Design?” She amazed me by replying with, “Why don’t you do both? It would bring you better job security.” Of all the states in America, Michigan is the worst for job security so when I heard those two words preceded by “better” it caught my full attention. I knew right away that this would cost much more money than one major or even the traditional major and minor route would, yet I was enticed by the prospect (Kushion).

When I saw my counselor a few days later I brought the idea of it up and she was willing to write down some courses I could choose from for Fall Semester. Among them were basic courses I had yet to take as well as a list of Computer Science Technology classes to start with. From that list were the Windows Foundations, HTML, ecommerce, UNIX/LINIX, Network Essentials, Computer Programming I, and Visual BASIC Programming I classes. When I checked the online registrar I was able to cross off the ecommerce and Network Essentials classes because they weren’t offered in the Fall Semester. I knew that the Windows Foundations class would be very easy, but I couldn’t take the HTML one without taking the former first so now I was down to four. I didn’t want to take any classes dealing with Visual BASIC since my computers professor had hinted that it wouldn’t be offered in later years and would become outdated. I’m still not sure if that is true.

Since I’m not one to work at home because of distractions, I put off scheduling my Fall Semester classes. When Spring Session rolled around I had completely forgotten about scheduling for the fall and was quite busy with my college work. However, the first question that came to mind when I realized we were to write this paper was related to my college choices. As soon as I got the assignment, I went to the online databases and looked up what the media had to say about dual majoring. While looking I found that the starting salaries for Accounting and Computer Services Bachelor’s degrees were reasonably high ($40,993 and $46,275 respectively). They were not the highest on the chart (Engineering holding an average of $49,528), but they were higher than the lowest (Teaching at $33,000) by a fair margin (Cox, Matthews & Associates). This eased my mind a bit about how much I could potentially earn in the careers I want to go into.

I also found that, for the class of 2005, employers for accounting jobs came in second with employers of computer jobs coming in fourth. This is illustrated by these statistics: 3,000 employers for Marketing, 2,955 for Accounting, 1,000 for Management, and 700 each for Computer Sciences and Computer Engineering. Below that chart was another about the majors in demand. In said chart, Accounting took the lead with 9,375 followed by Marketing with 4,070, Management with 3,500, and Computer Science with 2,922 (iMinorities). I thought upon the significance of those numbers and came to the conclusion that the demand for Accounting was impressive and that Computer Sciences have more than likely raised in demand by now.

In another article I found in the database it discussed the pros and cons of a specific major verses a general one. In the words of Julia Barlow Sherlock, CMU career services director: “If you want to be an accountant, you need to major in accounting in order to acquire the necessary experience and skills.” I plan to do so since Accounting is the only business-related major I am interested in. Another quote I found in the article was by Scarlet Edwards, a WTCC counselor, in which he stated: “We tend to think that selecting a college major is the same as selecting a career. For most careers, however, there are several pathways or majors that can lead a student to a particular career.” This is true of the computer science career since I don’t have one part if it that I like in particular. Instead, I like the career field as a whole and wish to use it for more flexibility in a job. As a whole, this article helped set my mind at ease as to my choices in majors since one is specific and the other is general (Ezarik).

Wondering how many jobs there are in Michigan that is accounting and computers related, I went to Monster.com and looked for jobs in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. I found 1466 results from 20 occupations both Accounting and Computer related. Of those jobs 57 were in the Flint/Saginaw area, which is closest to where I live right now. All of these jobs need experience and some sort of degree before they will hire someone which I hope to have by the time I earn my bachelors. However, from the experience of my brother and his friend it is hard to find a job to get said experience. They have filled out about 50 job applications and have got none of them back. Furthermore, when they applied at the local McDonalds their applications went directly into the trash because the employees didn’t like them personally. I’m hoping to avoid this by having a degree to back up my applications, but this will mean that I won’t get a job until I get my first degree.

In conclusion, this search has helped to reinforce my choices in major. The greatest help in this search was the trasfer program lists I found at the Delta webpage and monster.com. I have decided that I will stick with double majoring and if I must, get an early job and scholarships to pay for it.

Works Cited

“SVSU Computer Sciences Transfer Program” Delta College. 18 April 2008. 11 June 2008.

