IDCC 370: Web Design I   Spring 2008

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This handy little state drop-down element and this country drop-down element will save you a great deal of typing. (Warning: These links open in new browser windows.)


After opening a linked file, just copy the markup to the clipboard, and in code view paste it in your document at the desired place. Or if you prefer, save the file to your assign3 folder, then open, and take it from there.

You are free to use these form elements in Dreamweaver, whenever you need to, especially in your final assignment, due NLT 4:30, Thursday, December 13, delivered to Gail Wessell, Smith 121.

Thinking about how to create a form is half the battle in designing an interactive survey for the Web. The Form Development Cycle tutorial (opens in a new window) will help you to understand the 8-part form development cycle that will make Assignment Three much easier for you as you go about designing your on-line survey. I highly recommend that you step through the tutorial before too much longer.

Note that you can save yourself much time and misery if you plan carefully. This assignment is a perfect example of how to use paper and pen (low fidelity prototyping) literally to sketch your plan and its phased implementation. This approach to form design is iterative. You design, implement, test, redesign, reimplement, and retest. Work slowly, carefully, and in small increments, just as we are working in class on understanding the various form elements.

If you have questions, just e-mail me at wbuchholz@bentley.edu. Feel free to comment on this announcement, or if you want to e-mail it, click on the little mail icon directly below. Note also that each announcement has a permanent link, available through the announcement title and posting date.

Labels: check boxes, Dreamweaver, Form Development Cycle, form elements, Form Elements Accessibility Guide, interactive form, on-line survey, radio buttons, survey

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Next class we will begin work on the interactive form elements of the Assignment 3 specifications in class. Our first challenge will be to understand and create correctly labelled interactive form elements. Over the years, students have found this technology to be inviting and actually quite a bit of fun. I hope you will have the same experience. The screenshot of the forms tab insert bar (above) shows one easy way to access the 14 form elements available to you in Dreamweaver. The screenshot to your right shows the drop-down/fly-out menu system that also allows access to the form elements. I use them both, depending on where I am working in the form being built.

In class, we will very carefully construct a prototype form that will include all the elements needed for assignment 3.

To make a form work on our servers, you will need some special markup that calls up a Perl file (genmail2.pl) in the cgi-bin (Common Gateway Interface-binary) folder on the server. This HTML markup is simple text in a Notepad file (cgimailto.txt) containing hidden elements that allow the form to function. These elements must be inserted into the head of the form tag. Therefore, in class on, you will need this markup, often referred to as the cgi snippet, to test the functionality of your form.

If you have questions, just e-mail me at wbuchholz@bentley.edu. Feel free to comment on this announcement, or if you want to e-mail it, click on the little mail icon directly below. Note also that each announcement has a permanent link, available through the announcement title and posting date.

Labels: Assignment Three, binary, cgi snippet, Common Gateway Interface, form elements, form tag, interactive form, Perl

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Our focus in class will be on creating a number of CSS rules that allow you to float callouts and graphics left and right. The float, as many of you have learned already, is an essential design concept in CSS. Using your exercise six cleanly scrubbed, XHTML-ized, Semantic Web-proofed, well-formed and valid text, Open Communication Climate, you will plant two callouts and two graphics, both left and right, making necessary adjustments to the graphics and text to improve design for readability and overall aesthetics. You will want to pay special attention to the relationship of the graphics, callouts, paragraph size, and headings: a full-bore design experience is about to be yours.

The graphics left and right are the ones you will use for this exercise. I will provide written instructions and will work through the design and rule-writing with you in class. I think you will find working with the float to be a lot of fun.

At the bottom of your newly designed page, you will add this source note after the Buchholz source note:

Microsoft Office Clip Art Photographs: j0406569.jpg (Shaking hands) and j0289517.jpg (2 women in office). (n.d.). Microsoft Office 2003. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation.

Remember: when you hand in Assignment Two, due Tuesday, November 20, turn in the annotated Assignment One, so that I can make sure you had no trouble making your corrections. Be sure also to take advantage of shift-F7 in Dreamweaver; (spell-check is your best friend in Web design.)

If you have questions, just e-mail me at wbuchholz@bentley.edu. Feel free to comment on this announcement, or if you want to e-mail it, click on the little mail icon directly below. Note also that each announcement has a permanent link, available through the announcement title and posting date.

