assignments

Getting Started

• Tell me a about your computer background : what sorts of operating systems are you familiar with? What have you used a computer to do?
• What do you already know about how the internet works?
• Have you ever uploaded a video or photograph? Edited a blog? Created a web page? (If so, how?)
• Read wikipedia's outline of the internet page, and explore some of the connected topics. (This will be a starting point for a discussion of a bunch of buzzwords next week.)
• Download and install Wireshark, and try to capture a few packets. Describe you experience, and what you saw.
• How did all this go? Too easy? Too hard?

Exploring networks

• Choose at least two of the reading or exploration topics from this week's notes to look into and understand better.
• Fit the depth and detail of your investigation to your background and experience.
• Write up what you did and what you found out.
• Come to class on Tuesday ready to share and discuss.

Exploring protocols

• Like last week, choose any two of the topics from this week's discussions to google, research, and read about. Summarize in your homework submission, and come to class Tuesday ready to share.
• ssh to csmarlboro.org and try listing what files are there and changing folders.
• On your computer or csmarlboro.org, try the HTTP "telnet host 80" manual dialogs that I've been doing in class to manually fetch a web page.
• Try one other protocol "manually" besides HTTP - email or IRC. Explain what you did, and what you got.

Using and configuring web servers and web hosts

• Explore any of the topics from the notes this week, Tue and Thu, in particular :
  • Install and explore XAMPP.
  • Create some folders and put some files (txt, jpg, html, ...) on csmarlboro.org including at least one index.txt or index.html
  • Put a .htaccess file in a folder on csmarlboro to change some behavior of that folder (limit access, for example)
  • Investigate some web hosting services. I encourage you to set up an account on one (nearlyfreespeech.net, for example, which is very inexpensive) and put something there.
• Begin looking at HTML and CSS from either the books in 217 or the links on the resources page.

A static web page

• Continue reading about HTML and CSS using the links in the resources page and the Tues notes.
• On a web server of your choice (your csmarlboro.org site or an external hosting service), set up a static web page consisting of at least
  • A *.html file with some links to other pages and at least one image.
  • a *.css file that sets some colors and what-not in the html page
  • at least one image file
  • My component computer page is the sort of thing I have in mind (though yours doesn't need to have that many images or links or content.
  • The topic is up to you.
  • As is always good practice, do include your name, the date, and a license.
• I would like this to follow the html5 format; an example is csmarlboro.org/tron.
• Describe which HTML you've learned about, and which CSS rules.
• Come to class on Tuesday ready to share and discuss your work.
• We'll expand and refine this in coming weeks, adding more bells and whistles.

second static page

• Continue exploring HTML and CSS with another web page.
• Like last week, but with different layout and CSS properties.
• Start thinking about access and design issues: what choices did you make, and why?
• Give URLs of some sites that you think illustrate either
  • interesting HTML/CSS effects
  • good or bad design
• Questions?

midterm website

• Create a set of pages with a common design theme and clear navigation.
• If you're using a template or other site as a model, quote your sources.
• Describe which of the HTML & CSS now feel comfortable and which parts (if any) are still mysterious.
• Do you have ideas for what kind of project you'd like to work on after the break?

first javascript steps

• Explore the javascript links in the April 1 class notes, and choose at least one to start looking at either the javascript language or the DOM.
• Describe what you did, and show at some javascript exercises or examples that you worked through. You can upload your files here, or give a URL , i.e. a codepen.io site.
• Come to class ready to share your work.

project proposals

• Describe what you'd like to do for a final term project : something with html, css, and javascript.
• Continue exploring javascript for another week, and report.
• Try to come up with a web page where something is shown or hidden by some user choice. (We did an example Thursday.)

advertising

• continue work on your projects, and report on your progress.
• read about and explore internet advertising using the links in the Apr 15 notes
• optional but recommended : choose one advertising related technology to implement on one of your web sites. Come to class ready to discuss and explain.

project draft

• project first draft due
• Please do turn in more than just "I'm working on it" ... this should have a significant chuck of the components described for the May 9 final piece

project presentations

• in class : final project presentations

final project

• Submit your final project, which should include
  • a short writeup of what you did and how it went : easy, hard, difficulties, ...
  • a bibliography of which online and/or offline you used
  • a link to the working site
  • the code itself or a link to it
• The grade will be based on
  • Does it show an understand of the course material?
  • Is it a finished project? (works with clean and W3C compliant code)
  • Is it clearly and thoughtfully explained and documented?
  • Is it an example of good web practice (legible, easily navigated, etc)
  • Is it a reasonable sized effort for three weeks of work?

term grade

• a place for Jim's final comments