Web Authoring

On-line version of Powerpoint Presentation

Tutorials:

Beginners: Getting started. (1.72MB - takes a moment to download before displaying). NCSA--A Beginner's Guide to HTML

Intermediate: Bare Bones Guide to HTML

Advanced: There are three tutorial links on Cascading Stylesheets. A very short tutorial, a more detailed one and a collection of other tutorials.

(http://www.cssdrive.com/ - http://www.dynamicdrive.com/style/)

IMPORTANT: The most important tutorial will be given in class when a sample webpage will be created showing you the fundamentals of HTML; this class will also include the uploading of that file, creating and modifying other files and any other aspects of HTML you ask about. So ask!

Assessment

Assessment is by project, accounting for 100% of the marks, where you create a full working website. You may view current/previous submissions by clicking in the section below. Please note that the links in the sections below are not examples of best practice; they are merely examples of past work.

Your project should be created in a plain text editor - Notepad for Microsoft® Windows® or KWrite for Linux is recommended (marks may be deducted heavily for the use of any other publishing tool such as Microsoft® FrontPage®).

What colours can I use? Technically you can use any colour that you like; but how the codes for that colour will cause the colour to appear on someone elses computer may be completely different. That's why the idea of "Web-Safe Colors" was introduced.

Today, most peoples computers are sufficiently well equipped to display all necessary colours. But if unsure, choose a colour from the set above.

Generating non-standard characters such as áccented characters appropriately is also easy enough: just choose them from the list (PDF 17.7KB) and insert the proper çödèš.

Assessment 2007/8:

Personal Sites:

  1. it.lilietea
  2. it.ernestoc
  3. it.joshuac
  4. it.janicec
  5. it.seanc
  6. it.susanc
  7. it.johnc
  8. it.jamiec
  9. it.peterg
  10. it.fionak
  11. it.kieranob
  12. it.laurat
  13. it.rhondaw

Bi-Lingual (or tri-lingual) Project website.

  1. it.lilietea
  2. it.ernestoc
  3. it.joshuac
  4. it.janicec
  5. it.seanc
  6. it.susanc
  7. it.johnc
  8. it.jamiec
  9. it.peterg
  10. it.fionak
  11. it.kieranob
  12. it.laurat
  13. it.rhondaw

Your topic for this year is FitzGeralds Park, on the The Mardyke in Cork.

Note that The Mardyke doesn't exist as it once did. Where once it was fabled in song for it's Elm Trees...
The Banks Of My Own Lovely Lee
Oh how oft do my thoughts in their fancy take flight
To the home of my childhood away
To the days when each patriot’s vision seemed bright
Ere I dreamed that those joys would decay
My heart was as light as the fair wind that blows
Down the Mardyke through each elm tree
Where I sported and played ‘neath each green leafy shade
On the banks of my own lovely Lee
Where I sported and played ‘neath each green leafy shade
On the banks of my own lovely Lee

Words and chords for the above song are available in:

...those Elm trees have died long since as a result of Dutch Elm Disease, and The Mardyke itself has seen development that the author of the song would not know how to describe.

Each page must have a language option carefully placed on the page that allows the reader to change from viewing the website in the current language to the other supported languages. The supported languages are: Once an alternate language is chosen, the site should remain operating in that language until another language is chosen.

A suggested language switcher might look like this:

All normal rules about website creation will apply.

Due Dates: 20th December 2007
(English version with French links in place)
3rd January 2008
(Multi-lingual version with all links in place)
18th Janary 2008
(Tour booking version with start of feedback in place)

Assessment 2006/7:

The two topics thus far selected upon which students may create a website on are:

On-line Submission:

Your project should be SFTP'd securely, using our alternate secure port, to the folder 
/home/yourusername/public_html
on the webserver 
mymailbox.fachtnaroe.net
- this will enable viewing of the site by pointing of the browser at the location:
http://mymailbox.fachtnaroe.net/~yourusername/

Click below to see this years student submissions. Not all will be active yet - or ever!

Assessment 2005/6:

Please disregard these instructions for future years. This was a once-off arrangement.

This year your assignment must include at least the following elements:

Paper Submission:

This is just a minimum of five pages:
  1. Standard Cover Sheet,
  2. 1 A4 page with a site map, description of the target audience of the site, reason for choice of subject material, summary of the steps used to create the site,
  3. At least one representative page from the website printed,
  4. A print-out of the HTML behind the page selected above,
  5. An evaluation of your finished product.

On-line Submission:

Your project should be saved in the folder 
/192.168.1.252/home/yourusername/public_html
- this will enable internal viewing of the site by pointing the browser at the location:
http://192.168.1.252/~yourusername

As the first page of a website should be called 
index.html
and there is already a single webpage in that folder you're going to have a problem. They can't both be called 
index.html
so we'll use a frameset to get around that problem.

We can't just delete the previous page as the external examiner hasn't seen it yet, so no official marks have been allocated. Therefore, it has to stay.

To access your files on a website you normally use FTP. As you are creating these files on an internal Microsoft Windows network you can access your folder using a file explorer window and typing \\192.168.1.252 or \\LINUX2 into the Address bar. Provide your username and passwd from the previous Linux system.

Once this folder is opened you can use normal file explorer actions to put together your site in the public_html folder. If you want to open a file to edit it, right click on it, choose Open With and use the Notepad editor. Reload your site in the browser (which you should have open simultaneously) to see how your changes are working.

Framesets and frames were hailed as a superior way of dividing up the screen into separate sections when they became available first. Today, the use of frames is heavily deprecated; despite this we will use them to solve our problem of the two items needing to share a folder.
  1. Rename the existing index.html in the location above as history.html
  2. Rename the first file of your website as webbing.html - it should already be called index.html but as explained above, this has to change
  3. Copy your website into the folder
  4. Create a new file called index.html and put the html below into it
  5. Create a new file called internet-task.html and put the html below into it
  6. Test your site by using a web browser to go to: http://192.168.1.252/~yourusername
index.html 
<frameset rows="40,*">
	<frame name="topline" src="internet-task.html" />
	<frame name="mainwindow" src="webbing.html" />
</frameset>
internet-task.html 
<html>
<body>
<a href="history.html" target="mainwindow">History & Structure of The Internet</a>
</body>
</html>

NB Subject Matter NB: You may create your website around any subject you like as long as you clear it with your tutor first.

Sites 2005/6

(Closed to further submissions)

Assessment 2000-2004:

The website must be submitted online, so that the extern can check it for appearance and for working links etc. (The online submission should be matched by a paper submission. The paper submission should include a signed 'My Own Work' form).

Related:

Miscellaneous:

A sample site, dealing with dolphins. No representation is made about how accurate the contents of this site are.

Photographs from field trips: