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Hi, I'm Kirk Hopkins and I wanted to let you know that I created most of the video tutorials used for this Week after a recent accident where I fell off a barn roof. I'm feeling much better now but I did have a concussion from the accident and as I edited the lessons I noticed that I looked a little confused and I had a little scratch on my nose but all the lessons are good and I'm feeling much better now, and I hope that you enjoy this Week. Thanks. Bye.
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Hi, I'm Kirk Hopkins. Welcome to IMS222. In this Week you'll learn how to make great looking, highly useable, web pages and web sites from scratch using a text editor. We'll cover HTML5, CSS3, and PHP. You're not expected to know any of this prior to the Week. We'll also cover some computer basics so that you can edit code quickly.
The Week will be done in a flipped Weekroom style, where content is provided primarily in video format for you to cover on your own. In Week we'll practice the learned content by creating a web page highlighting the new concept. We'll also discuss content from the videos as well as work on assignments, projects, and help each other.
There are no quizzes or tests in my Week. As long as you do your work, come to Week, and participate, you should be fine. There is a lot of content to cover in a short amount of time so be ready to devote time to this Week.
I'm looking forward to seeing you in Week.
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In this class we'll learn great web design together.
I'll get you started on concepts but will not spoonfeed you every html tag or css element known to man.
We'll learn how to find code, because you just can't memorize everything.
And when things change in the future, you'll be able to figure things out on your own.
Why not start now?
I won't leave you hanging though.
My most important rule in computing is, "don't freak out"
The world won't end if you mess up your page. With good coding practice, by making one little change at a time, you won't have that problem anyway.
The 2nd most important rule is, "don't keep banging your head on a wall"
If you get stuck on something, take 5 or 10 minutes to try to figure it out, if you're still stuck, ask someone for help.
My 3rd favorite rule is, 'manage your time'.
Don't wait until the last minute to do your work. Do it early, so there won't be an emergency.
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Every student has web space at Miami. This tutorial will walk you through how to set up your web space.
From myMiami, access NetDisk (or go to https://www.netdisk.miamioh.edu) and log in with your Miami UniqueID and password.
From the Jump to drop-down box, choose MyFiles.
In the navigation pane on the left, choose Create Directory.
For the new directory name, type: public.www
(This directory name must be entered exactly as shown or published pages will not function.)
Click Create Directory. A public.www folder will be created and will appear on your Directory Listing.
Click the Share link located next to the newly created public.www folder.
In the UserId field type: udsweb
If you are in Basic view, select the checkboxes Read & Execute, List Folder Contents, and Read.
If you are in Advanced view, select Transverse/Execute File, List Folder/Read Data, Read Attributes, Read Extended Attributes, and Read Permissions. Under the Applies To drop-down menu, select This folder, subfolders, and files.
Click Apply.
Your MyFiles space is now ready to be used for publishing web pages on the Internet and can be accessed by visiting http://www.users.miamioh.edu/UniqueID. (Replace the italicized portion with your own UniqueID; for example, http://www.users.miamioh.edu/publicjq.)
Important Note: Some users have noticed that when following these instructions, they see only the Advanced permissions view, and not the Basic view. This is the normal function for NetDisk/MyFiles and should not be cause for concern. Permissions are set in the same way.
If you're off campus and you want to work with your Universal Disk Space (UDS) (also called "MyFiles") you will need to use a VPN client. You do not need to do this from on campus. You only need to watch this next video (and setup a VPN client) if you plan to work from off campus.
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The 2 most popular ways to edit code is to FTP the server or use WebDAV. With FTP, you keep the files on your local machine and copy them up to the server. This is a mostly archaic way of doing things in my opinion. With the FTP option, it can also get confusing as to what your editing vs what web page your viewing. Editing and testing PHP code is also a very slow process when using the FTP method.
We're going to use WebDAV in this Week. WebDAV stands for Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning. With WebDAV, you'll mount the server on your local machine. Accessing the folders and files will look just like other folders and files on your machine.
Not every web service offers the ability to use WebDAV, but I can tell you that if they don't offer it, I'm not going to use their service. BlueHost, one of the most popular web hosting companies (and one that I use) offers WebDAV.
Mounting your UDS on a Mac: click on the desktop (to bring Finder to the foreground)...Go...Connect to Server, then enter smb://it.muohio.edu/files/MyFiles/U/UNIQUEID where U is the first letter of your last name, and then your UniqueID. Mine is: smb://it.muohio.edu/files/MyFiles/H/HOPKINKS. Now you can use Finder to open and edit your web pages. Also note that while using muohio.edu still works, the university prefers that you use miamioh.edu now. Here's a tutorial on how do this for those of you who are more of a visual learner.
All in all, what you want in this software is something that works for you and colors the code so you know if you're running astray. If any of you have done some of this stuff and want to share your favorite software with the Week.
NOTE: DO NOT USE DREAMWEAVER. Never use Dreamweaver until you know what you're doing; and by then you won't want to use it. It's garbage software that mucks up the code and will cause loads of problems for you later. Sure, you can probably use it and I won't notice, but trust me, it's nothing but trouble.
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Open your text editor, I'm using TextWrangler. Type “Hello World”. We'll save it to the desktop. File...Save As...(name it) “WebPage00.htm” (you may have to get rid of '.txt')...Save (to the desktop).
Connect to your Miami disk space.
Create an “IMS222” folder.
Copy the file over to the folder you just created.
Verify that you copied it correctly by viewing the page with a web browser.
It's also good to verify that your permissions are correct by having someone else (not logged in as you) go to the same webpage.
They should now be able to see your page.
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Interactive web design takes building web pages and web sites beyond just coding. It moves it to functionality and usability. It focus' on meeting the needs of the customer or user. Let's look at Miami's vacation reporting site in Banner. I can report my vacation and sick time so it's functional but entering time is more cumbersome than it needs to be. See how the next and previous button move. Why can't I see the whole month at once? Why isn't there a dropdown option to select the time allowed? Whenever you have to use words like “make sure do it this way”, you know that you have failed on a usability standpoint.
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Progressive disclosure is an interaction design technique often used in human computer interaction to help maintain the focus of a user's attention by reducing clutter, confusion, and cognitive workload. This improves usability by presenting only the minimum data required for the task at hand.
An example of the use of progressive disclosure is our Week website. Menu options are in place to allow students to find what they're looking for. Everything could all be on one page but that would be too much. There's also the option to “Show the entire syllabus” or view one Week at a time, allowing the student to see the information the way they want to see it.
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There are several different types of architecture, like Linear, Hierarchy, Web, and Matrix. I don't get heavy into terminology and pedagogy so I just want to address this with the statement that information should be organized and arranged in a way that should be understood. You can look at our Week web site to see that the information is lumped together by several categories which happen to be presented as menu options. If you look at my work web page you'll see that it's organized in a very different way. That's because there's a different target audience. In the Week site, students are the primary users so things are organized in a way that a student would expect to see the information. Grading is pretty important to a student, so it get's it's own category. My work web page, in contrast is one big page with no menu. That's because I'm the primary user and I use it mainly as bookmarks to get to my favorite sites. Neither way is right or wrong, other than they should meet the needs of the target audience.
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The home page is the main landing page for your site. The identity and styles of home pages change over time but in general I feel that they should not include too much information. I'm personally a bit of a minimalist anyway so I prefer very little content on a home page, and use it as a spring board to get to other information. http://www.harrisonlegacy.com/ is a site that I manage. It's a church web site. The primary target of the site is to introduce the church to potential attendees. It's also used by current members which is why the “GIVE ONLINE” link is on the site. I removed it at one point thinking it was a bit rude to a prospective attendee and heard “where did the link go” from many current members. They used it weekly for their offering. So I added it back, but tried to make it inconspicuous.
Apple is a forerunner in design. They're not perfect, but you can generally gage what's popular in current design based on what they're doing. Let's take a peak at their site. Can you tell what Apple feels is most important? It's hard not to, right?
With Google around, users may not go to your home page first. That's why a good menu system is important. Looking at the church site again, you see that you can get to all of the topics that you might be interested in using the menu system from any page.
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Signals basically concern whether or not something makes sense. It could be something as simple as a label or a picture. On cars that take gasoline, there's usually an indicator on the dashboard that shows which side of the car you use to put the gas in; and it's usually a triangle. Now is that enough? The answer lies in the hands of the person filling up the car. If you've pulled in to the gas station on 'the wrong side', I would say it's not enough.
Computers use something called 'icons'. They're little pictures that signal something. On my Mac, I have a dock that I have configured to show small icons, magnify on hover-over, and automatically hide (among other things). The icons were designed by the company that made the program. Apple went the next step and also displays the name of the program when you hover-over it. That's a good way to bridge the gap between a graphical only solution versus a text only solution.
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Anticipation simply means that you should anticipate how the solution that you're providing will be used. The easiest way to do this is to use it. Does it work like you think it should? Second, have someone else try it. Can they figure it out without you there explaining things? To me, the biggest indicator or a failure in anticipation is the need for 'training'. If the user can't figure out how to use your solution on their own, then the solution does not meet their needs.
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Consistency is at the top of my list of important things when it comes to web design. Are you adding on to an existing site? Then follow the style and design previously set. Are you building a site from scratch? Then create your style and follow it throughout the site. If you're a list-person, meaning you like making lists, make the list and be consistent. If you use complete sentences in your list, ALWAYS use complete sentences. If you don't capitalize a certain word like “howdy”, and you have a good reason to do it (like if it's a catch-phrase used throughout the site), then never capitalize it. Just be consistent.
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You may be the smartest person in the world, but if you use bad spelling or have bad grammar, you won't look smart. Your website is a reflection of you. Having typos is just bad. Have a friend check your page/site. Use a tool like Typosaur.us to check your spelling. Whatever you do, don't have typos.
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I'm using a Mac with OS X 10.11 (El Capitan). Most of the shortcuts that I'm going to show you have been around for many years. On a Mac use the 'command' key to use a shortcut. Similar shortcuts are available on other operating systems as well. On a Windows machine, use the 'alt' key where I reference the 'command' key. Here are my favorites:
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You can personalize your Mac so that you can get things done faster. Here are some steps that I follow everytime I setup a new Mac (use 'System Preferences' to make these changes):
Trackpad - turn on everything, then turn off natural scrolling, and turn off swipe between pages
Desktop & Screen Saver - set these and hot corners
Security & Privacy - Require password 5 seconds
Security & Privacy - Unlock and set to 'Mac App Store and identified developers' if you want
Dock - Smaller, Magnification, Double Click a Window's Title Bar to Minimize
Remove icons that I don't use from the dock
Right-click on the icon...options...Remove from Dock
Add Applications Folder to the dock
Click on the background to go to Finder...command N (to open a new folder)...Drag the Applications icon to the dock
Mac Mail - turn off drafts
Mail…Preferences…Accounts…Mailbox Behaviors…(uncheck) Drafts (for each account)
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Since we're using WebDAV, editing and reviewing changes is very fast and easy and since we're using HTML5, CSS3, and PHP in this class, you don't have to wait on compiling anything. I can't believe that people still compile programs. To view changes to a web page, you just reload it. Let's walk through an example:
First, I'll open a web browser, then I'm going to use 'command tab' to switch to the Finder. Then I'll use 'command k' to connect to my web space. Next I'll navigate to the folder and web page that I want to edit. Double-click it to open it, I have PHP files set to open with TextWrangler. Change and save it, 'command tab' to the web browser, 'command r' to reload it. Continue using this method to make changes. Once you practice, you'll be a pro and editing code will be quick and easy.
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Want to open HTML or HTM files with your favorite text editor? On a Mac, navigate to a file of this type in Finder...right-click...Get Info...Open with...(select your favorite text editor)...Change All. That's it.
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Editing code on your local machine is a bad idea for a couple big reasons.
1) It gets confusing. You make changes on your local machine but test the changes for the page on the server but it looks like nothing changed. That's because nothing on the server changed.
2) Reviewing PHP on your local machine isn't that easy. We will be using PHP in the future.
So edit your code on the server. Trust me, you'll be glad you did.
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It's important to know that the rest of the world doesn't necessarily edit web pages with a text editor. Here are some sites that I work on that have different WYSIWYG editors. WYSIWYG stands for 'What You See Is What You Get', an old term that came about as the computer world moved from a text only based world to a graphical based world.
Here's a site that uses a proprietary interface by a company called Elexio. I'll make a simple change and reload the page to review the change.
Here's a site that uses Google. I'll make a simple change and reload the page to review the change.
Here's a Facebook page. I'll make a simple change and reload the page to review the change.
You have a lot more power and control when you're not using someone else's interface, but for people who don't know how to write code, these types of solutions make creating and maintaining a web site something attainable.
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HTML is the content. CSS is the styling. Javascript is an action. The lines are getting more blurred as CSS progresses and becomes more action-oriented. In our Week we'll focus on HTML and CSS. We'll also use PHP later in the semester to dynamically build web pages. PHP is very powerful and very cool. Get the HTML and CSS stuff figured out first so you can have fun with PHP when the time comes.
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HTML elements are written with opening and closing tags outside of content in HTML documents. A tag is part of an HTML element.
An opening tag starts with a less than symbol, then has some type of identifier, then ends with a greater than symbol. The closing tag will be very similar, but has a slash after the less than symbol.
If you want something to be bold, use a bold element: This is in bold.
Most elements have an opening and closing tag but there are some that don't like breaks. Some have optional closing tags like list items.
I will be referring to HTML elements as 'tags' throughout this course because that's how I learned them.
Here are some very popular tags:
bold <b>
breaks <br>
paragraphs <p>
unordered lists <ul> and <li> with a closing </ul>
ordered lists <ol> and <li> with a closing </ol>
tables <table> <tr> is the table row, and <td> table data which is the column
images <img src='FolderName/ImageName.jpg' alt='Image Description'>
Don't use spaces in file names on the web, that's just a hint that's going to save you a lot of time and effort.
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We're going to look at the anatomy of a web page.
First I need to connect to my VPN because I'm off campus.
So I'm going to use the Cisco Any Connect VPN client.
Then I click on the background to select the Finder, command N for a new window.
Command K to connect to my (web) disk space.
We're waiting for it to connect.
There we go.
I'm going to go to my IMS222 folder, and I'll click on SamplePage.htm, and open it up with TextWrangler.
This is the web page that we're going to work on today.
The first line has doctype html.
It can be uppercase or lowercase, it doesn't matter.
We'll leave the "html" there.
Line 2 has html language equals en which stands for english.
Lines 3 through 13 contain the head.
Line 4 has a favicon, which is just a picture that's made to show at the top of a tab.
Let's open up a web browser; I'll open a new window, I have an "H" on my university homepage.
You can see that I don't have a favicon on KirkHopkins.com, but I do have one on gzuslivz (a capitol G).
Let's close that window.
If you don't have a favicon, you don't need a favicon line in your html.
If you do have a favicon, you would want to leave it.
Lines 5 through 10 all talk about cache and screen size, most of it is for cache.
Cache stores html information so you don't have to keep reloading.
So this code tells the web browser not to save stuff.
If I reload the page, it will reload all html (but not css).
This makes testing a new page a lot easier.
Line 11 has my title.
I'll add some z's to the title
hit command s to save it
command tab to switch to my browser
command r to reload the page
now the page shows "Kirk's Sample Page zzz"
Let's change it again
command tab
remove the z's and add A's
save it
tab
reload
It changed to "AAA", this is how we want to edit our web pages.
I don't really want "AAA" so I'll delete it.
save it
tab
reload
Now it says "Kirk's Sample Page"
Line 12 talks about an external stylesheet
That name can be whatever you want it to be, I'll change it to "zz"
save it
tab
reload
It all changed because that document doesn't exist.
I'll rename it to "Kirks Great External Stylesheet"
save it
tab
reload
We see that it still doesn't work because KirksGreatExternalStylesheet.css doesn't exist.
If I rename it to KirksGreatExternalStylesheet.css
save it
tab
reload
Now the page is styled again.
There's a little secret that I learned about css.
Add question mark then something every time you change css and the css will be reloaded.
I'll show you how to do that automatically using PHP in a later lesson.
Line 13 closes the head.
Lines 14 through 18 us for internal styling.
I have a class called whatever_I_want which is referenced on line 28.
A class can be named just about anything, there is no special name that you have to use.
I'll change the class name and the reference to "anything".
A web page reload shows that it still works.
If I change the name to "anything_oops" but not the reference, the styling goes away.
When the reference is also changed, the styling works again.
Let's change the color to green.
To find a color we like, open a new browser and search for "web color picker".
We'll use the w3schools link, copy the value.
The first 2 characters are for red, the next 2 are for green, and the last 2 are for blue.
They go from 0 (no light) to 9, then A to F (full light).
Save the web page, tab, reload, and now it's green.
Let's change the text to reflect the new color, save it, tab, reload, there's the change.
Using TextWrangler, I'll highlight "anything_oops", command f for find, paste, type the new value, replace all.
Save, tab, reload
Line 19 through 21 is my header. This is where you will put navigation for a web site in the future.
Lines 22 through 44 contains the body, and line 45 has the html closing tag (it was opened at the beginning).
You could move the footer outside of the body but I like it in the body.
Let's look at some html tags/elements.
Line 23 has an h1 for heading 1, change the words, save, tab, reload, the words changed.
Why is it in blue? Let's look at the external stylesheet, and there it is, let's change it to red.
Save, tab, reload
It didn't change because the css was cached, let's change the data after the question mark.
Save, tab, reload, it changed!
Let's change the text again, save, tab, reload, tab back to the code
Line 24 begins a paragraph and Line 40 ends it.
Line 25 begins a bold tag with the word "Bold" to be displayed on the web page, followed by the closing tag.
Line 26 has a break tag. I change the text.
You can do a break like
but I like
.
Line 27 has a center tag.
Reload, it shows "wow".
Line 28 is a div, which is short for division, and is using internal styling.
Line 29 is a div with inline styling.
I can change the style (color) and the text.
I'll change it to blue with a really big margin.
You can do em's, percentage, pixels. I just try em, I don't memorize all of that.
Lines 30 through 34 have an unnumbered list.
Closing list items (li's) is optional, I prefer not to close them.
Lines 35 through 39 have an ordered (numbered) list.
You can see it takes me a while to figure out why I don't have numbers, darn css.
Lines 41 through 43 have the footer.
Line 44 closes the body and line 45 closes the html.
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>Shows on the tab</title>
</head>
<body>
This is a very basic web page with just a little bit of html
<p>
I did an internet search for "html bold" and found out how to use a <b>bold tag</b>
</p>
<p>
I also learned how to create an ordered list
<ol>
<li>Item 1
<li>Item 2
<li>Item 3
</ol>
</p>
</body>
</html>
I did an internet search for "html bold" and found out how to use a bold tag
I also learned how to create an ordered list
<table style="border: 1px solid black;">
<tr><th>Column 1</th><th>Column 2</th><th>Column 3</th></tr>
<tr><td>something</td><td>another thing</td><td>third thing</td></tr>
<tr><td>like my sample?</td><td>yes</td><td>no</td></tr>
<tr><td>tr stands for table row</td><td>th stands for table header which is like table data</td><td>td stands for table data</td></tr>
</table>
Column 1 | Column 2 | Column 3 |
---|---|---|
something | another thing | third thing |
like my sample? | yes | no |
tr stands for table row | th stands for table header which is like table data | td stands for table data |
<img src="img/SampleImage.jpg" alt="Sample Image">
Remember to check Kirk's Pet Peeves, it will affect your grade
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Here are some standard tags
nav is for menu navigation
h1 is for the first heading
h2 is for the second heading, and so on
For semantic reasons you should never have an h2 without an h1 first
section is for a section
article is for an article within a section
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Using proper indenting while writing code is very important. It's easy to figure where you're at and what's going on with small pages but start throwing some PHP and Javascript in there and crank up the number of lines in the thousands and you'll understand what I mean.
I like to use two spaces for indenting. Some people use tabs and that's OK too. Whatever you choose, be consistent.
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To view your HTML or the HTML on someone else's page use the inspect HTML option. With Safari you have to turn it on first. Safari...Preferences...Advanced...CHECK in 'Show Develop menu in menu bar'.
I also use Google Chrome. Right-click...inspect.
One of my favorite ways to view code is in a new window. With Google Chrome, option/command/u (all at the same time).
Firefox and Opera also have options to inspect code. I suppose IE may have it too, but I'm not an IE fan.
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After you upload your video to YouTube, Vimeo, or some other video streaming service, you can usually embed it into your web page. YouTube actually gives you the code to embed it. When you do this, your video is still stored on YouTube's servers (their cloud) and streams to the user's computer from their site, even though they're on your site. Pretty cool, eh? I usually warn against including info from other sites but I definitely make the exception when it comes to videos. Having previously managed a video player on my own site, I can tell you it's something that I don't miss at all.
I created a wrapper around the videos used in our Week using CSS. You're welcome to steal my code, but you'll need to figure out how on your own.
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The problem with including someone else's library or code in your web page is that you're relying on their service to be up and running and for there site to never go away. You can download other people's information as well. Unfortunately, it's often very bloated (large files) and you end up slowing down your user's experience with a bunch of code that you're not even using.
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My pet peeves? I'm not going to say much more than read my pet peeves. If I had to highlight my top four for the Weekes that I teach it would be spelling, consistency, broken images, and untested responsive design (we'll get to it later in the Week). My last really big pet peeve doesn't really relate directly to our Week as much, it's maintainability. There's not much worse than going to a web site and seeing 'upcoming' information for something that weeks, months, or even years old. It removes all validity to the web site. Before you start something, make sure you can finish it; with a website, that means maintaining it.
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I can't teach you everything there is to know about anything when it comes to the land of computing. The web didn't even exist when I went to college. I know, I'm old. You'll be old some day too and your kids will say, you used to do what? Fill in the blank.
Anyway, there are certain things that you'll do over and over, like using the bold tag or a paragraph tag. There are many things that you'll only do once in a while. That's OK. That's where Google searching comes in. Knowing some key words and learning how to spot what you're looking for quickly is the trick. It's a great skill to have. For example, if you want to make your font a different color, try a search for 'css font color'. If you want to build a table, try 'html table'. Stack Overflow is a great resource for answers. I'm sure other's will pop up too as time goes on.
It can be pretty difficult trouble-shooting your own code problems. Think that's hard? Try trouble-shooting someone else's. There are many ways to do things, even many right ways. So if you're having trouble with your code and your peer or even your professor don't know the answer right away, don't be surprised. The best thing to do is to work in baby steps. Change one thing at a time and test it. That way it's much easier to trouble-shoot the problem.
Another thing to keep in mind is not to bang your head against a wall for a long period of time with a problem. I usually give myself a 5 minute internet search if I don't know how to do something. If I still don't have the answer, I look to my peers for help. It's amazing how quickly you'll find the answer if you just give yourself different options.
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Let's dive into some cascading style sheets. These are examples from an external style sheet. Add something like this to your HTML to include an external style sheet:
<!doctype html>
<html lang='en'>
<head>
<link rel='icon' type='image/png' href='favicon.png'>
<link href='minimal_style.css' media='screen' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'/>
<title>201720 IMS222</title>
</head>
The minimal_style.css has the css in it. The first code that we'll look at is a ul which is an unnumbered list. Codes here need squiggly brackets around them, then the styling is inside the squiggly brackets. Each style type is listed on the left followed by a color and the style is on the right followed by a semi colon.
Here we're setting the ul which is an unnumbered list to display.
ul {
list-style: display;
}
Here we're setting the li which is a list item to have a left margin of 2 em.
li {
margin-left: 2em;
}
Here we're setting the nav which is navigation or menu system to be 100% wide, go to the left, have a shadow, a background color, some padding, and align the text. Look at some additional CSS just to get a feel for what it looks like.
nav {
width: 100%;
float: left;
box-shadow: 0 4px 8px 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2), 0 6px 20px 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.19);
background-color: #212121;
padding-left:2em;
padding-right:2em;
text-align: center;
}
nav ul {
list-style-type: none;
}
nav li {
width: 20%;
text-align: center;
float: left;
margin-left: 0px;
}
nav a {
background-color: #212121;
padding: 14px 32px;
display: block;
text-decoration: none;
text-align: center;
color: #eee;
}
nav a:hover {
background-color: #192A75;
}
b {
font-family: source_sans_probold;
color: #676767;
}
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {
font-family: source_sans_probold;
color: #192A75;
}
h1 {
font-size: 2em;
line-height: 1.15em;
margin: 60px 0px 2px 0px;
}
h2 {
font-size: 1.25em;
line-height: 1.15em;
margin: 10px 0px 2px 0px;
}
h3 {
font-size: 1.01em;
line-height: 1.01em;
margin: 5px 0px 2px 0px;
}
h4, h5 {
font-size: 1.00em;
line-height: 1.00em;
margin: 5px 0px 2px 0px;
}
p {
line-height: 1.45em;
margin-bottom: 20px;
}
section {
margin: 80px auto 40px;
max-width: 1070px;
position: relative;
padding: 20px
}
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Cascading Style Sheets got their name because they cascade like water. The style furthest away can get changed by one that's closer. There are 3 different ways of styling. External, Internal, and Inline styling. An external style sheet is a separate document with just CSS in it. You call it whatever you want, and then reference it in your HTML. In the example here, I call it: Kirks_External_Style_Sheet.css
<link href='Kirks_External_Style_Sheet.css' media='screen' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'/>
An internal style sheet is at the top of a web page. It's inside style tags like this:
<style>
summary::-webkit-details-marker {
color: #80C16F;
font-size: 125%;
margin-right: 2px;
}
</style>
Inline styling looks like this:
<p style='margin:3em;'>Blah, blah, blah</p>
The order is external to internal to inline. So if you have styling for a paragraph <p> in all 3 documents, the internal styling will win. It's important to note that the cascading piece only over-writes things that are the same. If you set a color in the external style sheet and don't change the color but set other things in the internal or inline style sheet, the color will still be what you set it as in the external style sheet.
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The important thing to know about fonts on the web, is that they are a little different than fonts on your computer. If you set a font up on the web, and I don't have that font, the site is not going to look the way you want it to look for me. The two most popular ways to do fonts on the web are Google fonts and TypeKit. Google fonts can be found at https://fonts.google.com/. You embed the font by using something like:
TypeKit is an Adobe option and since I'm not a huge Adobe fan, I'll leave you to figure that one out yourself.
I'm also not a huge fan of embedding fonts because you're relying on someone else's server being up and running for your site to work. That just adds a layer of complexity to your code that may be unnecessary. Try not to go crazy with fonts. 1 or 2 on a web page is plenty.
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Like fonts? Be original. Make your own font. MyScriptFont (at http://www.myscriptfont.com/) is a web site that allows you create a font from your handwriting. Then to convert the font to a web font use the Generator in FontSquirrel (at https://www.fontsquirrel.com/). Give it a shot, it's fun.
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This is what I like to call, life lessons with Kirk. Don't try to be all things to all people. Find what you do well and build on those strengths. This is true for you personally and to your site. Also look for the quick wins, also known as the low hanging fruit. If you can quickly and easily make a change to your website that makes a big difference, go for it. If it's something that's highly involved, put it on the back burner. This is a good lesson for this Week, your future jobs, and your future, period. Time management is something we all practice and hopefully improve on. Just remember, every time you say yes to something, that means you're saying no to everything else.
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A persona is basically a made up person that represents the problem that you're trying to solve. Sometimes they're called user stories. I usually just put myself in the shoes of my users and use the product like they would, and think about how I would like it to work. Some places like to do benchmarking (against competitors) but I'm not really a fan of that. Aren't you trying to make something better? Then why would you copy them?
If you're called to do a persona, you'll usually want to come up with a person (name and short background), their problem (as it relates to what you're trying to solve) and their goals (i.e. a solution that you can provide). If you're doing it for a company in the future, you may also include a photo of the person that you're trying to create a persona for.
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3 popular concepts in design are Wireframes, Mockups, and Prototypes. Wireframes can be pencil drawings or line art for how you want your design to look. Mockups are images that move beyond wireframes that give you a better sense of the final design. Prototypes are almost functioning solutions. You may have a database that will be built later; the prototype would be functioning code without the database. Personally I like to dive right in on the code but if you're having trouble seeing the final product, I encourage you to try any or all of these concepts.
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On a Mac, to take a screen shot, use Applications...Utilities...Grab...Capture...Selection. I also use a tool called Skitch which allows for annotations as well. You may use screenshots for a wide variety of reasons. Anytime you use a photo, I recommend keeping it small. 1024 pixels wide is generally acceptable. A jpg is also generally the preferred format. Try to keep photos under ½ MB. There can be reasons to go bigger than that like a photo sharing website, but even then I wouldn't force someone to have to download large photos while just perusing the site.
Name images without spaces. Spaces and the web are not good friends.
All images need to have alt text that describe the image too. Make the photo the size that you want it to be, let the user shrink it down but forcing them to zoom in on a picture will make the picture pixelated. Finally, putting "width='100%'" will keep your photo looking great at all sizes.
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When you evaluate sites you can use the information you've already acquired from this course. Bruce Tognazzini also came up with what he calls the 'First Principles'. You can check it out at http://asktog.com/atc/principles-of-interaction-design/. Bruce has some great ideas. One thing I would like to add is, be nice, especially when you're evaluating your peer's website. People put a lot of time and effort into their work, give them constructive criticism on things that they can do to improve their site.
We've already covered some of my top pet peeve's (spelling, grammar, consistency, file size). I'd like to address content now. If you're site is about art, it should have a lot of art on it. If it's about being an editor for a newspaper, it should have a lot of writing on it. Having the appropriate amount of quantity on a site is just as important as the quality of the content. There's no specific formula for how much you should have. That's where you need to do what makes sense and that's why it's always good to have another pair of eyes look at your work. For all future projects in this Week, you should have someone evaluate your work. It can only help you get better.
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Single web pages are OK but it's more fun to create an entire site. There are a number of ways to do that. The silly way is to recreate the menu system on every single page. Let's not do it the crazy way. You can also use an htaccess file to pre-pend and post-pend your web pages with a header and a footer. A third way is to use PHP to 'include' or 'require' another page. We'll try both of these methods in this Week. We'll cover the how-to later, I just want you to start thinking about your web pages on a larger scale, as a web site.
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Every web designer needs to understand photos and the web.
The file size for photos need to be relatively small and need to fit on the page.
This is a photo taken on a Nikon D5500 at 6000 x 4000 which means it's 6000 pixels wide by 4000 pixels high; which is way too big for the web.
The RAW version is over 30MB and the JPG version is over 13MB.
A good general rule is to keep web photos below .5MB.
To do that, we'll keep the width of our images no more than 1024px wide.
Before manipulating the image, I'm going to duplicate (or copy) it and rename it.
I'm using a basic image editor called Preview that comes with a Mac, to change the size of the web version of the image.
Tools...Adjust size
If I change the size to 1024, you can see that it will be 114KB or .1MB.
If you uncheck the 'scale proportionally' option, you could stretch the image.
Please, please, please, don't use stretched images.
Let's put the image on a web page, by connecting to the server, copying the image,
and adding html to a web page to display it.
Just for fun now let's create a photo that's 1024 x 200.
First I'll open up the image with Preview, command c to copy it.
I'm going to use a program called Pixelmator to do the sizing.
File...New...enter in 1024 and 200...paste...zoom out...drag the corners to resize it
Some programs stretch images when you do this, Pixelmator does not.
...zoom in, and move it to where you want it
...ok...File...Export
I like jpg's for photos, this one is less than 58KB, tiny.
Let's put it on a web page, and voila, there you go.
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Responsive Design is a design approach allowing for one web page/site to be viewed easily and equally among many different devices and sizes. It's essentially the way you make your site mobile friendly. There was a trend not too many years ago to create a separate mobile (or m.) site specifically for smartphone users. What a silly idea. People have a very hard time maintaining one site, what made them think they could maintain two sites? The other thing is that many things were missing on the mobile site. Whenever I see a mobile site now, I just shake my head and close the window.
With only a few lines of code you can make your site responsive. Let's learn about it now. Put this code on a web page and see how the background (and a few other things) change as you change the page size:
/*Responsive Design Style differences for multiple sizes*/
@media screen and (max-width:320px){
body {
background:#000;
color: #FFF;
}
A:hover {
color: #CCC;
}
}
@media screen and (min-width:321px) and (max-width:480px){
body {
background:#CCC;
}
A:hover {
color: #FFF;
}
}
@media screen and (min-width:481px) and (max-width:600px){
body {
background:#FAD2D9;
}
}
@media screen and (min-width:601px) and (max-width:768px){
body {
background:#D5FAD2;
}
}
@media screen and (min-width:769px) and (max-width:1024px){
body {
background:#77BE94;
}
}
@media screen and (min-width:1025){
body {
background:#D2DAFA;
}
}
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Transcript to be uploaded later
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There are many times on a website that you want to collect data from your users. To do that, you usually need a form. Here is a sample form that meets WCAG 2.0 Level AAA standards that covers types of items you would find on a form:
<section>
<h1>Forms</h1>
<h2>This is a place holder for a web page that has a completely accessible web form</h2>
<form name='formMyHDGLocationManager' action='' METHOD='post' ENCTYPE='application/x-www-form-urlencoded'>
<label for='a_text_field_01'>Text field</label>
<input type='text' name='a_text_field_01' id='a_text_field_01' value=''>
<label for='a_text_field_02'>Another Text field</label>
<input type='text' name='a_text_field_02' id='a_text_field_02' value=''>
<fieldset>
<legendphp>Radio Buttons</legendphp>
<br><input type='radio' name='gender' id='1st choice' value='1st choice'><label for='1st choice' Week='radio'>1st choice</label>
<br><input type='radio' name='gender' id='2nd choice' value='2nd choice'><label for='2nd choice' Week='radio'>2nd choice</label>
<br><input type='radio' name='gender' id='3rd choice' value='3rd choice'><label for='3rd choice' Week='radio'>3rd choice</label>
</fieldset>
<fieldset>
<legendphp>Checkboxes</legendphp>
<br><input type='checkbox' name='1st one' id='1st one' value='1st one'><label for='1st one' Week='checkbox'>1st one</label>
<br><input type='checkbox' name='2nd one' id='2nd one' value='2nd one'><label for='2nd one' Week='checkbox'>2nd one</label>
<br><input type='checkbox' name='3rd one' id='3rd one' value='3rd one'><label for='3rd one' Week='checkbox'>3rd one</label>
<br><input type='checkbox' name='4th one' id='4th one' value='4th one'><label for='4th one' Week='checkbox'>4th one</label>
</fieldset>
<label for='a_dropdown_list'>Dropdown list</label>
<br><select name='a_dropdown_list' id='a_dropdown_list'>
<option value='Option 1'>Option 1</option>
<option value='Option 2'>Option 2</option>
<option value='Option 3'>Option 3</option>
<option value='Option 4'>Option 4</option>
</select>
<p><label for='a_textarea'>Textarea
<br><textarea name='a_textarea' id='a_textarea' rows='5' cols='55'></textarea></label></p>
<input type='submit' value='Submit'>
</form>
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Accessibility is a hot topic these days and I will say, when it comes to design, it does limit your options. Color schemes need to have a lot of contrast. It's a good thing though, because there are tools to check your pages to make sure they're accessible by everyone, which is really the goal. The main tool that I use is the WAVE extension for Google Chrome (http://wave.webaim.org/extension/). With this tool installed, you can even check pages that require you to login first, because the tool runs from your local machine. Install this tool and check some of your web pages.
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Copy KirksSampleSite.zip to your web space and tweak it to make it your own. Change the color scheme and the menu and, of course, the content to your own interest. This is a sample site to show you how to create a whole site, and not just a page. You need to fill it up with something that is of interest to you. Make it yours. Have a peer evaluate it. Have your parents or friends use it and tell you what they think. Are there any typo's? Does it look different enough from the original to know that it's yours? Do you have an appropriate amount of content? Good luck and have fun.
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PHP is a popular general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited to web development. It is very powerful and is widely used. Up to now, all of our content has been static, which means you typed something, saved it, and viewed it on the web. With PHP, you will begin to use dynamically created content. You can type something like:
<?php
echo date('Ymd');
?>
on your web page and when you view it you'll see today's date in year month day format.
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PHP needs to be installed on your website. At Miami, it's already been installed. To create a new PHP document, you can just copy an existing document and change the extension to php. You can begin and end PHP multiple times in the document if you want to, or you can wrap the whole thing in PHP. To begin PHP type '<?php' and to end PHP type '?>'. When you're in PHP, you can still create HTML by using 'echo'. The following will say 'Hello World':
<?php
echo 'Hello World';
?>
Now let's put that in bold:
<?php
echo '<b>Hello World</b>';
?>
Now let's make it a header:
<?php
echo '<h1>Hello World</h1>';
?>
Now let's make a list:
<?php
echo '<ul><li>John<li>Bob<li>Bill<li>Rick<li>Steve</ul>';
?>
Here's the same list a few different ways, all with different code formatting but with the same HTML formatting:
<?php
echo '<ul>
<li>John
<li>Bob
<li>Bill
<li>Rick
<li>Steve
</ul>
';
?>
or
<?php
echo '<ul>
<li>John</li>
<li>Bob</li>
<li>Bill</li>
<li>Rick</li>
<li>Steve</li>
</ul>
';
?>
or
<?php
echo '<ul>';
echo ' <li>John</li>';
echo ' <li>Bob</li>';
echo ' <li>Bill</li>';
echo ' <li>Rick</li>';
echo ' <li>Steve</li>';
echo '</ul>';
?>
or
<?php
echo '<ul>';
echo ' <li>John</li>';
echo ' <li>Bob</li>';
echo ' <li>Bill</li>';
echo ' <li>Rick</li>';
echo ' <li>Steve</li>';
echo '</ul>';
?>
Here's a loop to show you some of the power of PHP.
$ThisManyRounds=3;
for($round=1;$round<=$ThisManyRounds;$round++){
if($round==1){$Topic='American Literature';}
if($round==2){$Topic='Mathematics';}
if($round==3){$Topic='World History';}
echo $round.') '.$Topic.'<br>';
}
See if you can change the loop to show the dates of the last 180 days in the following format:
Day of the Week, Month-Day-Year
Good luck.
Here's code to get you started:
$ShowThisManyDays=30;
for($day=-10;$day<=$ShowThisManyDays;$day++){
$TheDay=date('F m-d-Y, l',
mktime(0,
0,
0,
date('m'),
(date('d')+$day),
date('Y')
)
);
echo $TheDay.'<br>';
}
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Transcript to be uploaded later
I hope everyone enjoyed the class and learned a lot
513.529.6700 | email | Email Form
105 Harris Hall, Oxford, OH 45056
My office (105 Harris Hall) is on the right side of the building as you walk in to Harris dining hall. I'm on the right as soon as you walk in the building.
Find my office via Google maps
Office Hours prior to 03-10-2017: 10:45am-11:45am on Friday's or by appointment
Based on student feedback, beginning 03-10-2017, "Office Hours" have been replaced with class time from 11am-11:45am on Friday's in 205 Laws Hall