Live Chat

I recently discovered a really great website: firebase.com. It will store data for your applications, enabling you to write really awesome programs (such as multi-player games) using it - and the Development account (which I used) is free!

To communicate with the API, I had to learn HTML. I also learned some CSS and jQuery to make things easier. Then I wrote a live chat app using my knowledge.

In the app, you can use HTML to format your comments. At one point I allowed use of the &ltscript&gt tag, but after users abused it I disabled it. I also added a couple of new tags: &ltconsole&gt and &ltincode&gt You can post a comment by either clicking "Post Comment" or pressing the Alt key on your keyboard.

Fix Your Window

Click to try out the program!

In my original Smash It! program, I had a message that said, "Want me to fix it? Ask in Tips & Feedback!" I didn't want it to automatically fix itself, because that wouldn't be true to life. When you break a window, you live with the consequences.

Well, a lot of users wanted me to fix the window. One of the users figured out how to fix it himself, and started telling everybody how to do it. I didn't like that; it totally ruined the point of my program. Fixing a window shouldn't be easy. So I modified my code, and his solution was outdated.

He found a new method for fixing the windows. At first he didn't want to tell me about it, for fear I would circumvent, but finally he decided I wouldn't be able to. Laughing with pleasure, he wrote a fix-it program that used the method to fix windows, and started telling everybody about it.

I didn't like that. So I came up with a way to make his program stop working. I set things up using HTML5 storage so that his program worked great... for him, at least. For everybody else, it was useless. He didn't think of fixing it, because whenever he tested it, it worked. In fact, he happily talked about how good he was at programming. I just played along; ignorance is bliss.

I told him about it the next day. It's no fun to fool someone if they never know they were fooled.

Anyway, other users were writing fix-it programs, too. I decided it was time for me to write a decent one - a fix-it program that was guarantied to work. I didn't want it to ruin the point of my original program, so I created some virtual money; you could pay 30 virtual dollars to fix the window. My program made it to the top of the hot list; it was as popular as the original program.

Art Maker

Here's a very successful program I wrote recently. You just scribble on the screen, and press Enter; the program will generate some code for a program. You just copy the code, and then use the code as a new program on Khan Academy.

If you make a mistake, press Z to undo. As always, if you have a problem, comment and let me know!