Cox, Matthews & Associates. "Average starting salaries and ranges for selected majors by degree level, 2006-2007." Diverse Issues in Higher Education 24.20 (2007): 46(1). General OneFile database. Gale. Delta College Library. 21 May 2008.

Ezarik, Melissa M. "A major decision: should your choice of college major cover it all or be as specific as your goals?" Career World, a Weekly Reader publication 2007, April-May ed.: 20(5). General OneFile database. Gale. Delta College Library. 21 May 2008.

iMinorities, Inc. "The top 100 employers and the majors in demand for the class of 2005." The Black Collegian Feb 2005: 10(9). General OneFile database. Gale. Delta College Library. 21 May 2008

Kushion, Sally Lee. Personal Interview Heather Marie Kushion. 10 April 2008.

Monster. June 11, 2006 Monster Worldwide, Inc. 9 June 2008 <http://www.monster.com>.

Pritchard, Robert E, Gregory C Potter and Michael S Saccucci. "The selection of a business major: elements influencing student choice and implications for outcomes assessment." Journal of Education for Business 79.3 (2004): 152(5). General OneFile database. Gale. Delta College Library. 22 May 2008.

“SVSU Pre-Business Transfer Program” Delta College. 18 April 2008. 11 June 2008.

Me, Myself, and I

According to Zinsser it is best to write in the first person when writing non-fiction. The quote, “Say what you mean and mean what you say.” comes to mind at this as he also points out that you should not be afraid to speak your mind through your writing. The piece no longer becomes yours when the words don’t support what you truly feel or how strongly you feel that way. The only place I don’t use first person is when I’m writing fictional stories where it doesn’t matter if it relays that the author thought this particular way since they are taking you into their mind anyway. They do not need to state that it is their thoughts on something because the whole story came out of the author’s mind in the first place.

Not all fictional writers write in third person, however, since fictional stories can come in diary format or are restricted to one point of view to add mystery. Two excellent examples of first person fiction can be seen in Terrier by Tamora Pierce and The Amber Chronicles by Roger Zelazny. In Terrier each chapter is a diary entry from Beka Cooper’s (the main character) journal while a member of the Guard. In The Amber Chronicles the whole book is written in first person, following one character and his thoughts throughout. Both of these styles keep the reader guessing as to what will happen next and it makes the whole story seem more personal than one written in third person. I plan to write in first person a bit more and see how much of a difference it makes to the people who read it.

The Perfect Gift

I slam the door shut behind me and wait for the others to get out. The car has one of those cloth tops, brown in color, which is held up by a sturdy frame. The rest of it is a creamy off-white with silvery metal accents. The sunlight warms the exposed skin of my arms, neck, and face as my eyes wander past the cars parked in neat, although unmarked, rows to scan the erected tents beyond. Most are of a white cloth and flat topped, making it easy to see the red, wooden buildings beyond. I ignore the scattered conversation beyond and nearby as I wonder what each tent contains.

The crunch of four pairs of feet on the dirt lot follow my own as we make our way towards the first row of stalls – squares on the ground marked by white lines. The right side of the path is filled with various trailers – some with their doors open and their owners nearby; others closed tight to deter anyone stupid enough to take an empty trailer. My gaze is held by the first tent on my left, lingering on the wares displayed within and in front of it. The footsteps of the people around us is reduced to background noise as we inspect the wooden wonders before us. Large birdhouses hang from a short wall on the right, sparking my interest. I lean closer and feel the rough surface, my eyes drawn to the white strip of paper upon it. $40. Frowning, I consider it, but then shake my head and back away.

We move on to the second stall, filled with more crafts to wonder the eyes. Polished wood bring a smile to people walking by and browsing. Yet again I find something to spark my interest – a polished logs festooned with animals. Atop each log rests a solar light, like the topper of a Christmas tree. I smile as I point them out to my grandma and ask her opinion of them. Shorter than I with black hair, she looks younger than her real age. Her skin is tanned from working in her garden at home. She agrees that one would make a great gift for my mother, yet I’m not satisfied completely. I look for one bearing animals she would like, her favorites being birds and teddy bears, but find them lacking in that respect. Grandma reminds me that we can come back later, so we move on.

