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Notes from Nov 12, 2004

Web Site Creation; THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

I . Content Tips: Who are you designing for? If we are designing for your students, provide content that will take away all their excuses.

· Syllabus

· Class Rules

· Formula Sheets

· Lecture Notes from class

· Power Points used in class

· Assignments with due dates (http://schoolnotes.com/ )

· Grades (http://edline.com/ )

· Links to Resources outside your site

· email link

· feedback page ( http://us.ratemyteachers.com/ )

II. Design Tips:

· Keep Navigation simple and consistent from page to page. You can place navigation buttons in a separate frame, or if not using frames, keep them consistently placed at the top, bottom or side of your pages. A table may also be used to accomplish this.

· Keep backgrounds from becoming too distracting.

· Keep text readable by choosing appropriate contrast between text and background color.

III. File Size. Always use the smallest file you can. You may want the highest quality image, audio, or video, but the client surfing the web does not want to wait for it to load. You must compromise and use files that will load as quickly as possible. Warn the user if you link to a big download, or give them options for smaller similar files.

IV. File Types. There are typically three characters (visible or not) at the end of a file name (following the period). These indicate the file type, and are called file extensions. File extensions are crucial for your web page to be understood correctly by the browser. If possible keep file names short, under 8 characters.

· .htm indicates that the file is a web page

· .jpg, .gif and .png are image files most commonly used in web pages because they maintain good quality with a small file size. If you are using .tif, .psd, .bmp image files obtained from your digital camera, chances are they are too big for web use. Convert them with a photo editing program.

· .mid, .mp3, .wma, .ra indicates an file that is commonly used to play audio on the web. If using .wav or .aif audio files, try to keep them only a couple seconds long, since those formats have large file sizes.

· .mov, .wmv, .rv are common video formats. Be careful when putting video on your site! They tend to be large in size. You must scale videos down so they will stream easily on most computer systems.

V. Organization! Like real-estate, its all Location Location Location.

· Create a home folder on you local hard drive to house your site. This is where you will work on your web site. All your .htm files will be at the top level of this home folder. A similar folder will be created on the server that will house your files on the Internet. This is where you will upload all your files and subfolders, so that others can access your web site.

· Create subfolders inside your home folder.

         *Create an “images” folder to hold all your graphic elements.
       *Create an “audio” folder to hold all your audio elements.
       *Create a “video” folder to hold any video you may use.

· Once you have linked to or placed an element in a web page, DO NOT move the source file with out changing the reference in the web page. Moving files can result in broken links.

VI. Web Site Authoring Programs: You could learn to edit HTML code yourself using a simple word processor…but the easier route is to use an authoring program to create the HTML for you. OR , you can create a functional web site just using Microsoft Word. When saving your document in Word, use the save as "Web Page .htm" option. Word then creates a subfolder for all the page elements. All you need next is a simple way of uploading files (FTP). Remember to upload the associated subfolder with each .htm file. The method Word employs is not a particularly efficient, but it does work.

· MacroMedia - Dreamweaver

· Adobe - Go Live

· Microsoft - Front Page