Mechanics of the course

This is an on-line course in "Introductory Web Site Design". As it is an on-line course, it meets very seldom face-to-face. Almost all of the information about the course is to be found on Blackboard. There is also a web page which repeats a bit of the information and then directs you to use Blackboard. You can find it at this URL (web address):

          http://faculty.cs.niu.edu/~hutchins/CSCI275/main.htm

You need to know how to use Blackboard. If you do not know how, go to this URL:

          https://webcourses.niu.edu

and log in to the system using your login ID (typically a Z-number) and your Novell password. You will find a list of courses in which you are enrolled, and one of them should be CSCI 275. Select it.

There are tutorials available to tell you how to use Blackboard. Look under "Student Resources" and then "Student Help".

On Blackboard, the CSCI 275 class site offers a number of choices such as "Announcements", "Course Information", "Assignments", "Lectures" and "Quizzes". Look through these and become familiar with what information is where.

Under "Assignments", you will find homework assignments (surprise!). There are documents you can read or print or download. When you finish an assignment and want to turn it in, you do so through Blackboard. For each assignment, there is an item marked "View/Complete Assignment". Select it and you will find a page where you can submit your files. (You can submit multiple files.) Do not paste your files into the text area on that page, and do not send them by e-mail to your instructor or the teaching assistant. We have a due date for each assignment, and we have a late penalty for homework turned in late.

Likewise, the quizzes are all on-line quizzes. You may take each quiz up to 3 times. Your score will be the best of the 3 scores. We have a firm deadline for each quiz. Pay attention to the deadlines. (Hint: As these are on-line quizzes, they are also open-book quizzes. You can look up the answers.)

The tests are given in face-to-face class meetings, and they are not open-book events.

You can find your quiz scores and homework scores on Blackboard using the "My Grades" feature of the "Tools" menu. A word of warning: if you start taking a quiz and stop in the middle, saving it to be continued next time, please make sure you do complete it before the deadline for that quiz.

Your instructor can make some adjustments on Blackboard's grade record. For instance, if you submit an assignment and then discover it contained an error and you want to do it over, you will need to send e-mail to ask the instructor to cancel the earlier attempt.

What do you need?

As indicated in the syllabus, we have a textbook. While it is large, thick, heavy and expensive, you do need it because the questions on quizzes and tests are based on material in the book. We also have a series of lectures available as supplementary material, but they are not a substitute for the book.

You will need a web browser. On a Windows system, the most common browsers are Internet Explorer (which comes free with Windows) and Mozilla Firefox (which you can download for free). On a Macintosh, some browsers include Opera and Mozilla Firefox. There are many browsers available. Does it make a difference which one you use? The answer is "it shouldn't, but it does". There are minor differences.

You will need a text editor. This is not the same as a word processor. A word processor is a desktop publishing tool; it dresses up the test you are writing with hidden printing instructions such as "center this block of text" or "put this in an 18-point font". We want to create plain text files with no such extra or hidden formatting. In Windows, you can use Notepad, and on a Macintosh, you can use TextEdit. There are many editors available. Find one you can live with. (Search for "text editors".) Do not use a word processor such as MS Word to create your HTML files. Likewise, there are "authoring programs" that can be used to make web pages. Do not use these either in this course, as the idea of the course is that you should learn how web pages work, not simply how to use a piece of software.

You will need a folder somewhere for this course, and inside it you probably should have a separate folder for each assignment. You can keep this on a desktop computer at home, or on a notebook computer, or you can use the computer labs on campus and carry a USB drive or store your files "in the cloud". (Don't lose them.)

How do I get started?

The homework involves writing HTML documents. You write with a text editor and look at the results with a browser. That is:

• Start a new file with the editor. Put in some HTML code.

• Save it as a file with a name ending in ".htm" or ".html".

• In a different window, use your browser. Go to the File menu and tell it to open the file you just created. On Mozilla Firefox, this is "File" and then "Open file". On Internet Explorer, this is "File" and then "Open" and perhaps "Browse".

• The browser should now show you the page you are describing in the the file.

• Go back to the editor and add something or change something. Save the file.

• Go back to the browser and refresh the image. You should see the result of the change you just made.

You can create the web page by going back and forth between the editor and the browser. This is not difficult.

In some assignments, you will need more than one file. It is a good idea to keep all of these in the same folder. (You can read about "relative path" and "absolute path".)

Notice that we are not posting these as actual web pages for all the world to see. We are just using them as files. If you do want to put up web pages of your own, you can do so (free) as an NIU student. We have a brief web page about this possibility. Please do not post your homework on the student server.

What if I have trouble getting started?

Start with Assignment 1. It asks you to make a web page that resembles a specific document. You will need various HTML features: a centered heading, a graphics image (which is provided), different sizes of type, boldface, italics, a horizontal bar and an unnumbered list. None of these is difficult. Go read about them in the textbook and/or the lectures. Do one thing at a time.

You may find it helpful to look at the HTML that generated some web pages. You can do this in Mozilla Firefox by using "View" and then "Page Source" or in Internet Explorer by using "View" and then "Source". Be warned: The source code for a web page can be hard to read, so try this first with relatively simple pages, such as this one.

The later assignments involve various HTML possibilities: color, graphics, fonts, tables, forms, frames and styles. The mechanics of working on those assignments are still about the same.

You can, of course, ask for help from the instructor or from the teaching assistant, either by e-mail or during office hours.