School of Education

Internet Technologies At Work

Chapter 5: Creating Web Pages

After completing Chapter 5, you will know how to:

Options

There are four ways to create Web pages:

  1. You can use a plain text editor to type the HTML code of your Web page by hand. Doing this requires that you know the HTML tags, because a plain text editor does not have any built-in help for HTML coding.
  2. You can use an HTML editor that contains toolbars and menus that help you insert the codes. This built-in help makes it easier to create a Web page, but still it is technical and requires that you have a good understanding of how HTML works.
  3. You can use the "Save as Web Page" option to convert word-processed documents into Web pages. This is the most productive way to create Web pages from term papers and other forms of scholarly writing.
  4. You can use a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editor to create Web pages through a graphical user interface that lets you enter text and graphics directly onto the screen exactly as you want them to appear. As you create the screen, the WYSIWYG editor automatically generates the HTML codes that make the Web page.

Strategy

You may be surprised to hear that some of the Web’s most successful authors create their pages with a text editor. Because HTML is a textual encoding language, you can use a plain text editor to create HTML Web pages. This course is going to save you some money by taking advantage of this fact. Instead of requiring you to buy a fancy tool, this course will make it possible for you to complete all of the HTML exercises with a simple text editor that you already own. If you have one of the fancier tools, on the other hand, you can also work through this book’s tutorials with a more high-end tool.

Guidelines

Study carefully the Web page elements and design guidelines that Chapter 5 presents. Adopting these principles of good Web design will earn you a good grade on the Web site you will develop in this course.

End of Chapter Labs

Lab Project 5.1: Web Page Creation Strategy

When employees can create their own Web pages and publish them to the Web, a school or company becomes much more efficient in posting and sharing information. Hyperlinking enables the Web page author to link items on the page to other information that a coworker, student, or customer might be expected or encouraged to access as related information. The search engine selected in Lab 2.3 will enable users to search via keyword for any other page at the site to which they have access. This kind of information publishing, linking, and search capability is the very reason Tim Berners-Lee gives for inventing the Web back in 1989. In his 1989 proposal for creating the Web, Berners-Lee (1989, ¶ 5) said his goal was to help his coworkers keep track of things in a large project. Imagine that your employer wants to empower your coworkers to take advantage of the power of publishing, linking, and searching school or company information on the Web. Your employer wants you to recommend a Web page creation strategy that is appropriate for your workplace. In developing a recommendation for the best approach for your school or company to take in creating Web pages, consider these issues:

  1. Technical support. How much technical support is available to coworkers in your school or company? If your company has an IT organization with a support staff that helps employees troubleshoot technical problems, you may be able to recommend a more technical solution than a small company or school that does not have a lot of technical support staff, if any.
  2. Other software products. Take into account other software products that your school or company is already using. If all of your coworkers are using Microsoft Office, for example, that might direct your choice toward a FrontPage solution. If your school or company has adopted Netscape as its standard browser, on the other hand, Netscape Composer may be the obvious choice.
  3. Training. How will your coworkers learn how to use the Web page creation software you recommend? If you recommend FrontPage or Netscape Composer, for example, you could use the Web page creation tutorial in McGraw-Hill’s Internet Literacy textbook as training material.

Use a word processor to write up your answer to this assignment in the form of a two-part essay. In the opening paragraph, tell what Web page creation strategy you recommend and briefly state the reason for choosing it for use in your workplace. Then write another paragraph or two describing the other approaches you considered, and state your reasons for rejecting them. Conclude your recommendation with a paragraph describing how empowering you feel your recommended strategy will be, and give examples of a few ways in which creating Web pages in this manner will empower your coworkers and improve operations in your workplace. If your instructor has asked you to hand in this assignment, make sure you put your name at the top, then save it on disk or follow the other instructions you may have been given for submitting this assignment.

Lab Project 5.2: Adopting a Common Look and Feel

Whether or not the Web page author is aware of it, every Web page has a certain kind of look and feel. If the look and feel is consistent from page to page, coworkers and users who visit the site frequently get used to looking in certain places on the page to find different kinds of things such as menus, link bars, headlines, different kinds of content, and navigation buttons. If the look and feel is not consistent from page to page, the user must spend more time finding where things are on the page. This is inefficient at best and can be frustrating as well. Imagine that your employer has decided that your school or company Web site needs to adopt a common look and feel. Your employer has asked you to create a design specification recommending a common look and feel for Web pages created in your workplace. In creating this design spec, address the following issues:

  1. Templates. What kinds of pages do your coworkers typically create? The pages probably fall into a few basic types, such as home pages for different projects or products, search pages for finding things, catalog pages for listing products for sale, and document pages containing reports, product information, or scholarly papers.
  2. Design elements. What are the design elements that are likely to appear on the different kinds of pages identified in step 1? Make an outline that lists the basic kinds of pages typically used in your workplace. Under each kind, list the design elements that appear on that kind of page. Consider all the different elements that can appear on your workplace Web pages, such as banners, menus, search buttons, quick links, news feeds, headlines, navigation buttons, pictures, icons, logos, prose, products, catalogs, advertisements, and bibliographies.
  3. Positioning. Add to the outline created in step 2 an indication of where each element will go on the Web page. If you are not sure where things should go, visit some Web sites of organizations like yours, and study their Web page designs. If you have FrontPage, there are several built-in page templates you can look at. Pull down the File menu, choose New Page, and click the option to see the templates. As you click each template, a preview pane shows the layout. There is also a template gallery at officeupdate.microsoft.com/templategallery. Surf these templates and visit other Web sites in your industry or subject matter to get more design ideas.
  4. Navigation. Include in your design spec a strategy for placing navigational elements at consistent places onscreen.

Use a word processor to write up your answer to this assignment in the form of a three-part essay. In the first part, describe the overall approach you recommend. Mention the three or four basic kinds of templates you feel your school or company needs. In the second part, present the outline of design elements that will typically appear on each template. Conclude by describing where onscreen these design elements will appear. If you are graphically inclined, you can use your word processor’s table feature to create a prototype of the screen designs you envision. Otherwise, you can describe the layout prosaically. Make sure you specify where the navigational elements will be onscreen. If your instructor has asked you to hand in this assignment, put your name at the top, then save it on disk or follow the other instructions you may have been given for submitting this assignment.