This page will serve as the home base for our class this semester, which is section 002 of COMP 5230 that meets Wednesday evenings at 6:00 p.m.

I will update this page for each class meeting. Items that appeared on this page from previous meetings can be found via the "<previous Blackboard items>" link at the bottom of this page.

The menu on the left will give you access to other materials related to the course.

Introductions and Roll. (Some things about me).

On the first day, we'll be looking carefully at the syllabus, of course.

Books and materials

Tour this site

Introducing the Personal Course Home Page Project

A draft or "BETA" version will be due M 2/1, final version due M 2/15.

Brainstorming for a Theme (Clustering):

1. Take a blank piece of paper and turn it "landscape" (rather than "portrait").

2. On the far left edge of the page, write (small) the word "personal" and circle it like it's in a bubble.

3. On the far right edge of the page, write (small) the word "public" and circle it with a bubble.

4. Now free associate on paper for five minutes: write down words or phrases that represent things about you in either the personal or public realms, each inside its own bubble and connected with a line to the thought that led to it. For instance, you might write the word "Bluto," circle it, and connect it to personal. (Bluto is your cat.) Then you might write down "birdfeeder" in a bubble and connect it to "Bluto." (Watching the birdfeeder is Bluto's favorite entertainment.)

5. Keep free associating, writing down words and connecting them into long chains and clusters of associations. Try to develop both the "personal" and "public" sides. Don't stop writing down words no matter how irrelevant or obscure they seem--you don't know what's relevant yet! It doesn't matter if no one but you understands the items in your cluster.

6. Look for opportunities to draw lines of connection among the various chains to make a cluster or web. Do certain bubbles attract a lot of connecting lines?

7. When I tell you to stop clustering, write down a phrase or sentence that sums up something you're thinking about that connects the public and personal together for you. If you've got some other connections in mind, sum them up in other phrases or sentences.

8. Consider how a phrase or sentence might represent the kernel of a statement you might put on your Personal Course Home Page (something more individualizing and interesting than the typical "Welcome to my Web site! Feel free to...").

9. Consider, further, how this statement might set the tone for the entire page or site, and help you decide about what images to include and how the page is designed.

Moving into Our Disks/Drives

On your Zip disk or jump drive, create a structure of folders that looks like this:

Today, we'll try out Dreamweaver by making a Web page, posting it to the Web, and then visiting that page with our Web browser.

See the in-class handouts, "Liquid Page Design (Dreamweaver)" and "Moving Files to the Web with Dreamweaver MX"

If we get through these exercises today in class, I will ask you to complete these two exercises by class time on Friday. Send the URL to me in an e-mail with the subject line "5230-02 exercise jan 19"

In the "Liquid Page" exercise, I'll ask you to collect some online content from a Web site you like which uses both words and images. I'll use Josh Parson's Web site "Flags of the World Given Letter Grades," which you're welcome to use too if you can't think of something else.

Roll
Questions?
Questions about the Personal Course Home Page Project?
Scanning Pictures

By next Tuesday 2/1 at noon. A BETA version of the Personal Course Home Page is due to be posted to the Web.

How to:

1. Complete your PCHP using the "Liquid Page Design" exercise techniques, including a banner and other images prepared using the techniques you will learn in the "Beginning Banner" and "Intermediate Banner" exercises.
2. Post that page and associated image files to the Web using the directions in the exercise "Moving Files to the Web with Dreamweaver MX." On the server ("remote site") these files should be saved in the folder www/5230/personal.
3. Visit your page with your Web browser, copy the URL from the browser's location box at the top, and paste that URL into a message to the Webx discussion "Projects/Personal Course Home Page." We will learn how to access the Webx discussions in the exercise, "Logging into the Webx Discussion Board."

Sketching Real Estate: Let's spend five minutes making a sketch of your Personal Course Home Page Design.

Start with the principles of "Screen Real Estate, which says that the space on the page is valuable:

• because research shows that readers don't like to scroll and search, and so the first screenfull is all some viewers will ever see of your page
• because you can never predict what will actually show in the first screenfull since you can't control how much space the viewer's computer screen is giving to your page.

Some possible signs of bad use of screen real estate:
(see the "before" version of a page like this)

1. upper left corner of the screen is empty, or contains less important content (the upper left is prime real estate because it's the one part of the page you're sure everyone will see).
2. lots of centered content that creates a "totem-pole" design and leaves rivers of blank space on either side of the page.
3. white space is trapped in large blocks, rather than flowing around the content to highlight and organize it.
4. important content or navigation is pushed below the the scroll line by blank space or less important content.
5. more scrolling is required than necessary to see all the content.

Now, look at the required content, and think about where these chunks and pieces will go....

Today, we'll continue our exploration of Dreamweaver by taking the Web page we created for the exercise "Liquid Page Design (Dreamweaver)," posting it to the Web, and visiting that page with our Web browser, and finally sending the URL to our Webx discussion board.

See the in-class handouts, "Moving Files to the Web with Dreamweaver MX" and "Logging into the Webx Discussion Board"

Beginning and Intermediate Banner Techniques.
We'll introduce ourselves to Photoshop in these two sequenced exercises, in which we'll learn how to create an banner

In these exercises, you'll learn to combine typefaces and images in Photoshop to create a "banner" like the one used at the top of this page.

For this exercise, you'll need

• your Zip disk or jump drive
• to download the images "richlighthouse.jpg" and "seagull" (right-click on this link, and from the menu, choose "Save Image As") and save them in your "nonwww" folder.
• to open Photoshop, Microsoft Word on your computer

Roll
Questions?
Questions about the Personal Course Home Page Project?
For next Wednesday 2/9, read Jakob Nielsen's Chapter 3, "Content Design."

Tonight, we'll talk about ideas for revising and developing the Personal Course Home Page Project.

Debriefing Session. First, we'll get in groups of three and discuss questions, problems, anxieties and general thoughts on your experience of creating and posting this page.

You can open up your pages in Dreamweaver to show and tell if you wish, and even to get help with solving either technical, design or writing issues.

We'll discuss issues raised as a class afterwards. Brownie points to the groups who can come up with the thorniest problems and most difficult questions.

Then we'll talk about the readings from Jakob Nielsen's Chapters 1 and 2: "Why Web Usability?" (8) and "Page Design" (16).

Be thinking of specific ways you can improve--and re-envision!--your project with what Nielsen has to say (of what we say about it in class).

Visual Hierarchy in Page Design.

See the page "Visual Hierarchy" from the Techniques Site.

You'll send the URL to the discussion, "hierarchy."

Roll
Questions about the Personal Course Home Page Project?
By Tuesday 2/15 at noon, the final version of the Personal Course Home Page Project will be due.

Studio Session in the Second Hour

We'll have a Studio Session in the second hour to work on the final version of your Personal Course Home Page Project, which is due by noon on Tuesday, 2/15.

Though we will be working individually today, I'll expect you to stay and be productive until 8:30.

Checklist: The Personal Course Home Page Project

I'm handing out a Checklist tonight that you can use to revise your own project as well as to give you ideas for commenting on your classmates' pages in workshop starting next week.

I'll also use this same checklist in giving you feedback on your project.

1. Within 24 hours of the workshop ,copy and paste all the written comments you've made for everyone discussed that day into the form "Workshop Comments for Today" and click "Send." These comments will come to me. Be sure to label each set of comments with the project number and name of the project's author.
2. Send each author your comments on his or her project by using the e-mail list on the the form "Workshop Comments for Today."

In the First Hour

We'll discuss Jakob Nielsen's Chapters 3, "Content Design" (98)

Jello Page Design

You'll need to visit my home page to download some background images.

By Thursday evening (within 24 hours), send a URL of the finished product to the Webx discussion Exercises/Jello.

Roll
Next Wednesday, we'll continue workshopping according to the schedule below.

Printout and Commentary

Introducing the Glocalization Project

We'll take a break in the middle of workshop to talk about the Glocalization Project, which will be due by Tuesday, 3/15 at noon.

Roll
See "Coming Up" for important reminders and news.
Remember today that what we're discussing in workshop not only concerns these completed projects but future ones:

• The Glocalization Project and Client Project will raise many of the same issues of page design, visual hierarchy, personal/public, etc.
• You may also choose to revise the Personal Course Home Page for the ReVision Project at the end of the semester.

Questions on the Glocalization Project?

We'll have a "Brainstorming Session" on this project on Thursday. The Glocalization Project will be due by Tuesday, 3/15 at noon.

Printout and Commentary

Roll
See "Coming Up" for important reminders and news.

Questions on the Glocalization Project?

We'll have a "Brainstorming Session" on this project tonight. The Glocalization Project will be due by Tuesday, 3/15 at noon.

Tiling Backgrounds and Flash Buttons
(2 exercises on one page)

For the "Tiling Background" part of this exercise, go to the page Tiling Background Images in the Techniques site. There is also a handout I'll give you in class.

To do the "Flash Button" exercise on this same page, See page I-5 in the Sherry Bishop/Piyush Patel book Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 for how to insert Flash buttons in your page.

Insert at least one Flash button in the foreground layout table of your Tiling Background exercise page. Make that Flash button link to your Personal Course Home Page. Try to choose a Flash button that coordinates with the color and style of your page.

Resave the page, then and post the page with the Flash button link to the "exercises/tiling" folder on the Web. Note that you'll need to post to that folder the Flash button file as well.

1. post the page with the image tiling in the background to a folder "www/5230/exercises/tiling" on the Web,
2. visit the page with your browser, and then
3. copy the URL to the Webx discussion "Tiling Backgrounds."

Roll
See "Coming Up" for important reminders and news.
ITSS has announced the opening of a Student Technology Assistance Center (STAC), Monday through Thursday of every week from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., Kirby Plaza 146.
You can now have your own blog for free through the University of Minnesota's blog space, Uthink.
For working tonight, I'd suggest changing your monitor's resolution to 1024 X 768 or higher:
Choose Start > Settings > Control Panel > Display > Settings and then slide the "Screen Area" slide bar to the right (for higher resolution or more screen space).

Modify > Page Properties

We'll look together briefly at the functions available through the "Page Properties" menu. In past versions of Dreamweaver, some of these effects could only be achieved by knowing Cascading Style Sheets (a later lesson in the course). Note that you will not be responsible for uploading this exercise to the Web or sending the URL to Webx.

1. Download the page "Page Properties" into a new folder called "page_properties" in your non-www folder. (You may also need to manually download this page's background image and save it into the folder created by your browser for the image files).

2. Set up a new local site called "nonwww" (Site > Manage Sites > New) in Dreamweaver for your nonwww folder . You don't need to set up the "remote info" since we won't be moving anything to the Web.

3. In Dreamweaver, open the page "index.html" by going to the site palette on the right side of the screen and double-clicking the page file.

4. With "index.html" open, make the items in the link menu at the top lead to (respectively)

index.html
contrast.html
analogy.html
theory.html
target.html
tale.html

5. Also, make the word "More..." at the end of each section into a link to the appropriate page. Note that, in cases like this, you can do make links without typing by using the "Link" drop-down menu in the Properties Palette).

6. Together in class, we'll work through the functions of the Page Properties window in Dreamweaver (Modify > Page Properties).

The One-Minute Site

Once you get a single page of your site designed (including all the links menus and page-property formatting), you can create a whole site of pages in less than 60 seconds.

Use the page "Page Properties" to try this out by creating the additional pages in the "page_properties" folder (in "nonwww 5230").

Again, you won't be responsible for posting this to the Web, or sending anything to Webx for this informal exercise.

Chapter 4 (Site Design)

Tonight, we'll share some ideas about how Nielsen can help us create a better Glocalization Project.

When I give you the word tonight, write a short paragraph answering the following question in the Webx discussion "Nielsen Chapter 4":

What is the most valuable, interesting or surprising thing you learned from the chapter which you can use to make your Glocalization Project better?

Be sure to include the page number from the Nielsen book.

Studio Session (Second Half)

We'll take the last half of class today for a "Studio Session" to work on your "Glocalization Projects"

Roll
See "Coming Up" for important reminders and news.
ITSS has announced the opening of a Student Technology Assistance Center (STAC), Monday through Thursday of every week from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., Kirby Plaza 146.
First thing tonight, I'll collect the printouts and commentaries for the Glocalization Projects.

Introducing the Remaining Projects

We have three projects to complete by the end of the semester:

1. The Essay will be due by Tuesday, April 12 at noon in my mailbox in Humanities 420.

2. The Client Project will be completed in two stages:

• The "BETA" version of the Client Project (with commentary) will be due for workshopping by Tuesday, April 26 at noon.
• The final version of the Client Project (with an e-mail explanation of the changes you've made to the BETA version) will be due by the final exam time of 6 p.m. on May 11.

3. The ReVision Project (including printout and commentary) will also be due by the final exam time of 6 p.m. on May 11

The Manifesto as a Method of Reading Critical Sources for the Essay Project

John Perry Barlow's "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace."

Some notes on this reading:

• John Perry Barlow, according to his organization's Web site, "is a a retired Wyoming cattle rancher, a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead, and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation." More...
• While the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed to privatize the airwaves and phone systems, it also included a rider called the "Communications Decency Act," which religious conservatives had included to criminalize pornography on the Internet.
• Davos, Switzerland is a ski resort and home to the annual World Economic Forum, an organization that works to promote globalized commerce.
  

Two Other Approaches to Reading Critical Sources for the Essay Project

Critical sources can be useful in developing your own ideas if you can get past the impulse either to

• reject the argument out of hand as wrong-headed, dangerous or "too much" or
• find the argument so convincing that you are unable to think outside or beyond it.

Instead, it's more helpful to be able to open up the argument, see what it's fundamentally made of.

In discussing the following readings, let's the following, possible tropes or "moves" in each of these texts:

1. Setting up Oppositions. What oppositions, dichotomies or dualisms does the writer set up in the piece (this versus that, that as opposed to this)?

• Does the writer privilege one side of the opposition over the other?
• If the writer presents these oppositions as choices, are they really irreconcilable?
• Or, if the writer presumes to reconcile them, is this solution ultimately stable?

2. Implying Narratives. Most arguments or discussions are presented against an implied story or narrative, an assumed sense of recent history that informs the writer's thinking.

• What stories does the writer imply or assume? (Do these stories involve the oppositions and privilegings you noticed above?)
• Once you look at these stories, are they necessarily the only, inevitable account possible? Scholars critique the unexamined presentation of such stories as "totalizing narratives" that reduce all the subtle ebbings and flowings of historical developments to one-way straight lines.

The Texts

Jakob Nielsen's "The End of Web Design"

Barbara Kay's "History of Print Standards" (response to Nielsen's piece above)

An excerpt from David Siegel's Book Creating Killer Web Sites: "We Felt like Pirates."

David Walker's article on the Siegel/Nielsen debate, "Needing Science, receiving Art."

(See also Peter Elbow's Believing and Doubting Games from my Ideas site.)

Warming up (to) Theory

Read the page Einstein's Compass (the uses of theory) from the Ideas site.

Then, in a Word document or an e-mail to yourself that you can save to use later, write about an experience, idea, or example that you remember that had an impact on your thinking or perspective. Write about something that "placed the evidence of your eyes in a new orientation, helped you to see ordinary things in an extraordinary perspective, or situated you in relation to a more encompassing" sense of things.

Roll
See "Coming Up" for important reminders and news.
Questions?

Michael Heim and Pierre Levy

Today, we'll talk about these two essays in the Trend book (starting on pages 70 and 253) and how you could use them in your essay project "A Manifesto for Reading a Web Site"

So far, remember, we have discussed three ways of approaching critical sources like the ones we're exploring today:

• as a manifesto following Ulmer's Theory of the Manifesto
• as defined by sets of oppositions that define the terms of thinking
• as informed by assumed narratives, stories or trends.

Let's try these out on Heim and Levy.

(See also Peter Elbow's Believing and Doubting Games and Einstein's Compass (the uses of theory)from my Ideas site.)

Brainstorming Ideas from Heim and Levy

1. We'll start brainstorming by looking at some sample topics from the assignment page based on Heim and Levy.

2. Then: make a list of

• Web sites you know or remember,
• pieces of Web-design advice (agree or disagree) from Nielsen, class or elsewhere,
• particular features of Web sites,
• social or political issues,
• historical trends that you think about
• Web-site audiences you're part of or familiar with,
• ideas from Barlow, Siegel, Heim, Levy, the assignments, etc. that struck you in some way
• anything else related to Web sites, digital culture, the class....

3. choose one item from your list to cluster on.

