CISC103, Fall 2005

Activity 2

Essentials for Design, XHTML, Level 1, Project 1

(Lessons 1-7, pages 1-25).

Link to online version of this chapter as a PDF (may be slow to load).

This is provided in case you don't have your textbook with you. Note that this is the only chapter that is available online; next week, bring your XHTML and JavaScript Level 1 books with you to lab.

Detailed instructions are provided below to guide you through this activity.

Learning objectives

By the end of this lesson, students should be able to do all of the following (these are listed on p. 1 of the Essentials for Design, XHTML Level 1 textbook):

Detailed Instructions

Step 1: If you are doing this lab in Memorial Hall 028, make sure you are logged on to the cisc103 account.

See activity01 for details if you do not remember how to do this. Activity01 also explains how to log off and get logged onto the cisc103 account.

Step 2: Find your folder on the H drive

See activity01 for details if you do not remember how to do this.

Step 3: Create a folder lab02 inside your folder on the H drive

See activity01 for details if you do not remember how to do this.

Step 4: Open your XHTML book to page 2, and make a few corrections:

I took a lot of care in selecting the texts for this course. Having said that, no text is perfect, and there are a few flaws in the ones we have. What is even more unfortunate, is that a large number of them occur right on the first page! However, I don't want you to be overly alarmed... I don't think this will be a typical occurence.

Creating content for the Web is an inter-disciplinary activity. This course (CISC103) supports the interactive media minor, which is an inter-disciplinary program combining material from Computer Science, Visual Communications, Technical Writing (English), and Communications.

In support of that inter-disciplinary approach, I've chosen texts from two perspectives: the Deitel/Deitel text comes from the Computer Science perspective, while the "Essentials for Design" lab manuals come more from the design and artistic perspective.

Unfortunately, sometime when these fields overlap, folks extend themselves outside their areas of expertise. My expertise is in Computer Science, and thus I can easily spot the places in the "Essentials for Design" books where folks got the Computer Science a bit wrong. What will be harder for me to spot is the places in the Computer Science material where folks get the "artistic and design" considerations wrong. I'll rely on members of the class from that discipline to help out in that regard.

In any case, here are a few things in this week's reading that you should watch out for:

JavaScript Level 1, p. 2:

  1. The book says that HTML is a "simple scripting language...". This is incorrect. HTML is a markup language. Cross out the word "scripting" in that sentence, and change it to "markup". We'll discuss the difference in lecture. Fortunately, the difference is not important to today's lab.
  2. The book also says that a scripting language is a type of programming language that does not need to be parsed (interpreted by the computer) or executed as a full-blown programming language. This is totally incorrect. Just cross this sentence out completely.

    All computer languages have to be parsed, and I do mean all (well, except machine language, which we'll discuss in lecture, but which we'll not spend much time on in this course.) We'll talk about this in lecture. Fortunately, an understanding of this concept is not needed for you to work on today's lab!
  3. Finally, the book says that "a string is a line of code that instructs the program to complete a specific task, and that a character is a part of the code such as a semicolon, that ends a string of code." Just cross this sentence out. It's not a very useful definition of either string, or character, and you really don't need that definition for today's lab either. We'll clarify this in lecture also.
  4. The rest of page 2 is pretty much on target, and contains some important material. So once you've made these three changes, please read the rest of that page carefully!

Step 5: Look over pages 3 and 4, but don't do anything on the computer yet.

These are just for background; the actual computer work starts on the next page.

Step 6: Before starting with Lesson 1, on p. 4, note a few minor changes:

At the top of page 5, you are asked to create a folder on your hard drive called "Work_In_Progress". Throughout the "Essentials for Design" series books, you are advised to do this. Before you do so, however, we need to make a few small adjustments to the instructions:

  1. We are using both the XHTML and JavaScript "Essentials for Design" books. Both of these books use the same naming conventions. Therefore, unless we make some change, the files we create for the two books will clash with each other. Therefore, when working in the XHTML book, use the name "XHTML_Work_In_Progress" instead of "Work_In_Progress".

    (Similarly, later on, when we work with the JavaScript Level 1 or JavaScript Level 2 books, we'll name the folders JS1_Work_In_Progress or JS2_Work_In_Progress.)


  2. When working in the lab, instead of storing these files on the "hard disk" of the computer you are working on (e.g. the C:\ drive), store them in your folder on the H drive. For example, my "XHTML_Work_In_Progress" folder will be "H:\pconrad\ XHTML_Work_In_Progress". Note that the "H:\pconrad\lab01" folder is for "finished products" from lab01, not for "work in progress".
  3. From time to time, the book will ask you to copy various items from the "Resource CDROM". I'm going to look into a long term strategy that will allow you to copy those items from someplace on the server. For this week, the files you need for this lab are at the following link: http://copland.udel.edu/~pconrad/cisc103/05F/labs/lab02


    You may need to click on a folder name such as RF_XHTML_L1, then on a folder such as Project_01 to get access to the actual files.

Step 7: Now, really, start with Lesson 1, on p. 4, and continue all the way through, ending with Lesson 7 on p. 25.

If you run into problems along the way, ask your TA for help. When finished, ask your TA to check your work, and give you a participation grade for this assignment. That grade will be recorded on WebCT.

If you don't finish today, try to come back sometime during the week and finish up. If you need to finish up outside the lab, you can transfer your files to a "USB key drive", take the home and work on them, then transfer them back to the H: drive when you come to the lab next week. Ask your TA if you need help with this process.

Step 8: Logging off the cisc103 account

Whether you finish today or not, your final step today is to be sure that you save all your files, close all your windows, and log off the cisc103 account when you are finished.

 

Next steps:

If you would like to continue working and get a little bit ahead, repeat the same steps as above for Chapter in your Essentials for Design, JavaScript level 1 book. If you don't have it available, the first chapter (only) is available online as a PDF file (download may be slow).

Evaluation and Grading

This activity counts as a particpation grade. (Information on "participation grading" appears on the course syllabus.)

Specific details on what the TA will look for to be sure the activity is completed sucessfully will be posted later this week. In the meantime, if you complete all steps as described in the textbook, you'll be covered.

 

Copyright 2005, Phillip T. Conrad, CIS Dept., University of Delaware. Permission to copy for non-commercial, non-profit, educational purposes granted, provided appropriate credit is given; all other rights reserved.