The next stall had no tent and instead displayed a variety of stone figures and water basins, some sporting quaint sayings. I glance at them and smile, noting a standalone dog placed on a water basin, but wait for grandma and Aunt Annette to finish before moving on. My two cousins decide get a head start on the rest of us. Both of them are younger, yet taller than me – if only by an inch. Ali has strawberry red hair and is quite skinny and limber from years of dancing. Alona is an oddity in our family, possessing black hair instead of the normal blond and red. You wouldn’t know it, however, since she had dyed it blond not too long ago. Although she is not as thin, she has been dancing for longer than Ali has.

Moving on I spot a larger, three tiered log with a solar lamp on top of it. At the bottom were some pretty stones, a large one engraved with the word “Welcome”. Near the top were two birds: one a yellow finch, the other a blue hummingbird. My eyes lit up at the sight of it and I eagerly looked for the price tag. $30, I didn’t have that much since mom had given me two $10 bills and I had $6 left over. I told this to grandma and she said she would give me $5 if I really wanted it. She agreed that mom would probably love it, but told me that it would be better to see everything the Bazaar had to give before buying. I agreed, but made sure to remember what stall I had found it in. I hoped it wouldn’t be gone when we came back.

We made our way slowly down the row, stopping at most of the stalls, but not buying. At the end of the first row we moved further towards the red buildings and went down the opposite side of the stalls we had been looking at previously. We saved the other side of the row for when we came back down it. When we came to the next row, Ali and Alona were waiting for us. Ali told something to Aunt Annette, both of whom looked much alike since they were mother and daughter, although Annette’s hair is blond and not red. She gave Ali some money to use to buy kettle corn and off they went. Yet again I stayed with Aunt Annette and grandma, browsing the stalls. Mostly I was looking for something to rival what I had seen in the first row; however, I also went to wonder at the talented works of others.

A few things caught my eye, but did not seem as perfect as the one on my mind. Hours ticked by as we browsed, finally ending near the food stalls. Many smells assaulted me, but the sweet smell of glazed nuts overrode them in my mind. I knew the taste. This is the first time they’ve sold glazed pecans so of course we tried one first. It was delicious and much softer on the teeth than the almonds. Aunt Annette was wary of them at first, since a glazed almond had once chipped her tooth. Grandma and I barely gave that a second thought and bought a coned bag of almonds and pecans mixed together. We shared them on the way to the big red building farthest to the right.

Climbing the steps I could smell the sweet yet tangy sent of apple cider, my throat suddenly dry. I told grandma I wanted a glass and she agreed. While we were waiting in line, I decided I’d call mom and ask if she wanted a gallon of apple cider for home. When I flipped open my phone, however, I saw that the batteries were dead. Determined to get my mother’s opinion, I asked Aunt Annette if I could use her phone and she was willing to part with it. I kept the gift I had in mind a secret, asking her if she wanted a gallon of cider. She told me she did and asked me if I could get her a bag of apples. After a moment of confusion I agreed and hung up only to find that my aunt had already left to go downstairs.

Shrugging I put my aunt’s pink Razor in a pocket and told grandma that my mom would like a gallon of cider as well. Each of us with a cup of cider in hand, we went back downstairs to look through the items the gift store could offer us. I didn’t find anything of interest, so I followed the others around, a bit impatient to get my mother’s gift and anxious that it could already be gone. I realized I still had Aunt Annette’s Razor phone in my pocket and gave it back to her. I also kept to my mother’s wishes so we went into the grocery building next door to look for apples. Finding none, I left with the others after my aunt had bought some bread. Back outside we agreed that grandma and I would go back to the first stall with a mysterious package from Ali and Alona in tow. I was told not to let her see the contents, so I made sure that only I held it.

I kept with grandma’s pace although I wanted to move faster, dreading that my gift had already been taken by someone else. When we went down the first row, heading back towards the car, my anxiety surfaced as we neared the middle where a road went between stalls having found only one stall with the solar lights. I asked her if she was sure it was the first row when I knew in my mind that it was. I sighed in relief as we came upon the right stall and found that the item I wanted was still there. Smiling, I took my grandma’s $5 bill and paid the woman in charge of the money. I was perplexed as to how I should move it, however, until her husband agreed to take it to our car for us. I was glad the car was not too far away as he told us of a lady who had him wandering all over the parking lot looking for her car. He had been carrying a heavy toad at the time. He put it safely in the car just as the others came back, making sure that it wouldn’t roll and harm the birds that were insecurely attached to the log. Thus I found the perfect gift for my mother the day before Mother’s Day.

