Professional Web Site
important due dates
- November 8: CSS Web site / Portfolio rough draft due
- November 22: CSS Web site / Portfolio final draft due; present to class
- October 31 through December 8: Twice weekly CSS Journal entries due no later than noon Friday each week posted to the CSS Journal discussion forum (only one posting due the week December 8).
assignment parts
- project 2 overview
- professional web site
- portfolio
- css journal
creating your professional web site
In this section of Project 2, you will be designing a professional-looking Web site that you could present to future employers. This means that your new Web site will consist of many things, but not: pictures of you and your friends, sports team logos, bland descriptions of yourself, pictures of UT, etc. In short, anything that you think is not resume-type material will not be on the page.
The layout you decide on will be used throughout the whole of the site: the portfolio, and any other pages you wish to include. I suggest going through a similar, but not as extensive, design process as you did not Project 1: draw a pencil sketch, create a line-sketch using Photoshop, etc. Then, if you so choose, you can use InkNoise's Layout-o-matic to help design the basic layout structure.
web site specifics
The following criteria must be met:
- change the name of your old "index.html" page to "index-old.html" and then name the CSS-designed page "index.html"
- place your stylesheet in a "styles" folder and all images in an "images" folder (this includes all images from your portfolio)
- place all portfolio-related pages in a "portfolio" folder
- the site must be designed using CSS and XHTML; do not use deprecated HTML tags
- meets Section 508 accessibility standards
- validates as acceptible CSS and XHTML; provide links stating as such in the footer
- create at least two images, one of which will be a banner (an image, in this case, is not just a cropped photo)
- at least one of your images should be created using the techniques found at or through http://www.spoono.com/
- in your list of links, provide links to the main CSS designer blogs you are reading to learn more about CSS and Web Standards (there should be 5 blogger links, two of which can be from the list of links on the course site)
- the front page content should have information about you that a potential employer might be interested in reading
- if you use InkNoise's Layout-o-matic, the layout of the page should be altered in some interesting ways (i.e. adding a new div section -- simply changing color and border size will not be enough).
- all HTML pages must use an .html extension, not .htm
If you are planning to create a page for a field other than Web design, please see the instructor so you can work out assignment specifics that fit your needs.
sample student professional re-design
Here is a former student's initial "index.html" page created in the first few weeks of class:
And here is the same student's re-designed "index.html" created using CSS and XHTML:
