Notes

1 Objectives of this module

The purpose of this module is to give an introduction to designing and implementing websites. In order to do that, the student will need to know:

Basics of web technology

In order to understand how to use the technology, the student will have to know some of the basics of how it works. The coverage will not be comprehensive, though.

Design

Design is a vital part of any product. We will study design particularly in the context of web pages.

Simple, non-interactive web pages

The markup language HTML is the basis of most web pages; students will have to be able to create simple pages.

Interactive web pages

Forms

The simplest type of interaction is the form. They can be created in HTML (though something else is required to process them).

Client-side processing

Certain interactive elements can be incorporated into a web page to make it more interactive. We will concentrate on JavaScripts.

Server-side processing

More extensive processing has to be done using a programming language which runs on the computer hosting the website. There will be an introduction to this, using PHP.

Notes on these notes

The markup of the notes is intended to reflect their content. Thus, for instance, the notes on HTML are written (largely) in HTML, once CSS is introduced the relevant pages use CSS, and so on.

There are two formats for the notes. The difference is with regard to the display of images. The Screen version usually includes a thumbnail picture of the image and the visitor has the option of clinking on the thumbnail to see the full-sized picture. This speeds up loading times. It is inconvenient for people who want to print copies of the notes, though, who want the pictures to be of a visible size.

For this reason, all the notes are in PHP files. This slightly contradicts the principle set out above, but since a web visitor can only see the HTML generated from the PHP, it does not really. If that does not make sense to you, just wait until we get to the section on PHP.

Next Section: What is the Web?

7 December 2008