Tutorial 3 - Cascading Style Sheets

We start Tutorial 3 this week. It will have a large impact on your success in this class and your success as a webmaster in the future. Cascading Style Sheets - CSS - is an important topic in HTML, in Website Design. As is documented in Wikipedia, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are used to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML. CSS can enable the separation of document content (written in HTML) from document presentation (written in CSS). This separation can improve content accessibility, provide more flexibility and control in the specification of presentation characteristics, and reduce complexity and repetition in the structural content. CSS can also allow the same webpage page to be presented in different styles for different rendering methods, such as on-screen, in print, by voice (when read out by a speech-based browser or screen reader) and on Braille-based, tactile devices.

Oh, but we are getting ahead of ourselves. Suffice to say that CSS is an important topic, one deserving of your dedicated attention. Tutorial 3 will be the last tutorial covered over 2 weeks. You will note that there is not a graded assignment due Sunday Feb 22, but if you choose to, there are two bonus assignment.

Everyone must know that the 2 weeks of Mardi Graw happen while we are to cover Tutorial 3. This can be a great distraction. So, I caution you not to loose focus, to plan your time wisely, and to give your work on this introduction to Cascading Styles the attention it deserves.

During the remainder of our semester we will cover Tutorials 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 in one week each. Tutorial 9 will be covered during the last 2 weeks, and will also server as your final exam. Our Site Index has links to all the remaining assignments. Do NOT look too far ahead. Our text is well organized and each Tutorial builds on what is learned in previous Tutorials.

There are new forums available in BlackBoard Discussions with names ending in 16Feb. These will become part of the grading rubric in the next week's (Feb.25) Assignment that is due Sunday, Mar 1.

5 Bonus Points: Build a Shortcut (Bookmark) webpage linking to web sites about web sites. An example of a web site about web sites is the W3C Markup Validation web site that we are using. Your Shortcut (Bookmark) webpage can look something like this one. You will receive 1 bonus point for every 5 linked sites.

eMail George the URL of your Shortcut page before 11:59 PM, Sunday Feb 22.

I build and use lots of Shortcut pages ... this one I use every day. The advantage of keeping Shortcut pages on your web site is that they are available to you from anywhere ... unlike your browsers Shortcut menu ... which is available ONLY on your own computer.

5 Bonus Points: Build a Home Page for all your assignments in this class. Keep it current for the rest of the semester. eMail George the URL of your Assignments Home Page before 11:59 PM, Sunday Feb 22.

Get Started: This is the last time Bonus Points will be offered, hope you decide to take advantage.

Where is it? -- hint, driftwood art