Class overview :

Class goals :

An in-depth case study provides the hands-on skills to generate a dynamic Web site. Exercises include:

• Creating accessible, standards-based Web pages with HTML, XHTML and CSS
• Building, testing and refining your Web site
• Adding DHTML effects to Web pages
• Enhancing your Web page with images and image maps
• Configuring and testing a Web server
• Processing user requests and generating dynamic pages as the response
• Interfacing your Web site to a database
• Incorporating multimedia effects

Content of Developing a Website

Introduction to the Web

• Internet/intranet fundamentals
• Web architecture
• Exploring multiple browsers
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

HTML: Hypertext Markup Language

Building a Web page with HTML and XHTML

• Head and body elements
• Formatting text with tags
• Establishing hypertext links
• Ordered and unordered lists
• Designing tables to display data
• Defining relative and absolute anchors

Adding graphic elements

• Making your pages graphical with embedded images
• Adding interactivity with « clickable » images
• Utilizing animated images to liven up a Web page
• Creating image maps to link multiple parts of a single image

Controlling page styles and layout with CSS

• Attaching style properties to HTML tags
• Creating and applying style sheets
• Implementing a styled navigational menu
• Choosing and applying styles with class and ID attributes
• Ensuring a consistent look across all pages of a site

Implementing a Web Server

Web server functionality

• Web server/browser communication
• The HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP)

Configuring a Web server

• Setting up the server directory structure
• Deploying access configuration/security
• Ongoing server administration

Programming on the Server

Server-side scripting

• Client/server/script interaction
• Exploring the operation of server-side Web applications
• Accessing data on the Web server
• Creating dynamic Web pages
• The difference between GET and POST requests
• Including a consistent navigational menu on all pages
• Reading and writing browser cookies

Processing user data with forms

• Capturing user input with HTML forms
• Adding text fields, selection lists, check boxes and radio buttons to a Web page
• Configuring a form to invoke your server-side program when submitted
• Processing form input with dynamic Web pages

Interfacing to a Database

Relational databases and the Web

• Characterizing database records
• Using SQL to manipulate the database

Database-driven Web pages

• Opening a connection to a database
• Storing data captured from forms
• Performing dynamic queries on the database
• Generating a Web page response displaying the results of a query

Creating Dynamic Web Pages

Adding interactivity with JavaScript

• Incorporating JavaScript that executes in the Web browser
• Enhancing client-side functionality
• Validating form content to ensure forms are filled out correctly
• Reacting to user actions

Incorporating multimedia

• Embedding animation and video content in Web pages
• Adding interactivity with plug-ins

Creating interactive Web pages with Dynamic HTML (DHTML)

• Combining JavaScript and CSS
• Supporting multiple browsers
• Dynamically positioning content within a page
• Revealing and hiding page content
• Implementing rollover graphics with DHTML

XML and HTML5

• Fundamentals of XML
• Implementing an RSS feed on your site
• Introducing HTML5