William P. Craft

This Unit:

Reading Assignment:

Read Chapter Ten and do the exercises. This chapter has a very useful exercise that gives you a great basic overview of the "box model" from a very practical viewpoint.

The section on background images is also worth careful study. It seems like most modern web-design relies heavily on background images. In fact, everything on the www.csszengarden.com website is done with background images!

This section also explains the difference between a "class" and an "id". They are similar, but do very unique things--so look this over carefully.

Near the end of the chapter the authors explain how multiple style sheets are used in today's various webcentric systems. You won't run in to much of that in this course, but this is good info for you to know as you go forward in web design.

Discussion:

None this unit.

Quiz:

Take the quiz.

Assignment: Planning Your Project

Start thinking about your final project. In the submission section of the assignment page attach a document called plan.txt that lists the following:

  1. What is the topic of the project? What do you intend to cover in a webspace of at least 5 pages?
  2. What sub topic will be on each of the 5 pages? For example:
    • Page 1: My Wedding
    • Page 2: My Fiancé
    • Page 3: The Wedding Party
    • Page 4: The Reception
    • Page 5: The Honeymoon
  3. Is the topic going to be real world (based upon your actual life) or imaginary?
  4. Where will you get the pictures? What program will you use to edit them?
  5. How will you set up navigation between the pages? (You can use any navigation system you like as long as it does not involve script language, and as long as it passes XHTML 1.0-strict and CSS 2.1 validation.) You will find many good ideas on the web. Try Listamatic as a starting place. Another good place is CSS Playground. Don't worry about menu's too much this week. For now just take a look at the menu systems in Listamatic and CSS Playground, and think which type you like the best. There will also be built in menus in some of the templates we will look at in Unit 13, so there will be an easier way to go with menus if you want a less complicated approach. (Do not consider any menu system that uses Javascript. That type of menu is not part of this class and will usually mess up W3C validation.)
  6. Approach this website project as if you were going to present it to a prospective employer. Keep the content G or PG rated. You should be able to show it in mixed company without any warnings of disclaimers.

This exercise is only the starting point. As you learn more things in the following lessons, you may want to update your plan and that will be perfectly OK. In fact, I would be amazed if you didn't make a change or two.

The due date for the Quiz and the "First Draft Plan" is listed on the homepage for the course.

...Bill