~ I am incredibly embarrassed. I've been emailing myself my report, but I never got around to posting it. And I've managed to forget two weeks in a row. :( Better late than never, I suppose.

Week 10: July 16th - July 20th

OUTCOMES: Wow, what a week. First off I began and nearly completed a script that will convert all postings using County News and other related templates to postings using a new template that I’ve created. This new template will replace at least eleven existing templates, freeing up lots of space in the CMS application and making customer support a lot easier.

This new code essentially searches a directory for postings using each of the templates that are being removed and copies their content from placeholders in the old template to the appropriate placeholders in the new template.

Users to the site will not notice any difference, but on the backend things have changed considerably.

This week I also worked with Susan on the prototype. I added simulated table sorting functionality by directing users to a sorted page based on values in the URL’s query string. This way I didn’t have to program a table that sorted (as this is just a prototype site) but still gave the user that functionality.

I did end up doing some Javascript programming, however, when I was asked to make some checkboxes actually change the layout of a table. Essentially, certain data would be displayed when particular checkboxes were checked. Since creating a database was out of the question, I coded some Javascript that would hide/unhide the information the user requested when certain checkboxes were clicked.

COMMUNICATION: This week I met with Susan a few times to go over the County Calendar prototype, but for the most part of been on my own just typing away. Its been a pretty busy week.

NEXT WEEK’S GOALS: Next week I think the prototype might be finished. Also Jeff comes back, so I will likely be working with him on the new script I wrote. I don’t think the Graphics page I was going to be designing will ever come off the backburner – I should inquire about it again.

REFLECTIONS: It now seems that my weeks have been alternative between “computer science” weeks and “digital media” weeks. This week was both, although computer science certainly took the spotlight.

OTHER: If I had read this report a year ago, I would never have thought that I was the one who wrote it. Me? Programming C# and Javascript? I know I’ve said it before, but its amazing to see how much an internship can teach you.

~ I am incredibly embarrassed. I've been emailing myself my report, but I never got around to posting it. And I've managed to forget two weeks in a row. :( Better late than never, I suppose.

Week 9: July 9th - July 13th

OUTCOMES: This week I ran interference with lots of customers requesting help with CMS on the Internet and administrative services on the Intranet. I made quite a few updates to Internet sites, including building a new page for Fire Rescue, adding some documents to the site for both the Building Division and the County Admin office, and I also posted a new meeting cancellation for a Growth Management advisory board.

The biggest outcome, however, was rolling out the new Utilities site structure. For the past few months I have been working off and on with a marketing coordinator from the Utilities department to completely redesign their pages. We finally removed the old site and brought the new one live this week.

COMMUNICATION: This week was all about phone calls and emails. I was in constant contact with customers asking for help with their pages. In one case I was on the phone for at least an hour while I gave someone a walkthough on how to use the Events Listing function on the Intranet.

NEXT WEEK’S GOALS: Next week I will be working with Susan on a prototype for the new Meetings Calendar application. With Jeff out of the office next week, I will also be working on some scripts so that we can implement them upon his return.

REFLECTIONS: After all the programming I have been doing lately, it was nice to move back into the design aspect of my job for awhile – helping customers post content and get it organized. It looks like this prototype job I will be doing with Susan will also be design-centric. I cant wait :)

OTHER: Every day I keep finding that Orange County Government, in terms of employees, is larger than I thought.