Roll
See "Coming Up" for important reminders and news.
Questions? about the upcoming assignments, especially "The Analytical Essay: A Manifesto for Reading a Web Site"?

Sherry Turkle and Brenda Laurel

Today, we'll talk about Turkle's essay "Who Am We?" (236) and Brenda Laurel's article "Computers as Theater" (109)

Timothy Allen Jackson

We'll also talk about Timothy Allen Jackson's piece, "Towards a New Media Aesthetic" (347).

Let's start with Jackson's title:

• "Towards..." means that he's beginning a critical effort to understand something new. This is a "try" at defining or describing something that is emergent.
• "...a New Media..." refers to media that combine the various old media (writing, photography, audio, video) into one medium (Web sites, various other computer-based interfaces).
• "...Aesthetic" is a word Jackson defines on page 348...

Go to the Webx discussion new media aesthetics

Writing Session

We'll take some time to work in class on skills you'll need for the essay. See the checklist for the Manifesto Essay that you'll receive in class.

• Screen Shots: cropping/scaling, and inserting images in Word
• Framing Examples and Theory in Your Critical Paragraphs

Roll
See "Coming Up" for important reminders and news.
Want to learn more about publishing as a line of work in the Twin Ports? There will be an informal conversation with local publishers on Thursday 4/14 from 3:00 to 4:30 in Kirby 333.

Representatives from 11 local publishers will be there, and refreshments will be served.

Questions about the Client Project?

On the assignment page, be sure your understand the ideas of

• Community building on the Web
• Using Ethos/Pathos
• Channels

Brainstorming

Five words that describe the ethos/pathos of your client (good or bad)

List the "Channels" that your client currently uses to communicate with their audience.

1. Forms

See the in-class handout. Post the completed form to the Web, visit it with your browser, test it, and then copy the URL to the Webx discussion "Forms URLs" by Thursday evening.

2. Selecting with Masks

See the page "Selecting with Masks" for details. I will also give you an in-class handout. You will put the final product on the Web and send the URL to the Webx discussion "Selecting with Masks discussion" by Thursday evening.

Roll
See "Coming Up" for important reminders and news.
Trouble-shooting up the "Forms" exercise

Questions about the Client or ReVision Projects?

Sliced Rollover Menu

See the "techniques" page "Sliced Rollover Menu" and the in-class handout. The resulting images should be inserted onto a Web page, posted to a folder called "slices" in your "exercises" folder on the Web, and the URL sent to the Webx discussion "Slices."

Studio Session in the Second Hour

We'll have a Studio Session in the second hour to work on the final version of your Client Project, which is due by noon on Tuesday, 4/26.

Though we will be working individually, I'll expect you to stay and be productive until the usual end of class time.

Checklist: The Client Project

I'm handing out a Checklist tonight that you can use to revise your own project as well as to give you ideas for commenting on your classmates' pages in workshop starting next week.

I'll also use this same checklist in giving you feedback on your project.

1. Within 24 hours of the workshop ,copy and paste all the written comments you've made for everyone discussed that day into the form "Workshop Comments for Today" and click "Send." These comments will come to me. Be sure to label each set of comments with the project number and name of the project's author.
2. Send each author your comments on his or her project by using the e-mail list on the the form "Workshop Comments for Today."

Roll
See "Coming Up" for important reminders and news.

Collect Printouts and Commentaries

Workshop Today

For workshop today, please open up the SychronEyes software on your desktop and sign in with your first and last names.

1. Within 24 hours of the workshop ,copy and paste all the written comments you've made for everyone discussed that day into the form "Workshop Comments for Today" and click "Send." These comments will come to me. Be sure to label each set of comments with the project number and name of the project's author.
2. Send each author your comments on his or her project by using the e-mail list on the the form "Workshop Comments for Today."

Preparing for Workshop Next Time

Before class next time , please do the following:

1. Review the workshopping page for ideas about what you might discuss in your comments.
2. Visit the Client Projects scheduled the class meeting in the schedule below. Before class on workshop day, I'll link the names in this schedule to the projects, but, in the meantime, go directly to the Webx discussion "Client Project URLs" to follow the URLs there.
3. Type and printout written comments and suggestions for each project scheduled for that day. Bring both the printout of your comments and the digital file to class.