CS 105 HTML Term Project
Proposals due: April 25, 2000
Projects due: May 9, 2000
For weeks I have been guiding you with step-by-step instructions through labs intended to teach you the basic skills required to effectively communicate ideas on the web. Now that we have covered almost all the basic skills, I'd like you to try your hand at constructing some web pages without the step-by-step guidance. At the same time, I need some way to effectively evaluate the degree to which you have mastered the techniques covered in lab. So, for this project, I want you to construct a set of web pages on a topic of your choice. I hope these pages will simultaneously serve as an opportunity for you to demonstrate your technical skills and as an opportunity to begin to develop true communication skills in this new medium. I will not restrict your choice of topics, but I will reserve the right to base part of your grade on the depth of your coverage of the topic you choose. I don't want you to simply fill a few pages with links, images and tables. Instead, I want you to think carefully about how to present your topic in several ways:
Perhaps the best way to get the point across is to refer to one of the pages a member of a previous class submitted for the second part of the tables lab. The table submitted included results of what appeared to be an ongoing tournament of drinking games in some entry on campus. While this might not seem like a topic with "depth", I could imagine an acceptable project based on this topic because I'm looking for "coverage with depth" rather than a topic with depth. The coverage of this topic could be made "deep" by imitating network coverage of the Olympics. That is, the pages produced would have to include concise biography pages for the competitors (with photos), schedules of future events, details of the tournament rules, directions and parking information...
Now, to discourage you from all making up beer pong pages, here are a few examples from previous years that I hope will give you some inspiration.
I don't want to imply that these were the best projects produced previously (I certainly wouldn't want to insult any of the other students). I didn't even carefully check the "technical merit" of these projects as I was picking them out. In each of them, however, I was impressed by the feeling that they were good examples of what I meant by "in depth". These students clearly put significant effort into their projects. I was impressed by the results. Each of them gives me the feeling that the creator was personally interested in the topic they presented. I hope this will inspire each of you to seek a topic that you are eager to present well. Doing so will make the project considerably more enjoyable.
Often, the technical details of a project like this distract one from the underlying organizational issues. So, I would like you to take time before you start throwing pages together to sketch out your overall approach and design for the project. Based on this sketch you should prepare a brief (about 3 pages) printed "proposal" describing your project and your plans for realizing it. These proposals will be collected in class on the date indicated above.
You should definitely look for texts or web pages that discuss approaches to web design before undertaking your project. Yahoo has a collection of web page design advice from such wizards.
While I do want you to use this project as a learning experience, I also need to use it as a way to evaluate the technical skills you have developed. Accordingly, as you construct your web pages you should be looking for opportunities to exhibit these skills. To keep things comparable, I would like you to concentrate on the technical skills presented in the class. That is, I want to see uses of lists, tables, links, images edited with Photoshop and examples of other techniques covered in class, lab or the text rather than animated GIFs, sound files, frames or whatever else you may have picked up elsewhere. I do not expect you to demonstrate your knowledge of Java in this project.
In addition to constructing the pages, I would like you to prepare a simple page of text (with links) "guiding" me through the technical "highlights" of your page. This document should both direct me to what you consider the most interesting technical aspects of your project and explain technical aspects I could not appreciate just visiting the site (in particular, how you created any interesting graphics used in your pages).
To make it easier for us to find the relevant files when grading your work, please create a subdirectory of your www directory named "project" and put all your project files in this new subdirectory.
As you work on this project, you are likely to encounter questions involing the legitimacy of incorporating the work of others in the pages you produce. If you are not careful, you are likely to find yourself violating the Williams honor code, the U.S. copyright laws or both. To help you avoid this fate, I'd like to give you a little advice.
The honor code rules for this assignment are simple. You may borrow text or images from anywhere you want as long as you acknowledge your sources in the "guided tour" you produce for the project. The HTML you submit, however, must be your own. You may copy techniques you see used in other pages, but not the actual HTML code. If you do borrow techniques (from anyone other than me), you should also acknowledge the sources in your tour.
Unless we take special steps to restict access, the web pages you produce for this project will be accessible throughout the world over the Internet. As such, you are "publishing" the material you include in your pages. If you plan to include text or images from a book, magazine, etc. such "publishing" may be a violation of copyright law. The best way to deal with such issues is to see if you can get permission to use the material from the owner of the copyright. Several students have done this in previous years. If this is not possible, discuss your plans with me. We may have to resort to restricting access so that only you and I can enjoy your work.
This project will count as 15% of your final course grade. The grade for the project itself will be determined as follows:
Since I am hoping to see interesting uses of your Photoshop skills in your projects, I would like to remind you that the scanners are always available in the basement lab. I would also like to make our digital cameras available to those who see a use for them. Let me know (by email or in person), if you see a need for the camera. If many of you want to borrow one, I will have to arrange some help to administer the lending process.
It is my hope that you will want to provide a direct link from your home page to the work you produce. In addition, however, I will require that you include separate links from your labs page to both the project itself and the guided tour.