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Course Description
This course focuses on the construction of a web site. In an introductory session, we examine some general principles that set asside good web sites from lousy ones. Students than two weeks time in which to assess a web site, and prepare a statement what their own web site will be about.
After the introductory sessions, students will start to build their own web sites. They will be provided with free web space where they can design their own sites. This web space will be available even after the course ends.
The course will not deal with using an application package to compose pages. Instead, students will be taught how to hand-code the pages. The emphasis is on the use of standard compliant XHTML 1.0 and CSS level 2.1. Validity control will be an integral part of the composition process. Students are allowed whatever tool they wish to use to create their sites, but final project sites must be standards compliant.
The course will cover all of XHTML, except the following
The course will cover most, but not all of CSS 2 revision 1. At the time of writing, this is a draft W3C recommendation.
Finally, the course will, for the first time, include an introduction to javascript. Students will not be required to use it in their web sites.
Course objectives
After taking this course students
Prerequisites
There are no other formal prerequisites for this course. However this course is not suitable for technophobes. Students should be able to use a Microsoft Windows XP computer, e.g. click on an icon to run a program. Students should also be familiar with basic concepts of computer hardware and software, concepts like files, memory, characters, bytes etc. They should have general idea as well as a basic understanding of the Internet and of its client/server architecture. Everything that goes beyond that will be explained in class or by personal tuition from the instructor. No prior knowledge of HTML and CSS is assumed.
Instructor
Thomas
Krichel
Palmer School of Library
and Information Science
C.W. Post
Campus of Long Island
University
720 Northern Boulevard
Brookville, NY 11548–1300
krichel@openlib.org
work phone: +1–(516)299–2843
Private contact details may be obtained from the online CV.
Class structure
Each class will have a lengthy presentation by the instructor. For some small part of class time the students will work directly with their computers under the supervision of the instructor. However, give the hefty weight of the class material, students are expected to do much of the work on the web site at home.
Classes will be held in the ERC at Bobst Library between 12:00 and 17:00. The instructor will be around in the lab from around 11:00 and stay on after 17:00 to answer questions and allow the students to work on their web sites under some supervision. In addition the instructor will be at the Manhattan campus on Wednesdays to see students individually as requested by students.
Students are encouraged to subscribe to the class mailing list.
Class details:
| 0 | 2004–09–11 | Prologue: web site assessment |
| 1 | 2004–10–02 | major HTML |
| 2 | 2004–10–09 | major CSS |
| 3 | 2004–10–16 | minor HTML |
| 4 | 2004–10–23 | minor CSS |
| 5 | 2004–10–30 | http and apache |
To print the slides in Microsoft powerpoint, press control-p to print, then under "Print what" choose "Handouts", and under "Color/grayscale" choose "Pure Black and White". You can also use openoffice to print the slides.
Readings
As far as the design of web sites is concerned, Krug (2000) and Nielsen (2000) are classic references. Morville and Rosenfeld (2002) is a good book on information architecture. The most relevant contents of all three books will be discussed by the instructor.
The technical specifications of HTML and CSS are on the web. HTML 4.01 is defined in Raggett et al. (1999). CSS level 2 revision 1 is defined in Bos et al. (2003). http is defined in RFC 2616. URLs are defined in RFC 1738, but that definition was updated in RFC 2396. MIME types are documented in IANA 2002. The documentation of apache is online at http://www.apache.org.
If students want a textbook on HTML and CSS, they are spoiled for choice. However, students should be aware that must books teach the loose version of HTML and place much less of an emphasis on stylesheets as the course contents does. This is a LIS-style course with an emphasis on separation of contents and presentation. Castro (2002) is a widely used and reasonably priced book for beginners. Werbach (2002) is a good online source. A book that the instructor likes a lot is Musciano and Kennedy (2002). But it is expensive. An excellent book on CSS is Bos and Lie (2002).
Mailing list
There is a mailing list for the course at https://lists-1.liu.edu/mailman/listinfo/cwp-lis650-krichel. All students are encouraged to subscribe. As a rule, answers to email sent to the instructor will be copied to the list. There are exceptions to this rule
Assessment
Before each class except the first, there will be a quiz on the issued covered in the previous class. The average of all the quiz results will count for 5/12 of the assessment. The worst performance in a quiz is discounted. On the second class meeting, the students will hand in a one-page typed statement about the web site that they want to build. This statement should cover both the purpose of the web site and the site's architecture. The assessment of this statement will count for 1/12 of the grade.
On that second meeting, students will also hand in a web site assessment. This assessment should cover the web site of a LIS academic department in the US or abroad. The assessment should not aim to describe the web page, but assess its strength and weaknesses in terms of the usability criteria reviewed in the first class meeting. Each students should announce what web site they want to cover to the class email lists. The assessment should roughly be two typed pages long. If students don't like the first grade they get on the assessment they will be given a chance to improve it. The web site assessment will count for 2/12 of the course.
The remaining 4/12 will be assessed through the student's ability to build a web site. The site must validate against the strict version of the XHTML 1.0 specification. The site must have a style sheet with the main presentational elements. The site should provide an information source about a topic, though it need not to be comprehensive by any means. Students are recommended to develop the web site on behalf of someone else, just to get useful feedback on the site and to avoid creating something that is too designer-centered. The informational contents of the sit should go beyond simple link collections or path finders. Personal web sites, such as for the student describing themselves, are not allowed. The total amount of information contained should roughly be equivalent to a conventional student essay. It has to be finalized one week after the last class.
Students
Daniel Socoloff
Caroline
Mavergames
Carmen
Dubuisson
stephanie rubino
Hilary Gerson
Lyudmila
Shpilevaya
Sophia Empel