Web Systems Development

Introduction to eprojects

We follow the recommendation of W3C and use a xhtml-transitional template as the starting point of all our Web pages. The page you create and turn in for eproject0 must use that template. That template is provided for downloading. 
To make marking up Web pages easy, we will use Textpad, a programmer's text editor. It is provided free for downloading as well. Download Textpad from the komodo server page with my picture (not from Telecampus course) then follow the directions for extracting and setting up Textpad on your personal computer. The directions are found in lesson 2 "Tools of the Trade" in the Telecampus course. Learn to use Textpad -- it saves a lot of time and it is required for the course. The built-in template we need in Textpad is called the "Blank xhtml student" clip. To use it start a blank page and click on that clip name.
All eprojects must pass the "Validator" test. Because the template has an automatic link to the Validator site this is one very good reason to use the template. Your eprojects will loose points if they do not pass the test as valid xhtml-transitional.

How to succeed in the course

Keep up with the reading assignments on the Telecampus course site. The site has more mechanical features (tryouts, checkpoints, mastery tests) than the book, so you may want to start reading with the site and read the book to answer questions or for reference offline.
Practice what you learn. Web authoring is easy after you get through the preliminaries, but you have to learn the preliminaries and then perfect what you know through practice. It takes time but its fun.
Finally, your tests and projects will have to "show the markup" on your page. Instead of having the markup format your content into nice looking headings, paragraphs, lists, etc. like it usually would, you want the markup visible to the professor. Find more information in Lesson 5 under "Showing code and markup".  Sample "character entities" you would substitute for html syntax are shown below. 
Heading container: &lt;h1&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;
Paragraph container: &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;