Web Page Design and Authoring, leading to Library Web Pages: Modules Overview

The workshop is run over 4.5 (intensive) days. Each module can form a stand alone training resource.

Importance of good Web design

Learning objective: To understand why good Web design is important, factors to consider in design and assessing design solutions. This section also discusses how to avoid bad design and the effects of poor design.

HTML and creating Web pages

Learning objective: To develop a practical understanding of HTML tags, producing HTML documents in a basic text editor and viewing documents in a Web browser. In this section participants will learn the basic structure of an HTML page, gain an understanding how HTML tags are used and also how to link documents together within a basic file structure.

Tables

Learning objective: Learn how to present tabular data using HTML.

Reverse engineering of Web sites

Learning objective: Develop the skills needed to reverse engineer a Web site and examine the pros and cons of this approach (including a brief overview of Web site copyright issues).

Navigational tools and efficient Web design

Learning objective: Learn the importance of good navigation, the consequences of getting it wrong and how to design efficiently. Workshop participants will be shown examples of a wide range of navigational tools and the concept of a consistent user interface will be introduced.

Accessibility and validation

Learning objective: What is accessibility and why it is important. This section examines how accessibility can be assessed both manually and semi-automatically. The pros and cons of these methods is also discussed. Participants will also learn the importance of producing valid HTML code and how to design accessible Web sites

Web authoring tools

Learning objective: Introduction to the three types of tools available, with particular emphasis on the free and low cost authoring tools. Partcipants will also learn the advantages and disadvantages of using each type of authoring tool.

Preparing images for the Web

Learning objective: How to prepare images for the Web. Including an introduction to the Web safe palette and the tools available to assist in image preparation. Participants will learn how to optimise images for the use on the Web and the potential problems that may occur if images are not optimised.

Designing a scalable Web site and content management

Learning objective: An introduction to problems associated with Web site scalability and content management systems and procedures.

Web site project management

Learning objective: Web site development and project management, planning, costing, staffing, etc. Participants will also learn about the user experience, development lifecycle, business needs analysis, user analysis, task analysis, usability testing, heuristic evaluation, creating good content, developing prototypes, user testing, etc

What is not covered?

A relatively short workshop of this kind cannot hope to cover all Web design and authoring topics. With this in mind the course has been designed to provide participants with a basic skillset on which they can build further knowledge and expertise in other areas. Areas that are not covered in the course but which students might research further include:

  • Cascading StyleSheets - a technology used to control the presentation of a Web page
  • XHTML - the current version of HTML
  • Web hosting
  • Web server setup
  • Server log analysis
  • Password protection
  • File transfer
  • E-commerce
  • Metadata
  • Connecting Web sites to back-end databases
  • JavaScript

Throughout the course participants will be taught techniques based on accepted good practice or adhering to the Web standards published by the W3C (http://www.w3c.org). There are some additional topics that are deliberately not covered due to potential accessibility or interoperability problems arising from their use. These topics include (but are not limited to):-

  • Frames
  • HTML tags that produce blinking or scrolling text
  • Formatting using the <font> tag

In addition the following three modules are also available but these were dropped from the workshop after the first pilot. It was felt that these were too advanced for the workshop and would take the workshop to around 10 days duration. For the purposes of this INASP workshop series, this was considered too much. However, the workshop materials may still be of interest to people - either in general of for workshop participants who would like to use these additional materials as self paced learning tools.

Cascading Style Sheets
Learning objective: Develop the skills required to separate the content of a Web page from the formatting using CSS. Discover why CSS is important and learning its syntax.

Metadata
Learning objective: What is metadata, why is it important, how it's used and how to produce it.

Using MS Office for the preparation of Web pages
Learning objective: How to produce Web pages using packages within the MS Office suite and its potential pitfalls.

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