JB 3623 Internet Communications

With a new semester comes an updated syllabus, updated class notes and a new calendar. One of the requirements for this class is that you read all the materials and specifically this web site in advance of every class. This site is your way of keeping up with what’s happening in class and on the web.

Here’s the final review in pdf format. This semester, there will be a fill in the blanks question that is covered in the final review, but you might also want to download the html file that is the basis for this question so you can browse the code. This is a zip archive which you should be able to open on just about any computer.

Today is the day your final projects must be submitted to receive a grade on them for this class. The submission process is pretty simple, but shorter than it has been in some past semesters due to a permissions glitch in the way that I set up the themes at the beginning of the semester. Because of this you’ll probably have an hour or so of time to polish off your site before actually submitting it. Once submitted, you won’t be able to make any changes to the content or design of your site.

Here are the steps in detail:
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Tonight we’ll talk mostly about forms and how they interact with the server. During this discussion, you might want to look at this form and review the css and html code included in the file. That form includes all the major elements you might want to include in any form you create. This form comes from an article on making forms prettier and more accessible at the same time.

We’ll also talk briefly about Javascript and Web 2.0. Here’s a good site for playing interactivity with Javascript to get an idea of the possibilities…

W3 School Javascript Examples

Tonight, we’ll talk about Google’s Analytics service and how you can use it to achieve your site’s goals. The presentation for tonight’s class offers details on what the numbers mean, but you should also look at some actual reports from ocolly.com to get a better feel for the kinds of reports that are available through this service.

The O’Collegian began using Google Analytics about two years ago and as such it provides us with historical information that allows us to tweak the site to optimize it for our audience and our advertisers. Google’s service isn’t the only one of its type, but because it’s free, it is probably the most widely used.

For example, compared to last fall, our local traffic from Stillwater has more than doubled over last year and from that you could infer that our student traffic is up significantly. While that is most likely true, the statistics for the newspaper and web site are exactly opposite: 80 percent of people who read the newspaper are students while 80 percent of people who read the web site are from outside of Stillwater and most likely alumni.

Although we do not yet have any defined goals that can be tracked through Google Analytics, my own personal goal is that our blend eventually be 50 percent students and 50 percent alumni. This Google service offers data that can eventually help us reach that goal and could offer information to help you meet your goals.

Last month, I created a rate card showing all the forms of advertising ocolly.com has for sale along with the pricing. That rate card provides a good preview of what we’ll be covering tonight — advertising on the internet. For even more info, you can check out our online rates page, which has some demographic information along with a contract for online advertising.

The overall bit rate does more to determine how your video looks than anything else. These samples show you the trade off between file size and quality. All of these were compressed using the same 30 second Quicktime file sourced from a high definition master and saved for the iPod.
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The review of the mid-term exam and also the details of where we stand on the class project have been posted.

Jakob Nielsen is an expert on web page usability and has done several studies on writing for the web. Among his findings…

• Eyetracking visualizations show that users often read web pages in an F-Shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes following by a vertical stripe
• Reading from computer screens is about 25% slower than reading from paper.
• People rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences.

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Tonight, we wrap up everything you need to know to complete your semester projects with the last of four lectures on cascading style sheets. HTML and CSS are what this class is all about and now that we’ve covered just about everything we’re going to cover on those two topics you know that means:

It’s time for a test!

After the lecture I’ll summarize everything we’ve covered up to know and what you’ll need to know to be succesful on the mid-term exam. Don’t forget to check out the notes and and the lectures while you prepare. The mid-term is scheduled for next Tuesday, October 2, 2007.