Required reading (so far)

"Don't Make Me Think", chapter 2

"Introduction to Good Usability", entire 20 pages

 

 

Web topics on this site (so far)

Either covered in class or expected as out-of-class reading:

Additional examples of these design elements can be found on the class Diigo site.

 

Things you should know by the first quiz

First, make sure you've read the two readings on the left. Then, browse the course web pages on the right for information that's new to you. Finally, seven additional points are highlighted below.

1. You should know the difference between local and remote web site files.
Your web site files are kept in two places—one is your local site and the other is your remote site.

Your local site is on your memory stick during class. (You might also put a copy of your local site on your own computer.) You can preview your local files from within Dreamweaver by going to the File menu and selecting Preview in Browser, then choosing a browser program from the list. On the Recitation Hall site computers, Safari does a better job of previewing files than Firefox. At this point, your site is considered "unpublished" because it cannot be viewed from another computer.

Your remote site is on the University web server, copland.udel.edu. Copland uses the Unix operating system, so we have to follow Unix rules for file names and file permissions (access rights). When you put your files on copland, they are "published" and are available to anyone else who knows the web page address (URL). For this class, your published web files are in the location, http://udel.edu/~username/art307.

2. You should know the difference between a home page and any other web page.
Home pages have a specific file name and that is index.html. The presence of an index.html file becomes the file that is automatically loaded when the directory or folder name is used as the URL. For instance, the name of the home page file for UD is www.udel.edu/index.html, but users can just enter www.udel.edu. Without an index.html file, you get this.

3. You should know how to define your personal web site in Dreamweaver and how to recreate the site definition whenever you need to on a different computer.
Here are the site definition instructions for review.

4. You should know the significance of "content, structure, and presentation" as it relates to web design.

The separation of content, structure, and presentation is a fundamental principle for web design. We'll use two sets of examples for our class discussion. Here is one set set of examples:

  1. Content
  2. Content + structure
  3. Content + structure + presentation

Here is another set of examples:

  1. Content
  2. Content + structure
  3. Content + structure + presentation (this page)

5. You should know the format of HTML tags and CSS statements.
 
These are illustrated on the HTML and CSS code page.

6. Build your annotated resource links, bookmarks of design models, and create your own electronic bookshelf.
Start by participating in diigo and by saving the sample chapters into a "bookshelf" folder. Additional examples of these design elements can be found as our class Diigo site grows.

7. You should know that almost every presentation element of a web page is based upon default settings. As a web designer, your design reflects how well you manage these settings.
Our first example of this was entering text on a new page produced black text on a white background.