The problem for today is to find two websites you do not like, to analyze why you do not like them, and to describe what needs to happen to fix them. It is not enough to simply say a site is bad for this homework. For this assignment you have to relate what you think is wrong with these two sites to particular ideas you find at Jakob Nielsen's website and/or at Vincent Flanders' Web Pages That Suck site and/or in the class readings. You need to cite in your writeup exactly where the ideas you are using may be found.
First, set up the directories for a simple web site, then create two web pages for that web site using HTML (version 4.01 strict). Call one page index.html and the other citations.html. Place things on the RIT student web server (grace.rit.edu) in a new directory under imm/exercises called BadSites. Put css files into the usual imm/stylesheets directory.
The index.html document should contain your explanation of what sites you chose, why you chose them, what exactly you would do to fix them, and reference where in the Nielsen materials, in the Flanders materials, or in the class readings there is a discussion of this issue. References should take the form of a superscripted sequential number in square brackets, like this [1] for the first reference, and like this [2] for the second reference, and so on.
The citations.html should contain a normal APA formatted series of citations. If you are unsure of how to do this, then try using Citation Machine.
Either modify one of your existing stylesheets or create a new one for this project. Make sure a stylesheet is applied to each of the HTML pages. Make sure the styles follow decent usability standards.
Test your pages against the W3C HTML validator, and revise until it validates as completely correct. do the same for your stylesheet(s).
| item | points | |
| create and place directory correctly | 10 | |
| create and place files correctly | 10 | |
| set permissions correctly | 10 | |
| explain what sites chosen and why clearly | 10 | |
| explain clearly what problems each has and what would fix the problems | 10 | |
| explanation of sites chosen is formatted properly and in a usable fashion | 10 | |
| references in index.html are formatted correctly | 10 | |
| citations.html contains correct entries from correct sources, and they are formatted correctly | 10 | |
| external stylesheet applied to each HTML document, and follows usability guidelines | 10 | |
| file validates against HTML version 4.01 strict standard | 10 | |
| total | 100 |
Start of class 20 Sept