Descriptive In Class Writing Assignment

As you walk into the S-wing building of Delta community College you are immediately faced with the choice of paths. The rough red brick wall to your right continues on while the wall to your left opens up to a short hallway. Turning left you pass a a set of double doors made of an off-white steel on your right. In the center of each door is a narrow glass window surrounded by a coffee brown steel. Said doors are place far into the wall so as to accentuate the large display area between two double doors leading into a large room presumably for lectures.

The footsteps and the voices of people further within S-wing's halls can be heard bouncing off the walls. Within the display are a variety of macabre art from acrylic paintings to digital pictures. Upon a black stand is a statue made out of melted silver spoons. On the glass windows you can find the labels which state the author, title, medium, scholarship, and award for each piece. A reflection of the yourself and the windowed view beyond can be seen within the reflections on the display window.

The scents of nature leak through the ceiling-high windows to your left, the view beyond which is dominated by various construction vehicles and mounds of dirt. The windows are cool to the touch, reflecting the temperature of the world beyond. Sunlight streams through them, warming your exposed skin and making rectangles of light on the floor. A colder gray steel frames the windows while black rubber prevents the sounds of construction from reaching your ears.

At the end is a clear glass door leading outside. it is blocked by yellow caution tape stretched across by two black stands. To your right is a hallway similar to the one you glanced down earlier. However, you see a large room at the end as well as more artwork. The noises you heard in the small hallway get louder as you walk down this new one and you see more people walking past the opening to the room.

Clutter and Simplicity

The words are flowing, so clutter them not
For simplicity is
Was and will be
Easier to read

Pomp and circumstance is long and boring
So cut out some words
And help the reader
Discern what you say

Rewrite and proofread; over and over
Try not to assume
That they understand
Everything you write

To make things simple, try sticking to this:
Instead of “attempt”
And “assistance”
Use “try” and “help”

Forget using “personal” to describe
As well as "in a sense"
"A bit" and "sort of"
They are not needed

Heed what I say now and you will soon find
Through speech or paper
Your words will improve
The message you send

Insanity or Brilliance?

In the case of one Fred Muin I have found him most cooperative and polite. If I had not known that he had in fact murdered his wife I would never have suspected it by his actions. He kept well composed for the duration of our sessions and actually seemed quite brokenhearted in the case of the late Mary Muin. Everyone else I asked held similar opinions and they were also quite perplexed regarding his predicament. His mother, however, informed me that he had uncharacteristic moods every now and then. She even went on to describe a young Fred of twenty climbing a tree in an appallingly undressed condition, yelling about some sort of devil creatures residing within the basement. As you would expect her husband went downstairs to look, but there was nothing in the least bit suspicious within its stone walls.

This led me to believe that poor Fred may possibly have suffered a manic attack frequent of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia. With a curious resolve to prove his mental illness I delved deeper into the life of Fred and his family. As I had suspected, various members of his family also shared these episodes of mania although none had been properly diagnosed. However, all these memories were brought to me from word of mouth within the family itself and could not be very well verified as to its legitimacy. With that in mind, I asked the neighbors if they had heard of any of the various manic attacks the family claimed to have endured. Only Jane the maid and George, Fred’s best friend, told me they had seen Fred’s first bout of mania, but not the others. Suspecting that I had stepped into a considerable web of deception, I took a step back and pondered upon their intentions.

The late Mary’s father was a prosperous and influential gentleman of business and owner of a profitable chocolate factory. In his will I found that ten million dollars apiece were to go to his daughters and the rest to a variety of charities around the world. Supposedly since Fred had proven to be a good spouse to his eldest daughter, the old man had decided that if anything should happen to her, Fred would get the money. Fred was a business owner himself, inheriting the family business, called Muin Tires, from his own elderly father. With this new evidence before me, I conclude that I shall look into this more carefully, although now I am convinced that it is an all-consuming greed that drove Fred to kill his wife.

