Assignment #1
Due Tuesday, February 12
40 points
The objective of this assignment is to give you a chance to get
comfortable working with the wcit server and Strict XHTML 1.0. It will
also allow you an opportunity to work with some PHP and review your
basic knowledge of programming techniques. And on top of all that it
will establish a homepage that will be used to access your future
coursework.
It is not intended to be particularly challenging or
difficult, but if you do encounter problems it may take awhile to sort
through them. Therefore, I would recommend that you not take it lightly,
but rather begin on it as soon as you can and allow yourself plenty of
time — advice that will serve you in good stead for all this semester’s
assignments!
- (20 points) Establish and validate a homepage on the wcit server
to replace the default. Your new homepage must meet the following
minimum requirements:
- The homepage must be named
index.html and stored in your
public_html directory.
- The homepage must display your name and e-mail address, and the e-mail address
must be formatted to act as a link using the
mailto: scheme.
- The page must contain an unordered list preceded by a heading that reads
“Coursework”. The purpose of this list is to provide a list of
links to the various coursework files you produce later in this assignment
and others. We will hereafter refer to this as “the coursework
list.”
- Below the coursework list, your page may contain anything you wish.
However, it should at least contain
two to four paragraphs explaining your motivations for taking this course, your
level of experience with Web design and development, and what you hope to get out
of this course.
- Your homepage must utilize at least 20 different XHTML elements (including
those that must be there to adhere to the template presented
in class and those necessary to meet the requirements stated above),
and it must include an external style sheet that formats the page using
at least 5 different CSS style rules and at least 10 different CSS properties.
- Your homepage must follow the rules for Strict XHTML 1.0 presented
in class, using XHTML only for structural purposes. All presentation
(or formatting) must be accomplished using CSS in an external
style sheet.
- When you are done building your homepage, use the W3C validators accessible
from the listing of course-related Web
sites to validate both the XHTML and the CSS. When you get the page
to successfully validate, follow the instructions provided by
the validators’ success
pages and paste the appropriate code to display the validator
icons as links at the bottom of the page. I should be able to
click each link to have it automatically validate the code for
the page without receiving any warnings or errors. Note that
in order to make the button for the CSS validator revalidate
your page, you will need to merge one of the URLs it provides
in the instructions into the XHTML code example it offers for
you to copy and paste. Be sure to test that each link actually
validates the page when you click it. Also, please note that
I will accept warnings, but not errors, from the CSS validator
when grading, since it can be very picky.
- (5 points) Implement example 1-1 from page 6 of the
Sklar book, converting it to adhere to the Strict XHTML 1.0 coding
standards and template presented in class. Publish the file on the
wcit server and add a link to it labeled “assign1-part2”
as the first item in the coursework list on your homepage. Validate
the file to eliminate errors and warnings using the W3C Markup Validator
and place a button at the bottom of the page that I can use to repeat
the validation process during grading.
- (10 points) Implement example 1-5 from page 9
of the Sklar book, converting it to adhere to the Strict XHTML 1.0
coding standards and template presented in class. Publish the file
on the wcit server and add a link to it labeled “assign1-part3” as
the second item in the coursework list on your homepage. Validate
the file to eliminate errors and warnings using the W3C Markup Validator
and place a button at the bottom of the page that I can use to repeat
the validation process during grading.
- (5 points) Make a copy of your solution to part
3 above and modify it so that it does the following:
- Gets the user’s first name, last name and home state, using
three separate text entry fields
- Incorporates the user's first name, last name and home state into
the greeting that is printed after the form is submitted
Publish the
file on the wcit server and add a link to it labeled “assign1-part4” at
the end of the coursework list on your homepage. Validate the file
to eliminate errors and warnings using the W3C Markup Validator and
place a button at the bottom of the page that I can use to repeat
the validation process during grading.