GRDSN 126: Web Production

Course Syllabus for Fall Quarter, 2009

Doug Crabtree: Instructor

E-mail: dougc@spokanefalls.edu
Phone: (509) 533-3717
Office: Technical Arts — Bldg. 19, Rm. 223
Office Hours: View my schedule
Mailing Address: MS 3190 3410 W Fort George Wright Dr Spokane, WA 99224-5288

Prerequisites

GRDSN 158: Photoshop 1

Concurrent Enrollment

None

Course Description

This course provides an overview of World Wide Web page production skills. The emphasis will be on gaining the basic skills in web page graphics and layout. Whether your destiny is in the creative, project management, content management, coding, or occasional encounters with web projects, this course will provide you with the basic skills to be more effective, and less dangerous as a web design team member.

Course goals:

Develop awareness of the web as a career, and the development of a learning strategy or habit.
Gain competence with semantic HTML, or semantic markup, in general.
Ingest familiarity with Web Standards
Gain competence with basic CSS for styling and layout tasks.
Invent strategies for creating layouts with the coding in mind.
Use software tools for creating web graphics and optimizing them for best appearance with smallest file size.
Use of Dreamweaver to layout pages, manipulate code and manage site files.

Exploring Design

Are you a Designer or Decorator, you pick!

We ask the question, “what is design?”, andidentify varied approaches to design. Everyone blurts out “problem solving”; what does that mean? We will look into problem definition and the areas of Discovery and Implementation.We will evaluate the balance between the “no fun” strict approach to web design and the “all fun” approach, the balance between valid code and great user experiences.

Think Critically

Critical Thinking skills enable you to approach problems effectively, especially if they involve situations outside your experience and interests. Critical thinking mimics the proven method of scientific investigation: a question is identified, an hypothesis formulated, relevant data sought and gathered, the hypothesis is logically tested and evaluated, and reliable conclusions are drawn from the result.

Professional designers are hired by clients to help them reach their customers and deliver information, promote products and ideas, etc. Effective designers will use critical thinking to help invent strategies to do this task. They may use images, words, sounds, concepts, relationships...whatever they can imagine to communicate the message.

Who is the Web? Who are you?

We will look at the history of the Internet. What machinery runs the web; the servers, domains and DNS, and browsers?

We will identify the jobs in the web industry? You will examine your possiblities for web employment and what learning objectives and strategies you might use.

Web Standards

Standards aid accessibility and portability of information, they improve the overall user experience.

We will gain familiarity Web Standards and identify resources to more fully inderstand them.

POSH

Plain Old Semantic HTML; the formatting of a well-behaved standards-based web page. We will discover the advantages of using the most appropriate tags to indicate hierarchy and purpose in our page content.

Cascading Style Sheets

Basically, web pages are a lot of boxes filled with stuff. Designers arrange the boxes on pages. Basic HTML is rather limited for placing elements within a page. In the past, designers assembled layouts by cleverly appropriating table structures to hold image sections. This technique worked, but let to numerous problems for the evolving web environment. Designers are now mastering the superior tools in Cascading Style Sheets for layout and presentation.

We will stress the basics of HTML and CSS and the creation of sound page strategies.

Images

Web browsers display images in a limited set of formats. Typical pixel-based images must be GIF, JPEG, or PNG formats. Animations and graphics containing pixels and vector shapes can be displayed on most browsers; these are Flash and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) formats.

It is important that these graphics are built to particular size constraints. The width and height, in pixels, must fit the layout, and the file size, in bytes, should be managed and compressed to allow quick downloading and viewing of the web page.

We will be developing techniques to create the most effective graphics. Image quality and file size, effective color balance and range. Semantic and Presentational are key concepts of page styling.

These apply presentational styling over the semantic markup. We will work tirelessly on methods of CSS page styling.

Other Technologies

We will briefly discuss some of the other tools used in the web industry, such as:

JavaScript
AJAX
Flash
AIR
Spry
Flex
Data-driven pages
PHP and MySQL
Content Management Systems
HTML e-mail
Web Video
Blogs and vlogs
Social networks

Activities include, but are not limited to:

Lectures
Exercises
Projects
Research
Written papers
Exams

The Projects Roster

Suggested Textbooks

Adobe Photoshop CS4 Dreamweaver CS4 Visual Quickstart Guide

Web Resources

A variety of web sites and podcasts will be used as reference and research sources.

Grading / Attendance Policy

If you have completed the criteria and competency listing on any given project you will receive a 3.0. If you do not meet these industry standards you will receive an "I" for incomplete. Any incomplete projects need to be completed within 5 lab days after the final project is due. To obtain a 4.0 you must exceed expectations in either work ethic, artistic ability, production skills, writing skills, computer skills, people skills or idea development. Attendance is crucial to your progress and will be taken at the beginning of every class. The attendance policy is as follows: More than 4 absences = 0.0 grade point.

If you are absent you must make up the work by: a) collecting the class notes, b) doing any missed work and c) coordinating with your instructor. Any work you do not make up due to your absence will lower your grade one full grade (Ex: 3.0 turns into a 2.0). Two late attendances equal one absence. Leaving early or working on projects for another class during class time will result in absence.

Be prepared: Bring your disks, sketches, ideas, pictures to scan, research, and textbooks to class. You need to create a binder that contains your class handouts, competency listings and sign off sheets. This should be with you at all times.

It is recommended that you make multiple backups of your work.

Communication

You are automatically set up with the Angel system. Testing and communication will take place within Angel.

You will receive email regarding this course through the email address you provided when you registered. Please make sure you have your current email listed in your SFCC student information.

I check email Monday thru Friday. Please allow 24 hours for a reply to your email.

Note: This information is tentative and may be changed as the course proceeds.This course syllabus is only for the quarter listed above and appropriate changes may be made by the faculty. Also, future syllabi for this course may be different.