Marvin Zandolski

Marvin Zandolski

Family Psychologist

A Pack of Liars

Dear Diary,

I’m starting to have a sneaking suspicion that the shrink has seen through our best efforts. He started asking questions about my dear Fred’s “mania” today. Devil creatures from hell in the basement. I mean honestly, he has the strangest ideas. Why couldn’t he have just poisoned her? We wouldn’t have to pretend with that at least, just say that she was ill and passed away. No, Fred had to get his darn gun out and start waving it around. To darn greedy for his own good and too imaginative too.We finally decided that half would go to his family and the other half we would share by the way. Even George (Fred’s best friend) would get part of the money so if this goes belly up we’re all in trouble.

The problem is those darn neighbors. I overheard that the shrink questioned them too. The family should have bribed them into agreeing with us! They had to be stingy of course. Wouldn’t want to waste any of our precious money to protect ourselves now do we? I won’t forgive him if we don’t get the money. I’d rather not go to jail, thank you. Might not be a bad idea to skip town and start a new life. No, I won’t back down now. I won’t be the coward when we’re so close to getting that darn money. I’ll just sit tight and wait it out. Too late to back out now anyway, they’ll have wanted posters of me by the end of the week I just know it. So much for easy money.

What Makes a Writer?

Writers come from many different backgrounds and have many different views on how one should write. Most believe that you must revise over and over again to truly write well. Others never revise at all, saying that revision takes away from what comes naturally. I find myself revising instinctively, changing things only when it occurs to me to do so and mostly leaving things the way I wrote them. Some can only concentrate with silence; others like to have music blaring on the radio. I find it easier to write at night, usually in silence or with the radio on low. Some are night writers; others can only focus in the day. I can write in the day if I have to, but I prefer to get out a notebook and a pencil just before I go to sleep.

Writing in itself is hard work, but when you enjoy doing it, it seems easy. I find it easier to work on something I assigned myself to do than to do something that I was told to do. This is the reason why I don’t do well in English, yet have an enthusiasm for writing and reading. I’m far from professional by any means, but I do sometimes get the itch to write a story. Most of my focus has been on fictional writing, so non-fiction is something I tend to veer away from. I’m a bit afraid of it actually, since I don’t find my life all that interesting and don’t even know where to start when attempting a biography.

On Writing

Most of my writing has been online in roleplaying forums. Basically it's making a story with many different authors, each author controlling one or two characters. There is one creator who keeps things from drifting too much. I plan on making an RP (short for roleplay) soon using a regression-type plot.

In the past I have made a scene in dialog format for a Freshman English class. I have also been working on several ideas since 8th grade. For five years I have kept a diary/journal on day-to-day things which has been nice to look back upon. Sometimes I forget to write, or just don't feel like it so there are some huge gaps in it. In Health class I kept a journal on various things. One entry described a scene from a story idea I had been working on Freshman year.

As you can tell I forgot my eraser today, so any mistakes are there to stay. I believe that I am a rather good writer nonetheless. The hard part for me is to finish what I've started. Some of my papers I didn't finished completely so I didn't hand them in. Band mistake on my part. I have since decided that handing in incomplete work is better than not handing anything in at all. However, I do plan on working hard this "semester" and finishing my papers.

Mozilla Firefox

From My Experience

How I Found Mozilla Firefox

A couple of years ago, my father stumbled upon Mozilla and its various programs. He downloaded them and found that Firefox was much faster and safer than Internet Explorer. Conscious of the family’s online safety copied the Setup.exe file of each program to a USB flash drive and proceeded to install them on every computer we owned. When I asked him what he was doing, he told me to stop using IE and start using Firefox because it was safer. Ever curious and willing to try new things, I soon got to love Firefox’s user-friendly layout and customization.

Incompatible Sites

Ever since then I only use IE for sites that won’t work on Firefox. The first site I found that didn’t work with Firefox was the mmorpg called Flyff (Fly for fun). This annoyed me at first since it was the site I went to the most, but instead of switching back to exclusively using IE again, I decided to not go to the site as much. Actually, I forgot about its existence for a while since I couldn’t get to it using Firefox. I also noticed that some of the windows sites (Such as Windows Updates) will not work with Mozilla.

CPU Overload

When I acquired my laptop after graduation I was thrilled! It came with the Vista Home Premium Edition operating system, which I’ve grown attached to despite its various compatibility issues. Months went by and I began to realize that Firefox wasn’t working properly on my laptop. It would freeze up on me sometimes and slow down the rest of the laptop so bad that I was forced to restart it manually. After a while of this I found out that Firefox was using an immense amount of CPU and memory power to run. Appalled, I was forced to switch to IE whenever I multitasked too much. However, Firefox 3 gave me a ray of hope that I’ll get into more detail later.

Password Manager

This integrated part of Firefox has been a real lifesaver to me. Unlike IE that stores your passwords and doesn’t let you access them, Firefox has a window that lets you see what username and password you use in what website. Firefox also has the added security of the “Master Password” which allows you to set a password that locks all of your other passwords out of prying eyes. I’d advise not setting this to something someone would think of using, but would be easy for you to remember because you’d be using every time you open your browser.

Themes

When I first acquired Firefox I found the idea of customizable themes interesting and soon became to attached to a theme called BlueShift. When I upgraded to Firefox 2 BlueShift was not available and only the original color, Redshift V2, is available to download. Not satisfied with the red color, I went searching again and found a theme called NavyBlue. Now this theme had a nice nautical theme to it and I was currently (and possibly still am) into pirates. I stuck with it for a few months till I saw the darker NASA theme. The customizable blank page and other images piqued my interest and I’ve used it ever since.

The History of Firefox

Beginnings

The fledgling rising out of the ashes of the Netscape browser, Mozilla had some disagreements with it’s parent organization and wanted an independent identity while Netscape knew that it knew how to do send out the product better than Mozilla did, having experience. The theme was awkward and Netscape was overbearing, causing many headaches within Mozilla supporting Netscape staff.

“Many contributors, myself included, pushed for further improvements to the user interface. We got extensive pushback from people within the company. On more than one occasion I tried to flex my muscle as “user interface module owner” (Mozilla parlance, then a something of a novelty — Mozilla had granted me this role in an attempt to show autonomy in project development after the disaster that was the original Modern theme). It did not go well. Weak management stressed the importance of seniority over logic when it came to feature design. I was told I could not expect to use Open Source tricks against folk who were employed by the Company (all hail!). I held true to my beliefs and refused to review low quality patches. I was almost fired. Others weren't so lucky. It became a source of great frustration and disillusionment for me. I lost motivation. I realized Netscape's Byzantine stranglehold permeated the design of the Mozilla product still, and that now as a Netscape employee I was expected to use my “module ownership” to support its whims. I was to be a puppet.” –Ben Goodger

The cofounders of Mozilla decided to start anew attempting a project called Manticore that flopped. Next they attempted a browser called Camino which still exists today in Mac systems. Finally they got the idea for Firefox, which was still a far cry from the Firefox we know today. (Goodger, 2006)

Phoenix

0.1 “Pescadero” Released September 23, 2002, Phoenix 0.1 marked the true beginnings of Firefox. The original idea of Phoenix was to make the Mozilla browser faster and leaner. The menus were customizable at this point, but there wasn’t much content to add to the toolbar. The only addable buttons were home, print, go, and an icon to go to the Mozilla website. However, this early version did have a download manager and tabs which IE hasn’t added until this past year. (Gsurface, 2005)

0.2 “Santa Cruz” Phoenix 0.2 was released on October 1, 2002. A sidebar was added as well as new options to the preferences section and the ability to add extensions and themes to the browser. Slightly faster than Phoenix 0.1, it offered more options to arrange on the toolbar such as history, downloads, new window, search bar, and bookmarks. The search bar was only for Google, dmoz.org, and the page you were currently on. (Gsurface, 2005)

0.3 “Lucia” was released October 13, 2002. Shrinking in file size by 1MB, Phoenix 0.3 made many changes to the overall look of the browser. Previously the refresh and stop buttons were on the right side of the address bar (Like in the current IE browser), but this version moved those buttons to the left side, next to the next, back, and home buttons. The Mozilla team also added an image and popup blocker although it didn’t let you add in custom URLs. (Gsurface, 2005)

0.4 “Oceano” was released October 19, 2002. In this version the option to manually add URLs into the popup blocker was added and the “white list” was updated. Tabbed browsing was improved by the use of hotkeys (such as Ctrl + t for new tabs) and the address bar was tweaked so that all you had to do is press Ctrl + Enter to add the website suffix automatically while typing. (Gsurface, 2005)

