Publications Design 660
Fall, 2001 - Noah Wardrip-Fruin
wardripfruin@ubmail.ubalt.edu
Mon: 5:30-8pm (185), Tue: 8:15-10:45pm (186)

(Graduate) Hypermedia:
An Introduction

Course Introduction

To design a good Web site you must:

What do I mean by "multiple site-level designs"? Well, we're in a time of transition -- between the old Web and the new Web. The old Web was made up of static pages which were viewed using a couple of types of browsers, on a small range o f screen sizes. The new Web is made up of continually-changing sites, with pages often assembled at the time of request, which will increasingly be viewed using a wide variety of software and using screens that range from the wall-sized t o the cell phone.

To create for the new Web, we will have to understand:

Of course, no book yet published covers all of the above. So we're going to have to read from multiple sources, and sometimes make our own way, in order to get the comprehensive picture we need. We'll start by getting a handle on the old Web, which is sti l most of what one sees, and then move into the new Web.

Learning Web Design by Jennifer Niederst will be our source for old-style design, which is still the dominant practice on the Web. Online notes and selections from books (e.g., HTML and XHTML: The Definitive Guide by Chuck Musciano and Bill Kennedy) will help us translate old-style design into new, stylesheet-driven design.

Further, the tools we will be using are BBEdit Lite, a simple text editor, and two Web browsers. One is the market-leading Microsoft Internet Explorer, and the other is the open -source, standards-compliant Mozilla. We will doubtless find that what works in one doesn't always work in the other. That's okay. For our purposes, the important thing is that we never create a layout in one that fail s in the other to the extent that the needs-meeting information we set out to provide is not available to those users.

Finally, you probably know that we only meet once a week. That means you'll be doing a lot of work in-between classes. Say, twice as much as you'd be doing if we met twice a week. I know you probably realize this already - but that means it's more work th an you'll be able to do if you leave it to the last minute.

Course Schedule

  • September 4 (Tuesday class only)
  • September 10/11
  • September 17/18
  • September 24/25
  • October 1/2
  • October 8/9
  • October 15/16

    • Site 1: For this assignment you must create a site using html, images, multiple directories, and links - and you must put it up on the server using ftp.

    PC FTP: For FTP on the PCs in the Graphics Lab you must follow these directions.

  • October 22/23
  • October 29/30

    • Specialties: Available specialties are Usability, Graphics, and Cascading Style Sheets. If you strongly wish to have a different specialty, please talk with me, and propose alternate reading/work.

  • November 5/6

    • CSS resources: Here are some online CSS resources recommended by a fellow student:
    - jalfrezi.com (provides some guidelines for using style sheets)
    - webreview.com (amongst other things, provides browser compatibility charts for style sheets)
    - about.com (search for "style sheets" and you'll find a great deal of information and tutorials on the topic)
    - htmlgoodies.com (style sheet tutorials)

  • November 12/13
  • November 19/20

    • Site 2: For this assignment you must create a site which replaces deprecated tags with css, uses meaningful naming to connect your html with your css, takes a number of other steps toward the "new web," and also reflects knowledge from your specialty.

  • November 26/27
  • December 3/4

    • Rollover: Some students asked for a pointer to rollover and image preloading code.

  • December 10/11
  • December 17