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This is your home base for Web Design and Advanced Web Design. From here you can access lessons, lecture videos, projects, project rubrics, useful external links, and examples of good student projects. You can use this page at school or at home, and be sure to report any errors, whether typographical or technical, to Mr. Miller for extra credit!
Web Design
Web design is one of the fastest growing fields in the computer industry, and this course will teach students the basics of designing their own websites.
Adobe's Creative Suite is a powerful collection of applications geared towards web design, and students will have access to the CS4 versions of those applications. Adobe Dreamweaver is considered the best visual web development program in the industry and students will become extremely familiar with the program through lessons and projects. Students will design a number of websites, including a site that will be put on the internet. Past classes have designed an actor's website, a site for the Yorkville High School football team, and sites for the YGS and Grande Reserve libraries.
In addition to learning how to use Dreamweaver, students will also learn how to design graphics and simple animations using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Fireworks. Photoshop is the standard image editor for many web professionals while Fireworks is similar, but a little more geared towards creating web graphics. Additionally, students will learn how to create some simple animations using Adobe Flash.
Finally, students will learn the best way to plan a website from start to finish. Students will first learn some of the basic principles of design such as color choice, texture, and the rule of thirds. Next, they will learn about font choices, and how to create a font family for a website. Lastly, students will learn about specific design choices when creating a website such as deciding between a liquid or fixed-width site, adding intuitive navigation, and creating a layout that follows standard web page anatomy.
The final exam will have students using the skills they have learned to edit a pre-made website. Students will be given a layout of what the website is suppose to look like and they need to modify the site so it follows the layout. Students will be provided with all the images and files they need so they only need to concentrate on fixing the mistakes in the site.
Advanced Web Design
Prerequisite: Web Design
The world of web design has changed quite a lot in the last few years. Websites are expected to be more than just static pages of information. Now users expect to have the ability to interact with websites and use them like a normal computer application. This course will teach students many Web 2.0 technologies that will allow them to create an interactive website.
The first Web Design course does not delve too deeply into HTML, but Advanced Web Design requires students have a knowledge of how HTML works. Students will learn about cascading style sheets, or CSS, and how to use them to quickly make stylistic changes to a site.
After learning CSS students will learn how to use the ActionScript programming language to create interactive Flash animations and flash games. Students will learn how to create a Pong game, and then will design a game of their own.
Finally, students will learn how to use one of the most important technologies to hit the internet, Ajax. Ajax is used on many popular web applications, including Facebook and GMail, and combines XML, Javascript, and PHP to create incredibly dynamic experiences on the web that don't require entire pages to reload. Students will learn about all of the technologies that make up Ajax to create your own applications in this course so they won't need prior programming experience. The database technology MySQL will also be taught so websites can be used for storing information.
Students will design their own website for their final project with the only requirement being that they use Ajax, Flash, and MySQL somewhere on the site. This project is meant to allow students to express their creativity so almost any project is possible.