Personal Course Web Page (12 March 2008)

If you have your RIT web pages on Grace rather than Gibson (the new RIT web server), you will need to migrate your site to Gibson. Instructions can be found on the ITS web server, and require you to log in with your DCE user ID and password.

Once your Gibson site has been activated (test it by going to http://people.rit.edu/~yourid), create a webdesign directory in your Gibson www directory, and in it place an index.html page from which you will link all subsequent assignments. (The url to the page should be http://people.rit.edu/~yourid/webdesign/ .) The page must include a (recognizable) picture of yourself and your name, and should include placeholders for links to your midterm and final personal projects, and a link to your class weblog.

Do your best to use the principles of design you learned in 320/741; I want to see the best you can do (that does not mean putting in every type of bell and whistle you can imagine; keep it simple and clean!)

Remember to design for your audience--which in this case is me. I'll be using this page for three primary tasks: associating your face with your name, finding your individual projects, and finding your blog (which is where you'll be putting all your in-class exercises).

I will grade both your coding and your design; be sure to use standards-compliant HTML or XHTML, and CSS for all your formatting. (That means no Flash--it all must be entirely accessible even on a browser with no graphics enabled.)

Please have the site done by noon on Sunday, March 16th. The page should appear properly at the URL specified above by that time.

Group Project 1: Design Document ( 4 April 2008)

For the project, I want you to create a site that illustrates and explains the history of the Internet and the world wide web. A good starting point is Hobbes Internet Timeline, but there are many other sources of Internet history information that you can draw from. It should allow for navigation in multiple ways, and the issue of how you organize and provide access to the information will be as important as the information itself.

The first group assignment will be to create a design document for the site, using the guidelines provided in the Webmonkey Information Architecture tutorial.

The document should be submitted to my dropbox in myCourses no later than 3pm on Friday, April 4th. A printed copy of the document should be delivered to my office, also no later than 3pm on Friday (you can put it in the box outside my office if I'm not there). Page mock-ups can be included as part of the document (screen shots and diagrams), or you can provide an URL to a web-based mock-up as part of the design document.

Only one document should be submitted per group.

Personal Midterm Site (13 April 2008)

Create a web site about a place that you've lived--and you can interpret that very broadly. Place the site in its own directory in your Gibson account, with its own index.html file. It should have a minimum of five pages.

Divide the content up into appropriate "chunks" of information, and design the site in a way that enhances the presentation of the content. This means you need to think about how to break it up, how to label it, how to navigate through it, keeping in mind who your audience is. I will be evaluating the quality of your content, as well as your information organization and navigation.

Use CSS for text formatting and layout. While you may use inline and document-based styles, I would also like you to create a linked style sheet that controls formatting for some aspect(s) of all of the pages in the assignment.

Include a link to an annotated version of your external CSS (not just a link to the CSS itself, but to an HTML document that has the contents of the CSS along with annotations explaining what the various rules accomplish).

You can assume I'll be using a current generation browser to view your pages, but don't assume that it will be IE, or that it will be a specific hardware platform.

Grading will be based on the following components:

• Content (quality of writing/ presentation, depth of content, organization of content)
• Design (visual design principles, navigation)
• CSS (external CSS, inline only where appropriate, text formatting, positioning)
• Clean, standards-compliant XHTML and CSS
• Documentation (annotated CSS, appropriately commented code)

The site must be online, and linked from your personal page for the class, by noon on Sunday, April 13th.

Final Personal Site (18 May 2008)

Your final personal site is due by noon on Sunday, May 18th

The basic idea behind the project is that you're going to rework the midterm site, incorporating all changes and feedback from the first round of grading, and adding in implementations of various technologies covered during the second half of the class.

Required components include:

• Complete standards compliance in your HTML and CSS.
• CSS used for positioning as well as formatting. No tables or font tags for formatting purposes.
• DHTML functionality--write your own, or use something from an archive.
• Either SSI or PHP-based file includes to place information from a single file on multiple pages (navigation, copyright, etc).
• One subdirectory protected with server-side authentication. Do not protect your entire site, or I won't be able to grade it! Put a link to the protected directory in your site, and with the link provide the user ID and password for access so I can test it.
• At least one CGI script or PHP script implemented on the site. If you use CGI, use a script from an archive!

In place of the annotated CSS file from the midterm, provide a documentation page in which you discuss the scripts and additions to your site, detailing where you found the various scripts, and what you had to do to implement them on the site.

Group Project 2: Final Site & Presentations (19 May 2008)

Final project presentations will take place during our exam week meeting.

Your entire group should be there, ready to present a version of your site that has the full information architecture implemented, with content on the main page, any second-level (main topic) pages, and at least one set of third-level or below (specific content) pages implemented, as well. More is better, of course, but it's possible to get a good grade without all content being completed.

I'm not going to provide a laundry list of technologies to implement on the site--your use of technology should be to facilitate the user experience, rather than to meet a set of arbitrary criteria. That said, effective and appropriate use of the technologies we cover in class--from client-side scripting to back-end scripts--is expected.

Your final project grade will be based on three components:

• Design Document (20%)
• Final Site and Presentation (40%)
• Peer Evaluation (40%)

As you can see, the peer evaluation is a significant component of your final project grade, so if you haven't been pulling your weight in the project up to this point, now would be a good time to step up to the plate and prove your worth to your groupmates. :)

Here's the peer evaluation: