The purpose of the overall assignment is to demonstrate what you have learnt in this course. You will do this by creating a coherently themed web site using the design ideas and construction techniques you have learnt in the lectures and labs. The assignment is worth a total of 40 marks and must be submitted in three parts.
The theme of your assignment will be Me and my passion
.
What does this mean? Well, here is your chance to build a website introducing yourself and your great interest to the world. Whether your passion is for model aircraft building, haute couture, quantum physics or medieval Hungarian literature — tell (and/or show) us about it.
If you have an alternative topic or subject you are desperately keen to work on you can email me and we may be able to negotiate the alternative (make sure you keep a written record of our agreement).
The tasks listed below set out the minimum requirements for each part of the assignment. You can always do extra things, and we won't ignore them in marking - so they may earn you extra marks to compensate for other things you don't do as well.
The first step of the assignment is to fill in the assignment info form. The form does not work well in Internet Explorer! Review the Fair Use document document to understand what is tolerable to do and what is strictly prohibited in the context of this Assignment.
Introduce yourself and your passion, interest or hobby etc.
Write a mission statement or list of goals similar to the idea of a brief statement
of the mission and list of goals in chapter 1 of the Unusually Useful Web Book
.
This section should probably take 200-400 words or so.
Create an external (separate) CSS file. Use at least 10 CSS rules. Make sure your CSS includes comments that would be useful to someone taking over the maintenance of your site, things like the purpose of each rule, exceptions to its use and the choice you made as to which selector you specified.
If you create more than one CSS make sure they are deployed in a Cascading
manner, i.e. there should be at least one default CSS that will be applied to
all the pages in your site, with specialised CSS then being applied to specific
pages of the web site.
If you use Xanga, make sure that your CSS modifications to your Xanga page are coherent and you have added comments.Sometimes Xanga wipes out the comments so also include a copy of your CSS and explanations in your weblog.
This page should clearly depict the organisation/structure of the web site, possibly using a table or links (or both) or an image map. Make sure you update the source log as you expand your web site in Parts 2 and 3.
You will need to keep a log. A typical log describes the list of sources you used for your project and the modifications you applied to them. The origin of the source should be given in enough detail to ensure the marker can access the source whenever it is possible (URL, ISBN etc). Make sure you update the site map as you expand your web site in Parts 2 and 3.
In the second part of your assignment you will add content and possibly enhance your design.
Create a page which takes feedback from visitors to your site via a form.
Create a page which displays one or more image maps. Make sure that there are at least 3 links, with proper labels in your image map.
Take or select at least 10 relevant photographs. Convert the photographs to *.png format. Use a template or a suitable tool like Galerie to present them with appropriate titles and any comments you wish to make. Your photo gallery should have the same look and feel as the rest of the web site. The easiest way to achieve this is to ensure it uses the same CSS.
You can do the storyboard (Lab 5) as a table, or in any way you choose. The key thing is to present your plan of how you intend your video (see 3.1) to look after editing.
Convert your storyboard into a comic. (see lab 5) .
The comic and the video (see next task) should represent the same
story
. It should be possible to understand the video by
reading the comic, and understand the comic by watching the video.
Shoot and edit a video and present it on the website. The video (i.e. about your subject, its the same video) should contain at least one title and one transition. It will be inlined within a web page. Use your creativity and originality to do something interesting, useful or just funny.
For video cameras and especially digital still cameras with movie
mode, don't forget to use a tripod. Keep in mind that video cameras
are not the only source of video. For example, many modern digital
cameras in movie mode
will produce video recording which are fine
for web delivery. Then there is video caputure from a running program,
and so on.
Last year almost everyone had access to a video camera or digital still camera with movie mode from family / friends / church / work / etc. If you end up unable to find someone with one, please e-mail me and I will try and help.
I suggest 5 minutes absolute max for the final video. You should also provide a few words describing what the video is about and/or trying to achieve.
Create an second CSS page which transforms the appearance of your website, either
in an interesting way or into a more printer-friendly format.
OR
Create 2 alternative CSS pages, one which presents your web
pages in a printer friendly format, the other which transforms the appearance
of your website in an interesting way.
Apply the RSS feed technology you have learnt about in lab 9. Use Yahoo Pipes to do a feed mashup, or Dapper to convert some other content to a feed, or show me some other similar technology.
Run at least 2 of your CSS and at least 2 of your most complex HTML pages through the W3C validation service. Create a page (or another photo gallery) showing some screenshots (if you're not sure how to take screenshots - google it!) of the validation report.
Get creative and add a component or content which differs from the tasks listed above. It might be an extra page presenting some interesting content you made or wrote yourself, or which provides links to sites you have found useful while making the site, or which are about related or relevant subjects. or it might be something made with a tool you have researched and learnt to use yourself. Don't get stressed - this is meant to allow you to be creative in some way, and get marks for it.
If you need to apply for an extension you MUST contact me and explain your situation BEFORE the deadline (e-mail is best).
There are two ways you can submit the assigment.
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Each part will be marked separately and marks will be allocated in the following way:
What will marks be awarded (or deducted) for?
Late assignments will be penalised at the rate of one (1) mark per day, or part thereof, that the assignment is overdue. Assignments more than seven (7) days late will not be accepted.
The assignment is not too difficult technically, but you will need to devote some thought to how it will all fit together. This is because your final product has two potentially contradictory goals. On the one hand you must maximise your marks by meeting all the criteria specified above, but on the other hand you must ensure the thematic coherence of your site.
Virtually all the assignment tasks are based on your lab work. If a task seems unclear, check the related lab sheet again - I didn't want to duplicate everything in the lab sheets here so that may be why the description here is short.
Make sure your content is easily accessible - if the marker can't find something whether one of the mandatory tasks or something special and unique you have made - you won't get marks for it.
Lastly, an assignment checklist —