Template Task

There are a number of sites with free page design like http://www.oswd.org A visually good design requires serious practice and often art background. But you can use free designs by modifying them to your liking. For example, when you go to http://www.oswd.org do the following steps:
1. Find a good front page design applicable for your project.
2. Download it to your computer using the link in the upper-left side of the page that you found
3. Explore the files in the downloaded collection. Some have just an html file with all the css being embedded into it and also with an additional folder containing art. Some have an external CSS file and the link to it from the html page.
4. Explore the art, substitute the text for your text, and most importantly instead of the "#" symbols in the menu links put url addresses of your own pages. Of course, will be even nicer if you will maintain the top part of the page with logo and links on some of your pages for consistent look, but is not required for the task completion. Just modify the front page to match your business and connect at least a couple of your own pages to its menu. See how CSS relates to HTML elements. If you connect an external CSS file to any page of your and retain the names of HMTL elements that CSS refers to - those styles will be reused on your pages.

This is a good exercise in making your previous learning of HTML and CSS more reality connected.

XML, etc.

Based on the analysis of current students' backgrounds in your Student info posts, skills, and computing environments the plan for the rest of the semester is as following:

This week you will deal with XML as a basis for many Web communication methods and protocols which together with refreshed HTML creates the foundation of the main information formats pushed over HTTP. After that we get into CSS styling to see how they can be applied to HTML and XML allowing to separate Web design aspects (pretty looks) from Web development (basic functionality) to let different people/departments handle these issues separately.

After that we get into JavaScript to learn popular client-side development technologies and how JavaScript can be applied to XML and HTML documents. The following subject will be Ajax where you find out how the previously learned technologies can be enhanced by more advanced client-server interactions where a page will be seen not as a document but a number of rather independent action parts with each allowed to communicate with servers whenever the situation calls for it without complete page reloading or other parts' participation.

Later we move to the server side of the development learning PHP and MySQL that can not only enhance the power of asynchronous communications of AJAX but give you the full spectrum of development tools including both client- and server-side.

W2 HTML Problems

Please see the HTML Deprecation post regarding some img control problems.

W1 Grading Comments

Week 1 work was simple, allowing students to explore Moodle, to see how the research-discussion works and do a good research on modern technologies. The quality was good and showed that we have quite a strong group.
I will just advise those who published posts at the end of the learning week to switch to early work mode as many of you did, since starting week 2 you will have more technical tasks that might create problems requiring help or more work than you planned.

Commentary to W2 material

The goals of this week include not only the basic understanding how HTML is built and used, but also how to use simple online tutorials (like typing “HTML tutorial” Google). This is the practice that you will need to use due to the continuous changes in Web development tools and environment.

This also shows the methodology that we use in this course in all weekly tasks:

1.    You get basic understanding of how the currently learned tool works

2.    Get some simple hands-on experience to make sure that you can really use it.

3.    To see how online tutorials or search for discussion groups can allow to get the specific details that you will need when doing specific tasks without memorizing all small details. This is called JITL (just-in-time-learning) used by professionals in Web development with lots of changes coming every day. In this week’s case it is the understanding that knowledge of HTML is just the knowledge of what tag to use for a specific element that you want to put on your HTML page. Once you learn how to deal with some of them – you do not really need to remember all the tags but go to online tutorials that all have the lists of tags and examples of how to use them, find what you need and see the correct use of it. Instead of taking the semester-long course of HTML and then of each of the known technologies - we can use this methodology for learning a bunch of most important open-source tools for Web development in one class.

4.    The last part of our future weekly work within this methodology includes experience in more complicated and creative use of the elements learned in simple exercises (like a simple meaningless HTML page from this week). This course is project-oriented and starting next week (or you can start thinking even now) you will be choosing and proposing the term project topic, which is a Web site that will be using all technologies learned in this class. Once you decided on the site and it is approved – the last part of weekly tasks will be in applying to your site the technology learned-and-tried in simple hands-on tasks of that week. The site will be growing with every week when you will be adding more features and technologies to end the semester with something interesting that can demonstrate your employers (or potential ones) your ability to handle a bunch of important Web technologies and combine them in one project. This will also be a reminder of how to use specific technologies by just going to your site and seeing how you did it.

More About the Course

 Read here more about the essence of this course.

Purpose of This Blog

Since the course is hands-on, dynamic, and in online format - I will be running a blog that will substitute professor's commentary that you might get in face-to-face classes. It will allow make such comments more timely (whenever they have to be done and not only during class sessions) and more tailored to the current class performance and activities. Here you will find my current comments on the tasks, grades, additional help materials, etc.

Check this blog often since I assume that you've read it and consider it in my evaluation of your course work, task creation, and quiz questions. Additional advice, requirements, or modifications in the weekly tasks will also be posted here.