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CAOS/ARTS 113iWeb Authoring: Dreamweaver CS4
This page is for students of the CAOS/ARTS 113i-01 class, Dreamweaver CS4 Winter Quarter, 2010.
Download the Winter 2010 Syllabus.
Meets: every Friday, 2:00 - 5:40 pm, in AT204, beginning January 8 and ending on March 12.
Text: There is no textbook for this course. Instead videos available at Lynda.com and my De Anza iTunes site for the class will be substituted for a standard text book. You may access those sites by clicking on the links above. However, access to the Lynda.com videos require that the student pay a small fee to access their videos. (I believe that this is a much more reasonable cost than for a new textbook, or even a used textbook. Also, you will get to access more videos about Dreamweaver on Lynda.com than we will even cover in this class.) The videos on the iTunes site were produced by me and you can access them for free. I will explain in more detail how these two sets of videos will be used during class meetings.
Assignments:
- You will be responsible for completing six lab assignments made during the course of the class. (Total of 60 points)
- One mid-term exam on 2/19. (40 points) which you will take using Catalyst (the college's course management system) during the class meeting on that day.
- One five-minute final class presentation on 3/12, during which every student must demonstrate his or her web site highlighting the material and techniques used. (50 points)
The class is a Pass/No Pass class. A student must earn 105 points (70%) or better (out of a possible 150) to receive a Pass for the course.
Assignment
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Total Points
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Lab Assignments
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60
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Mid-term exam
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40
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Final Project/Presentation
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50
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Total Possible Points:
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150
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| Total Points Needed to Pass (≥70%):
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105
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How to access the videos
Instead of buying and reading a textbook for this course, you will be expected to watch videos to learn about Dreamweaver as well as to receive additional content and instruction from the instructor. For each class there will be videos on lynda.com assigned for you to view during the week, and occasionally videos that the instructor has produced, for you to watch. The lynda.com videos contain step-by-step explanations of specific actions in Dreamweaver and are designed to teach you the specific concepts in Dreamweaver that you need to know to be proficient in Dreamweaver. The class meetings will serve three purposes: (1) to provide you with a higher level understanding of web design and development through lectures by the instructor; (2) to give you an opportunity to ask questions about things you may not have understood in the videos or the assignments; and (3) give you time to work on Dreamweaver in the lab, where you can get assistance from the instructor.
To view the videos I created for this class click here. That link will open up iTunes on your computer and navigate you to the course page for this class. (If you don't have iTunes then go to this page on the Apple web site to download it to your computer.)
Guidelines for the Final Project
I will post a description of the final project later in the term. You will present your final project during the last class meeting on March 12. I will give you tips on what to do and how to prepare during class meetings well before that date. Also, be sure to read the information about the final presentation in Catalyst, when it becomes available there.
Other important information:
There are two servers that you can, and should, access for doing your homework in this class.
- One server (Puma, also known in the labs as the G: drive) is critically important to you because you will turn in most of your assignments using it. Directions for how to log into Puma (or the G: drive) are available in the large (AT203) lab and we will spend part of the third class making sure that everyone has an account there and then logging into it.
- Voyager, the second server, is provided by the college for students to use in a variety of ways. For this class you can use it to test your web page and web sites to see how a "real web server" would display your pages. Although you are not required, as a part of this class, to use Voyager, I suggest you do so because (1) you will learn how to move files to a web server (an important function if you ever want to have your site seen by other people!) and (2) it's important that you know how a server will really show your work. You will get a handout during one of the classes that gives you step-by-step directions for logging into Voayager. And, also, here is a document on how to test your work on Voyager. It was developed by a student in a previous class. If you like it, tell me and I'll thank her for you.
You will also need to use Catalyst during this course. (Catalyst is a software application used primarily for online and distance learning classes. Most importantly your midterm exam will be administered via Catalyst. I am increasingly moving more material into Catalyst. You should log in to Catalyst early in the term and get accustomed to how it works. Instructions on how to log in are on the first page.
Other Resources
Although the focus of this course is about Dreamweaver and not
hand-coding in HTML or XHTML, it is important that students have an
understanding of (or at the very least, a way to learn the fundamentals
of) coding HTML/XHTML pages. In other words, you will need to have at
least a very basic level of understanding about the code, tags, and
page design of web pages. There are a number of web sites that provide
a listing of HTML tags for you to review and, hopefully, learn.
Below are a couple of web sites that I think are particularly relevant to the course related to HTML code.
- quackit.com (lists the tags alphabetically and you click on them to learn more) This site is particularly nice because at the bottom of each listing you can experiment with the tags to see what they do
- HTML Dog (for tags listed according to categories, e.g. structure, text, images, links, lists, tables, etc. and it also has tutorials for various skill levels) tutorials on XHTML coding at W3Schools site; this is a really good site for learning all the permutations of coding web sites, whether you just want to get something quick, or study it in detail
Also, it very important that you follow web accessibility standards (for those individuals who may have various impairments and disabilities) as you develop your web pages/sites. In fact, to reinforce how important that is, your grade will suffer if you don't do so. To help you learn more about web accessibility, you should go to the authoritative source, which is the W3C evaluation site. You will find links there to various other sites that provide you with tools for evaluating your web site for conformance to accessibility guidelines. Use it!
Check out this video for tips on good html coding practices! It's fun!
We will be using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) a lot during this class. To learn more about the power of CSS, check out the CSS Zen Garden site.
The truly cool thing about this site is that as you explore any of the
links to other Zen Garden sites you will find that every page looks
radically different in appearance from the others, HOWEVER, in each page the code
remains the same, the only thing that has changed is the external .css
file. Yes, really! Check it out.
If you are interested in web page design here is an article in the NY Times listing 10 Ways to Design a Good Web Site. Also, in the past some students have wanted to host their own web site based on the final project. If you want to do that, too, you need to select a web hosting service. Here's another article from the NY Times on How to Find the Right Web Hosting Service.
Interview with the New York Times Design Director
-- This site contains interesting insights into how a very busy
newspaper web staff maintains its huge, growing, and constantly changing,
web site. "All the news that's fit to print" is their slogan for the print version, but the web site has much more now (video, graphics, animation, etc.). The
Times is generally recognized as one of the leading news sources (not
just the leading "newspaper") in the world.
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