Week 1 — HTML elements, entities & attributes
        The structural layer for web pages

The interactive ear

An example of what can be done with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. However, such a complex site is not built without using sophisticated web development tools, which are beyond the scope of this course. What you will learn are the fundamental concepts that underly the creation of dynamic and interactive web pages.

Background

• Expecially, follow the link Beginners guide and peruse the links under the heading Web fundamentals
• Do the exercises at the end of the pages for the first three links in the section Web fundamentals
  • The history of the Web
  • How does the internet work
  • The web standards model—HTML, CSS and JavaScript (you will need to follow two redirection links)
• As we discuss the topics HTML, CSS and JavaScript in the course, you may find the web pages in the corresponding sections in the beginners guide a useful starting point in your studies.

Content

• Administrative — using forum for report specifications, and course related questions
• Example showing the structural, presentation and dynamic layers of a web page
  • spaceling_text.html — text only; not easy to read
  • spaceling_html.html — Structural layer - text with added HTML tags; can read the page but it is not very presentable
  • spaceling.html — the complete page; CSS & JavaScript added
  • spaceling.css — Presentation layer - the style sheet
  • spaceling.js — Dynamic layer - JavaScript to make the page dynamic
• HTML elements, entities, and attributes and their syntax.
  • The main points in HTML basics.
  • A basic starting structure for a web page.
• HTML validator — Use to verify syntactically correct tag structure.

Applications to use

• Browser: Firefox, Chrome, Safari — Firefox will be used by the instructor for running your programs.
• Text editor — see Software to use in the Resources page.

Exam topics

• History of the web
• How does the Internet work
• HTML terminology, syntax and semantics