Lab
One
Your
First Unit – Your First Web Page
Introduction
Upon arrival at your first fleet unit, your CO welcomes you aboard and tasks you with creating a homepage for the unit’s website. Now it is time to show your talent and flair. You get to pick the unit (or ECA – see online “Lab Guidance”).
General Web Page Guidance:
All labs (that are web pages) should conform to basic
standards and propriety. See the Lab
Guidance document for specific guidance and
for reminders that you may not use editors such as FrontPage,
DreamWeaver, etc. for any assignment in this course.
For this particular lab, you must include all of the requirements listed below (for full credit). But keep in mind that merely doing these requirements is not enough. Carefully consider the web site’s programming accuracy, functionality, artistic quality, and creativity (again, see the guidance).
You are encouraged to do some research. Browse the web for similar units, pictures, and links. Discover webpage designs and functionality you would like to include in your site.
Tips:
- Read this whole lab through before you start – will save you time in the end.
- If you have used HTML before, remember that XHTML is different. Your pages must be valid XHTML.
- If you want to use more advanced formatting/centering/styling, see Chapter 5 (we’ll cover this in a few weeks).
- For images, you may want use “Google Images.”
Instructions:
- Follow naming conventions very carefully in this course. Lab1 is not the same as Lab01. Lab01.htm is not the same as Lab01.html. Failure to do this may cause the web server and/or your instructor to not find your files.
- How to map your W: drive to your personal web space (We will often call this your “web drive.”).
- NOTE: It is ideal if you are not logged in anywhere else (e.g. back in your room while doing this in the lab). If you are logged in elsewhere, it’s safe to proceed, but your profile may not remember the drive and you will have to repeat these steps later.
- Go to My Computer and select “Map Network Drive” from Tools.
- For Drive, pick W. For Folder, enter \\cs-websrvr.cs.usna.edu\www.mXXXXXX.IT350.cs.usna.edu$ (note dollar sign at end. Substitute your alpha for XXXXXX) (NOTE: enter full cs-websrvr.cs.usna.edu – not just cs-websrvr)..
- Check the “Reconnect at login box.”
- Click OK, then click Finish.
- Verify that you can access your W drive.
- Important – the following will save much pain later. You should also do this on your PC in your room: Open up the File Explorer (one way is to right-click on the Start menu, then pick Explore). Click on the W: drive. Then select “Tools -> Folder Options.” Select the View tab. Look for an option titled “Hide extensions for known file types.” Make sure this option is NOT checked, then click on the button at top that says “Apply to All Folders.”
- Go to this starter page: /Users/cs/lmcdowel/courses/it350/F08/labs/starter.html . Choose File-> SaveAs, and save it as W:/default.htm
- This must be default.htm, not default.html
- Save all your work under your W: drive. Files saved on your X: drive are not visible to the web server. Files saved on the local hard drive may be erased when you log out!
- Try to view your page at http://www.mXXXXXX.it350.cs.usna.edu/ (substitute your alpha number for XXXXXX). You can use either Internet Explorer or Firefox – Firefox is generally recommended, but you should verify that pages you create work in both. This works because the web server knows to search for a file called default.htm in your primary directory when no particular file is specified.
6. Now modify default.htm (see Editor Help below). This page is your main page for the course – each week you will modify it slightly to add a link to the new lab that you have created. Modify this page to have: your name, a welcome message/banner of some kind, and a link to Lab01/index.html (which you will create below). Since this is to another page on your same site, it should be a relative link, not an absolute link. You may add other creative enhancements if you like. Also add a legal disclaimer (see below).
7. Validate your default.htm page (you can click on the provided button) and correct any errors. Practice validating as you go – do not leave it to the last minute! You are very likely to encounter validation errors, and at first they may be somewhat confusing. Allow enough time to work through these and get help as needed.
8. Create a folder on your web drive. Name it Lab01. The overall structure should look like this:
9. In Lab01 create a file “index.html” (not index.htm) that contains the following: (you can also create other HTML pages if desired). Use the starter.html page to begin. This page should look reasonably like the home page for your unit/ECA. In other words, the general message might be “Welcome to the Blue Angels flight page!” not “Welcome to Lab #1”.