Labels: CSS, Float, Graphics, Microsoft Clip Art, Open Communication Climate, scrubbed, Semantic Web, source graphic, spell-check

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Next class, we will begin our assignment two design project using this Word doc about open communication in the workplace. In class, I will provide specific directions on how to handle this document, which will become exercise 6. The basic idea is to show you how to import a Word doc. file and then to scrub up the XHTML in preparation for named fragments and style rules application (readied for the Semantic Web). This will be practice for assignment two, due Thursday, November 15.

If you have questions, just e-mail me at wbuchholz@bentley.edu. Feel free to comment on this announcement, or if you want to e-mail it, click on the little mail icon directly below. Note also that each announcement has a permanent link, available through the announcement title and posting date.

Labels: named fragment, Open Communication Climate, Semantic Web, Word doc

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Next class we will finish up the look and feel of your Web site template by creating the CSS "buttons." I think you will be amazed at how attractive your site will be when the banner and buttons are activated on all your pages. If you enlarge the screenshot to the left, you will be able to see some of the detail in the template page for exercise 5. With any luck, we will be able to complete the lion's share of this exercise next class. At any rate, you will receive a sheet of directions that will allow you to work on your own outside of class.

For the next two classes or so, you should bring your Assignment One, if you have not finished correcting it yet, and any exercises that you may need to complete or polish up. If there is time in class, you may be able to tackle some of this material. Remember, Assignment Two is due Thursday, November 15, at the beginning of class.

If you have questions, just e-mail me at wbuchholz@bentley.edu. Feel free to comment on this announcement, or if you want to e-mail it, click on the little mail icon directly below. Note also that each announcement has a permanent link, available through the announcement title and posting date.

Labels: Assignment One, Assignment Two, banner, buttons, CSS, css buttons

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As a group, you created some wonderful Web sites for Assignment One. Congratulations to you all. I want, however, to highlight some areas to watch out for when creating a Web site and in making your corrections on the assignment. Here goes:

1. Writing and proofreading: The Web is both a graphic and a written medium. In Web design, you must be very careful on both fronts, as you are publishing to the world. Make sure that your writing is concise and correct. Watch your phrasing (how you say something), punctuation, spelling, and proofreading (shift/F7 in Dreamweaver results in the spellcheck utility, pictured at right). Good writing is critical in the design of Web sites. If your site is riddled with errors, your credibility and professionalism plummet. People will not trust the information you are trying to convey. A site that is untrustworthy is just taking up cyberspace. Don't let that be you.
2. ALT: Be sure that all graphics contain Alternative Text (ALT). This becomes very important as you construct your pages for Assignments Two and Three.
3. Contrast: In Web design, when setting text against a background color or layer, you must be very careful to create high contrast, otherwise the text will not be visible. The extreme, as I've mentioned, is black text on a black background or white text on white. It just doesn't work. In some of your pages, you put dark text against a dark background: no go. Note too that when you use a black page background, your visitors will have a difficult time reading blue and maroon hyperlinks. You need to change the color of the background, hyperlink, or text.
4. Vertical spacing: Some of you have too much space vertically—usually extra enters. Kill them.
5. Meta tags: be sure to place meta tags for key words and page description on all your pages. These need to be unique to the page. Make the meta tags work for you through improved Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
6. Page titles: Remember that the <title> tag is your visitor's (and your) best friend for all the reasons discussed in class. Make sure that all your tags are structured so that the key identifying information for the page itself comes first, followed by key site identification information. Here is the ideal model: <title>Biography of William Buchholz, IDCC 370, Bentley College, Waltham, MA 02452</title> Another: <title> Exercise 5 – The Finished Template, William Buchholz, IDCC 370, Bentley College, Waltham, MA 02452</title> You get the idea.
7. Click here: Avoid this. Remember, you should always make in-line hyperlinks descriptive of their destination. Rather than “William Buchholz resume, click here,” you should set the link descriptively: “William Buchholz resume.” Creating descriptive links helps your site visitors and, of course, contributes to more effective SEO.
8. Quoting and paraphrasing: Some of you are still confused about how to handle quotes and paraphrases. The easiest rule of thumb is this: if you use three words or more in a row from your source, be sure to put quotations around this material. You can intersperse your commentary with quotes, but be very careful about this. And remember to refer to the handout for Exercise One (Sourcing Your PowerPoint Slides) that spelled out exactly how to create your documentation both in the text and in the sources.

If you have questions, just e-mail me at wbuchholz@bentley.edu. Feel free to comment on this announcement, or if you want to e-mail it, click on the little mail icon directly below. Note also that each announcement has a permanent link, available through the announcement title and posting date.

Labels: "click here", alt, Assignment One, background, contrast, meta tags, proofreading, shift f7, sources, spacing, spell-check, writing