Web Tech Online, or CS 4980, was a course that I took at the University of West Georgia in Fall 2009. This course taught me many concepts including how to use good web patterns and principles, how to exercise file organization and management, how to code with XHTML, how to create cascading style sheets, how to create JavaScript files, and how to use the elements of good design in my websites. In my opinion, the course was very stimulating and I learned a lot. Here is an overview of the concepts that I learned through Web Tech Online:
Web patterns and principles are important because they contribute to web pages and websites that are easy for users to understand and for developers to manage.
Some examples of good web patterns/principles that I learned are:
Separation of Concerns means keeping things that are related together and things that are unrelated separate. (Ex. Songs go into a Music folder and pictures go into a Pictures folder).DRY, or Don't Repeat Yourself, means exactly what it says. When you're building a website, repeating yourself makes messy code and will just cause you to have to do more work in the long run. Low Representational Gap means giving items descriptive names. If you give an item a descriptive name when you first create it, it will be very easy to find later. High Cohesion means keeping things related to a task together and things unrelated to that task separate. For example, XHTML (website content) should be kept separate from CSS (website style).
I liked very much the presentation of the concept of Web Patterns and Principles through Web Tech Online. I had heard about these principles before, but never really learned much about them. Through Web Tech, I learned much about these principles and applied them often.
File organization and management is an important concept, especially when it comes to building and maintaining web pages and websites. Well-organized files can make it easy for one to find exactly what one is looking for while poorly-organized files can create such a hassle that one may completely give up on finding something.
Good principles of file organization include:
I liked very much the presentation of the concept of File Organization and Management through Web Tech Online. Before I took this course, I was a rather disorganized person when it came to files. I would throw all my files to the Desktop or My Documents without giving it a second thought, sometimes not even bothering to name them. Needles to say, this created some problems when I had to search for those files later. Web Tech Online has certainly helped me to organize more files more effectively: Now I have school folders for each semester with subfolders for each course, storing files with descriptive names so that I can find anything relating to school fairly quickly. I enjoyed learning about this concept of file organization and I feel confident enough to research any questions I may have about it in the future.
XHTML is important because it is the language used to create many web pages & websites across the globe. With the language of XHTML, one can make such things as headings, paragraphs, tables, ordered lists, and unordered lists. To create any of these things, one should use XHTML tags. For example, to create a paragraph, simply enclose it with <p> and </p> tags:
<p> This is a paragraph. It is enclosed with paragraph tags. </p>
Notice that the last tag has a slash, indicating the end of an element. Other tags include <ul> for unordered lists, <ol> for ordered lists, <h1> for level-1 headings, and <table> for tables.
Before I took Web Tech Online, I was not acquainted at all with the concept of XHTML, so I feel that I have learned a lot about it through its presentation over the semester of Fall 2009. I like the fact that this concept was presented to me step-by-step, starting with easy things like paragraphs and headings & culminating with harder things like hyperlinks and breadcrumbs. Because I have a good understanding of the basic concept of XHTML & because resources such as the XHTML Reference were presented to me, I feel confident enough to research any questions that I might have about XHTML now and in the future.
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets, which are used to assign styles to web pages and websites. Without the style and organization that the language of CSS provides, many websites would be boring, and large sites would be very hard to organize. With CSS, however, one can do many neat things such as change the background color of page, position elements, highlight paragraphs, and much more.
I liked the presentation of the concept of CSS, because like XHTML, it was presented to me step-by-step, starting with easy things like _ & culminating with harder things like _. Also, good resources relating to CSS like the CSS Tutorial were shown to me, so I feel confident enough to research any questions that I might have about CSS.
JavaScript is a language that is used to interact with the user. JavaScript can be used to do such behaviors as _ in response to the user. As one can see from many websites, JavaScript can be used either well (creating an innovative look and feel with neat levels of interactivity) or poorly (creating crowded, distracting elements that cause the user to feel lost and confused).
Some guidelines for good JavaScript are:
I liked the presentation of the concept of JavaScript, but not as much as the presentations of earlier concepts. Perhaps because JavaScript is a bit more complex that XHTML and CSS, the presentation seemed to not cover all the aspects of JavaScript. Of course, there are so many aspects of JavaScript that I don't think any one-semester course ever could. I did like the fact that resources like the JavaScript Tutorial were presented to me, and I feel confident enough to research any questions I might have about JavaScript or anything more that I would like to know about the concept.
JQuery is basically advanced JavaScript. JQuery is important because it can be used on newer web applications that push the limits of regular JavaScript. With jQuery, one can use a simplistic approach to do many neat things such as magnify things or blur text.
I liked the presentation of the concept of jQuery, but not as much as the presentations of earlier concepts. I did like the fact that good resources like jQuery documentation were presented to me. However, I felt somewhat overwhelmed by the amount of information that was presented to me on the subject. I think that jQuery would not have seemed so overwhelming to me if I had seen it presented in smaller chunks instead of all at once. Of course, I appreciate that jQuery is a large subject and the basics are what I really need to understand. I do believe that I understand at least the basics of jQuery and I feel confident enough to research any questions that I might have about the subject.
Web pages/sites across the globe can be seen to have either good or bad design. Design is important, in that a good site design can create a positive experience for the user that could encourage him/her to visit the site again while a bad site design can create a negative experience for the user that could leave him/her lost, confused, and rather unwilling to visit the site again.
Some guidelines for good web design are:
I liked the presentation of the concept of web design because great resources like the Web Style Guide were presented to me. However, the wealth of information and exercises relating to web design overwhelmed me and, in my opinion, the presentation would have been better if it had presented the concept in smaller chunks.