1. Proper head element with title (this must be in every html file and after this lab it will not be mentioned again, just expected)
2. An appropriate title of the page (heading). This is not the <title> in the head element, but the title or heading one sees upon opening your web site.
3. Text of two different sizes (i.e., different heading sizes)
4. 2+ hyperlinks to another page (locally or external). Avoid links that say “click here” – use a descriptive term instead.
5. Two images, using appropriate attributes
6. 1+ horizontal lines
7. 1+ ordered or unordered list(s)
8. A hyperlink to your own email address
9. A few reasonable comments in the source of your HTML files, explaining major sections or what is being accomplished. This may seem artificial for a simple page now, but is good practice. See examples in the main IT350 web page.
10. Ensure your page works with both IE and Firefox.
11. Ensure all your pages validate and that you have met all requirements.
NOTE: all HTML files must validate as XHTML 1.1 without errors for full credit. The penalty for a file that does not validate is 10%. See the course home page for the validator links.
Some of the requirements above you may not normally wish to be present in your particular web site. However, part of the lab process is to learn to use differing tags and attributes. Therefore incorporate them into this web site using your creativity and skills.
Editor Help:
For this course you are encouraged to use “Crimson Editor.” You can also use Notepad, but Crimson Editor will make your life easier. It’s already installed on the lab PCs – see the IT350 page for free download info for your Bancroft PC.
When saving a file from Notepad or Crimson Editor, be sure to select “All Files” from “Save as Type”. Otherwise you may end up with a filename like index.html.txt.
Browser Help:
There are two ways to view your files:
- (recommended) Open up Internet Explorer or Firefox, and enter a URL like at http://www.mXXXXXX.it350.cs.usna.edu/Lab01/index.html
- (sometimes useful).
Internet Explorer: File -> Open -> Browse (go W drive, then appropriate file).
Firefox: File -> Open File (go to W drive, then appropriate file).
The second method fetches your pages directly from your W drive. The first method fetches your pages from the web server and displays them, so using this method provides more assurance that your files are configured as they need to be. The validator button also only works when using the first method.
If you change your page, but it doesn’t seem to change what is in the web browser, use the View -> Source (or Page Source) command from your browser. This will show you the raw HTML that your browser is displaying.
Extra Credit
Throughout this course, expect extra credit to be worth a nominal number of points – the main purpose is for your additional practice and challenge. Multiple parts may be given; you can attempt all, some, or none of these.
- For this assignment, add another image to your page, and make this image a hyperlink to some logical target, given the image. Can you find an image and a layout that makes clicking on the image natural, without needing explanation? (This may be difficult given the amount of XHTML covered so far.)
- Explore the web or your textbook to discover how to add an internal hyperlink (a link to within the current page). Modify your page to make some logical use of this feature.
Deliverables
1) Your main web page should be called "default.htm" (without the quotes).
2) All of your files for Lab01 should be in a folder called "Lab01" (without the quotes) on the Web drive.
3) Your web page for Lab01 should be called "index.html" (without the quotes) and placed inside the folder Lab01.
4) Your instructor will assume that your web pages are viewable at http://www.mXXXXXX.it350.cs.usna.edu/Lab01/index.html where XXXXXX is your alpha number.
5) You should check that this URL is viewable and that everything works correctly from a computer where somebody else is logged in. If you've goofed and linked to a file on your X drive, this will help you catch it!
6) All files must be complete and saved to your Web drive before you submit the hardcopy of your assignment. Do NOT modify your files after you have submitted your assignment. For next week you will modify default.htm and create Lab02/, but nothing in Lab01/ should change.
7) Turn in the following hardcopy on or before the due date, stapled together in the following order (coversheet on top):
a) A completed assignment coversheet. Your comments will help us improve the course.
b) The first page of the output of the W3C validator, as run on the final version of your Lab01/index.html. This should show that your document correctly validated, but turn it in anyway if you can’t get your page to validate.
c) A printout of the source to your Lab01/index.html file (not the rendered page that you normally see with Internet Explorer/Firefox). Truncated lines are not acceptable – use Crimson Editor vice Notepad if needed for printing. You could also paste into Microsoft Word etc. if needed.
Postscript
Your default.htm should contain the following disclaimer (other pages don’t have to). Feel free to cut and paste from the assignment page.