Date

topics (edited to add notes after class meetings)

Week 1

9/1

T

Introductions to the course, the lab and each other…
Macs vs. PC, network drives &c.; defining the Web…

9/3

Th

Basic tools: Working with HTML using simple text editors.
The power of hypertext and semantic markup: “Web 2.0 is Us/ing Us” (4:34 multimedia). Pay attention to Wesch's point about "form" versus "content" (1:30-3:00 & on)

Week 2

9/8

T

Discuss how tables were used to control layout before wide acceptance of CSS.
Visit csszengarden.com to see how well CSS can separate "form" from "content." (The site shows one page of HTML content reformatted with many different expertly done CSS layouts.)

Tags you know by Tuesday:

html, head, title, body, p, br, img, table, tr, td

Coding: Tags for tables, lists, links; simple text markup for emphasis

See Castro book and W3schools.com
(especially use W3schools to test tables and CSS tags)

Start your site:

• Put a "coms326" folder in your public_html space.
• Put folders of daily in-class work (e.g. "sept8") in it, when requested. (Otherwise, keep daily work folders in your H-drive space, but not in the public_html folder.)
• Make an "images" folder in the coms 326 folder.
• Make a copy of your 100x50 pixel image (or a new 100x50 image);
  name it 100x50.jpg, and put it in the images folder
• Make an index.html page for the coms326 folder, including an image and links to several other pages.
• Make other folders (site structure) to hold midterm project.
• DEADLINE: Build basic site structure (326 page, some empty folders) by 5 p.m. Friday, if not finished in class. (ref Castro p 51; Williams ch. 4, about naming & organizing things.)

A little Unix, ssh and chmod.
See pages on how to make your pages public using the myRU portal and using Unix "chmod" command at http://www.radford.edu/rstepno/09fall/326

In class: position images in HTML tables (Castro ch. 16).
Capture screen pix.
Add links (ch15), lists (ch 4), styles (ch7 & 8; local, p 134; internal, p 131; external, p128).
Preview midterm project (critiques of multimedia stories) between classes.
Skim Castro chapters 3 & 4 to get to ch 5.

Sept. 10 computer glitches:
1. Students and professor in 326-01 were not able to connect to the ruacad Unix server with SSH, but students and professor in 326-02 were able to, following exactly the same procedures. Apologies to both for the inconsistency and confusion. I'm contacting IT to try to prevent this trouble in the future.
2. Some students had another kind of network problem when trying to use TextEdit to open html files that were already on the server. That also may be a temporary problem. See my notes.

9/10

Th

Week 3

9/15

T

More table and link coding… See Castro ch. 3-5 & 16 (p227-234)

Learn more tags and review the ones you know: Basic HTML framework, anchor/link codes, lists (numbered and bulleted), paragraphs versus line breaks, tag "attributes" and "values" for background colors and measurements, CSS Styles to control fonts and colors.

Discuss testing, browser wars and cross-platform issues.  Review of imaging concepts, file types, file compression, and some hexadecimals…

9/17

Th

Special visitor: See http://blueridgemuse.com and meet Doug Thompson. Talk with Doug about citizen journalism, Web hosting, phography and multimedia-site styles and critiques for your midterm project.

For Tuesday:

• With some combination of words, pictures and links, make your coms326 home page a better representation of who you are, what you're doing here, what you like and dislike on the Web, what you hope to do on the Web, etc.
• Pick a multimedia site to review and post your first comments on it as a new page in your coms326/reviews folder before class Tuesday, 9/22. (Calendar previously said Sept. 18.) These first comments can be refined later. The first goal is to be sure you can post a new page to your site on your own, outside of the class period.
• Suggestion: Included bulletted or numbered lists of linked pages that have features you'd like to know how to do, or multimedia stories you want to write about for the midterm.
• For now, focus on "content" -- text, comments, images and links. Next week we'll deal more with CSS and page layout, so you should be reading the relevant textbook sections and w3schools.com pages.

Week 4

9/22

T

Structure, form, content, usability & accessibility... More CSS… Site types, audiences, and some history, from Arpanet to Googlezon. Documentation, comments and debugging

9/24

Th

Dreamweaver I – The user interface and site definition. This will help you polish your home pages and develop your midterm project template.

Week 5

9/29

T

 Dreamweaver II – CSS with a purpose

10/1

Th

 Dreamweaver III

Week 6

10/6

T

 Dreamweaver IV

10/8

Th

Midterm project wrapup lab: Project deadline 5 p.m. Friday, Oct. 9

Week 7

10/13

T

Read and review each other’s projects; discuss multimedia styles and techniques.

10/15

Th

Sharing and Web 2.0 tools: Wikis, Ning, Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, RSS feeds, podcasts & more.

Week 8

10/20

T

Final project proposal brainstorming: Types of sites, audience needs, working with clients.

10/22

Th

 Using audio and video files on your pages; MP3, Quicktime, Adobe Flash

Week 9

10/27

T

 Build a media page

10/29

Th

Post project proposal draft by Friday, in HTML, with relevant links.

Week 10

11/3

T

 More multimedia – proprietary tools and free software

11/5

Th

 Review skills you have – or need – for project

Week 11

11/10

T

Complete site map for final project. CSS and multi-platform pages; Zen garden examples.

11/12

Th

 Design for project

Week 12

11/17

T

 Work on project page layouts, templates

11/19

Th

 Post first draft of final project before leaving town.

11/21-11/29

Thanksgiving break

Week 13

12/1

T

 Site review and coding lab

12/3

Th

 Site review and coding lab

Week 14

12/8

T

 Present sites to class

12/10

Th

Final pages: Self-evaluation and portfolio.

Exam week

12/
14-12/17

Final project revision due at exam time below

326-01 normally meets TTh 3:30 p.m.; EXAM  8 a.m. Dec.  14 (Monday)

326-02 normally meets TTh 5 p.m.; EXAM 5:30 Dec. 15 (Tuesday)