0.5 “Naples” was released December 7, 2002. This version was more about fixing bugs than improving the User Interface. A new Intellimouse support allowed the user use the back and forward buttons on his or her mouse to go to the next or previous site and the browser could now remember the previous settings that were used before it was exited. (Gsurface, 2005)

Firebird

Faced with copyright issues with Phoenix Technologies, Mozilla decided to change their browser’s name to Firebird. Firebird 0.6, codenamed “Glendale” was released May 17 2003. They kept the original layout, but of course changed some things in the User Interface. The button images were changed along with the default theme. The file size increased by 5MB because of all the new changes and it’s compatibility with the Mac OS X. In Firebird 0.6.1, relealsed July 28, 2003, the browser had its own executable icon separate from the Mozilla icon. The Mozilla team also fixed a number of bugs, adding cut, copy, and paste icons on the toolbar. The password manager was added in Firefox 0.7 (I’d probably have forgotten a lot of my passwords without this) and the file size was reduced by 2MB. (Gsurface, 2005)

Firefox

In February of 2004 Mozilla decided to change the name of their browser yet again. The previous title of Firebird was taken by a different corporation, but Mozilla had already bought the rights to it and could have kept it. However, they realized that the name Firebird would clash with the name of their email program, Thunderbird, and so changed it to Firefox. (Davis, 2004)

Firefox 0.8 “Royal Oak” let users surf the web offline and gave PC users the option of installing the developer tools with it or not. It also utilized the “new” Firefox icon we’ve come to know and possibly love. They also changed the default engine to Google, but gave users the ability to change search engines if they wanted to. Version 0.9 added compatibility with Linux and a new default theme. Users moving from IE to Firefox now had the option to move their user data over to Firefox. In version 0.9.1 the default theme was revamped into what it is now. (Gsurface, 2005)

The long awaited Firefox 1.0 came in 31 different languages and in the PR version the Master Password was integrated into the Password Manager. (Gsurface, 2005) When I joined the proud few who use Firefox it was in this stage. I hope that this inspires you to use this amazing browser as well, but you are free to your choices as always.

What’s New

Firefox 2 “Bon Ocho”

Many out there still do not know about the superior performance and speed of Mozilla Firefox and the safety it provides. Some have been deceived by the current “statistics” into thinking that IE is safer than Firefox when in fact IE doesn’t release most of vulnerabilities that have been found (Claburn, 2008).

Firefox 3 “Gran Paradisio”

Firefox 3 Beta 1 was released Monday, November 19, 2007 with great expectations. However, this version is not to be used by casual users as errors within the browser make it unstable. A blacklist, like the white list of the popup blocker created back in Phoenix, has been iterated into Firefox 3 to protect users from malware. (Claburn 2007)

“Responding to a report last week that 80% of the bugs found in Firefox 3 would remain unrepaired by the time the software is officially released, Dotzler said in a blog post, ‘That claim is simply [not true]. We've already fixed over 11,000 bugs and features in Firefox 3 and now we're discussing how to handle the remaining 700 issues we wanted to get fixed for Firefox 3.’” -Thomas Claburn

During the testing time many errors and bugs were fixed, one being a CPU spike that caused the usage of hundreds of megabytes of RAM. Since this fix was in the server itself a new version did not need to be downloaded. (Wagner, 2007) As you may have noticed earlier this is one of the big things I’m counting on Firefox 3 to fix. It is also the reason why I download the Betas despite the warning not to.

Just newly released on Tuesday, February 12, 2008, Firefox 3 Beta 3 fixed 1,300 errors found in Firefox 3 Beta 2. (Claburn, 2008)

Bibliography

Claburn, Thomas (February 13, 2008). Mozilla Releases Firefox 3 Beta 3. InformationWeek. Retrieved February 20, 2008 from http://www.informationweek.com

Claburn, Thomas (February 8, 2008). Mozilla Issues Firefox 2.0.0.12 Security Update. InformationWeek. Retrieved February 22 from http://www.informationweek.com

Claburn, Thomas (November 20, 2007) Mozilla Releases Firefox 3 Beta 1. InformationWeek. Retrieved February 26, 2008 from http://www.informationweek.com

Davis, Ziff (February 9, 2004). Mozilla Renames Browser, Revs New Releases. eWeek. Retrieved February 22, 2008 from General OneFile database.

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