ah teaches web design & development (The Interwebs lecture)

The Interwebs

Lecture outline

An overview of the course, some fundamentals when thinking about design on the web, and an introduction to semantic markup. Lecture slides will be made available on the day of the lecture (Sept 15).

A series of water pipes and tubes

The Interwebs

Your teaching team

Wave here.

Mohammadreza's portfolio

Andrew Hawryshkewich

SIAT Outlines

Contacting your instructors

A friendly how-to

Andrew and Mohammadreza are available via:

Office hours

Please send an email or message indicating you'll be attending.

Andrew's office hours:

Mohammadreza's office hours: Fridays from 1:30 - 2:30pm online via Zoom (linked through Canvas).

Email rules

Please allow up to 2 business days for responses.

We do not provide design critique via email or chat. Please arrange a meeting or attend office hours for design critique.

To make our responses faster, please include the following in your email:

  • Your full name.
  • The course number (IAT-339).
  • A clear question.

Chat conduct

Please treat our online interactions the same way you would in-person interactions.

If you have concerns about anyone's conduct at any point, please direct message or email Andrew.

Illness policy

If you are ill, stay home. You are able to watch the lecture recording later, and follow-up with Andrew or Mohammadreza to arrange an alternative time for critique.

If you will be ill for a prolonged period of time (more than a week) please email Andrew to arrange accommodations.

If one of the teaching team is ill, we will notify you via Canvas and course chat before 8:30am on the day of the class.

The lecture+lab experiment

We are testing out this lecture+lab combo this term.

It is meant to provide more direct instructor engagement as well as more supported work time. Please let us know if things are going wrong.

Lecture+lab

What to expect

Our class will involve a number of activities:

Question

Knowing this class will be unable to move from Friday evenings, what can help make this class a more palatable use of your Fridays?

Workload

A reminder that this course expects about 2-5 hours of work outside of class time.

If you ever have concerns with workload please email Andrew.

Canvas

Our main course-site

Andrew opens up Canvas and briefly introduces it here.

https://339.ah1.ca

Projects

  1. Process — 10% (Individual)
  2. Company — 30% (Group)
  3. Portfolio — 30% (Individual)

70% of your grade.

Group Work

A quick note

Project 2 (Company) will be done in groups. Contracts, reflection and/or evaluations will be used to clarify expectations and outcomes between teammates.

Remember, you are responsible for your own work.

Readings

Fee-free!

Readings are available entirely digitally.

Canvas has PDF copies of all readings.

Reflections

There are seven reflections available, and you are only required to complete two. Reflections are completed within the class time and submitted before the end.

You may complete up to three reflections and have the lowest grade dropped.

10% of your final grade.

Reading reflection #1

Coding quiz

Details of the coding quiz will be discuss closer to it, but it typically focuses on your ability to think through a problem with code.

10% of your final grade.

Coding and other exercises

Code exercises are practice for the web-coding you are doing in the course.

10% of your final grade.

Exercise rules

  1. You can use online resources, course materials, your TA, and lab-mates for support.
  2. You must cite any knowledge that is not yours in a comment in the code.
  3. If work has been copied without citation the exercise grade will be zero.

Plagiarism

This course has a zero tolerance policy for plagiarism on projects. If you are found presenting work that is not your own or resubmitting old work without notice, you will receive a failing grade on that project. No exceptions.

AI tools

You are welcome to use AI tools unless specified in a project, quiz or exercise brief, and with the following conditions:

Late or problematic submissions

Late submissions receive 10% per day late.

Problematic submissions — i.e. we can't open the URL or the wrong files were submitted — receive an immediate 20% off plus late penalties on the resubmission.

Concerns with grades

Please notify Andrew of any grading concerns within 10 days of the grades being released. This can include just getting some further feedback and/or wanting to have something regraded.

Course overview questions?

If you have any questions that linger about the course overview, please feel free to email Andrew or ask during our lecture time.

A statue with a unicorn and a shield

Not everyone wants to be a unicorn.

The ever-changing demands of the web

Oh, how things change!

Our goal here is to give the theory, fundamentals of coding for web and an understanding of how to develop your skills beyond this course.

This course is biased towards building accessible and fully responsive websites.

IAT-235 and IAT-339

For those students who have taken IAT-235 with me, you may find the first couple weeks a bit repetitive. This is intentional.

Do keep track though, as things may have changed.

Web toolkits

Prepped and ready to go

Available on Canvas are links to programs for your first 'web toolkits'. They should contain:

Firefox or Chrome

Why?

The developer tools in Firefox and Chrome are reasonably easy to access and have the features we need for the term.

Coding applications

VS Code, Atom, Sublime Text, Bracket, Notepad++, etc

We are working with code-only applications in this class, as you need to understand the code to be an effective web designer.

I will be teaching using Visual Studio (VS) Code.

No Illustrator, Photoshop, Figma, or Sketch mockups permitted

We will not critique designs that use mock-up tools. We are going to work purely in-browser for when we start designing and critiquing things.

This is to get you into the habit of working within the medium.

No frameworks until the final project

For P1/P2, you are required to generate your own code. In the final portfolio project, you will be allowed to work with existing frameworks should you so choose.

This is to ensure you are practicing the development.

Why no React, Angular, etc?

Even if working with React, Angular (and other JavaScript libraries or frameworks) you still need to understand HTML and CSS to accessibly define the content, and style it.

I recognize there is more demand for JavaScript, but we will not be able to go into significant depth within this course.

A series of tubes

"It's a series of tubes." — Former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens

P1: Process
The progression of atoms through to pages, as proposed by Brad Frost's Atomic Design

'Atomic' Design

Why We Style Guide

Style guides help us to:

Mailchimp Style Guide

Let's take a look at the The MailChimp Style Guide.

Break-time

Runaway! Runaway...

See you in ten minutes.

Please make sure you have:

The Document-Object Model (DOM)

Our standard in delivering HTML

This week you will be building your first HTML pages, this involves the DOM, which put simply is a collection of objects (ie. navigation, headings, paragraphs) that resemble the document it is modelling.

Semantics

We want to pick the most appropriate HTML element to define the content, not the most stylistically appropriate element.

Semantic markup

Telling the computer the pieces

HTML elements are (most frequently) comprised of an opening, and closing tag — i.e. <p></p> — using triangle brackets and a forward-slash to denote that they are HTML elements and not content.

Oops, this code did not quite load. Please view it at https://codepen.io/andrewhaw/pen/cd0509d108d9292b031bc4b78d14a596

Semantic Markup

Markup should help us understand the content.

Oops, this code did not quite load. Please view it at https://codepen.io/andrewhaw/pen/cca86d1438b4958efddeb5178290d02b

Common Coding Errors

Since we will be starting some scripting this week, please keep an eye out for:

Having coding concerns?

Let us know!

Let us know sooner rather than later that you are having concerns with coding.

We can often answer code questions in the chat as long as you provide a link to the webpage.

A messy computer desktop filled with different folder and file icons

If this is you, we may need to chat.

Time to code

Please open up this week's "starter package"

Reading reflection #1
HTML exercise

Next week's lecture

Styling the Webs

Thinking about our websites as modular components and the fundamentals of styling websites.

Lecture recordings will typically become available the day after the lecture.

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