Notes on Homework 1

Summary: I summarize my comments on what my students submitted in response to homework 1.

Contents:

• Some General Comments
• The Great High School Bond Debate
• The Great Chocolate Debate
• A Balanced Schedule
• Linux vs. Windows
• Simpsonmania
• Boycott the Bookstore

Some General Comments

• Too many of you thought too little about the links. Just as you wouldn't shove all the paragraphs of an essay together, so should you not make a link from every paragraph to every other paragraph.
• Boy, I thought I had bad design sense.
• Your names belong on your pages so that others can cite you and contact you.
• Almost everyone needs alt tags for your images.
• Almost all of you had fun with the assignment. For that, I commend you.

The Great High School Bond Debate

URL: http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~rebelsky/Courses/CS151/2003F/Examples/HW1/SchoolBond/

Authors: Seth Coster, Peter Sullivan, Nate Wright

Content:

• Lots of it. It might have been nice to have fewer pages. (The goal was a short argument.)

Links:

• Very few specific links, except for the stuff involving costs.

The Great Chocolate Debate

URL: http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~rebelsky/Courses/CS151/2003F/Examples/HW1/Chocolate/

Authors: Louisa Poythress and Nileena Job

Content:

• Generally amusing.
• The disclaimer is great.
• The alternative text for an image should describe the image.

Links:

• Generally well selected. It would have been nice to see an explanation of the form of logic you are using.
• The page names could have been better (perhaps even reflecting the content).

Appearance

• Simple and clean.

A Balanced Schedule

URL: http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~rebelsky/Courses/CS151/2003F/Examples/HW1/Schedule/

Authors: Maggie Becker

Content:

• The opening page probably needs a paragraph of text. Something like, Although some at Grinnell claim that a balanced schedule is a prerequisite for a liberal arts education, an unbalanced schedule can provide not only an acceptable but an excellent liberal arts education.
• It's not immediately clear who the I is (is it Maggie Becker or the reader)?

Links:

• My quick scan suggests that every page links to every other page. I'd like you to think about more sophisticated linking.
• You do provide a variety of kinds of data and links, which is nice.

Appearance:

• I find black on purple hard to read.
• The variety of background colors looks kinda funky.
• I like the validate this page link at the end of every page.

Linux vs. Windows

URL: http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~rebelsky/Courses/CS151/2003F/Examples/HW1/Linux/

Authors: SungJu Park and Louis McGinty

Content:

• Taken from elsewhere, but that's okay.
• Lots of good attempts to find information elsewhere.
• Many spelling mistakes.
• Good attempt to learn from doing the assignment.

Linking:

• Naive: Only one direction. Rather than just giving points, why not think about the structure of an argument?
• Your pages could have used better names.

Appearance:

• Garish
• I hate all caps.
• It's not clear why you have a style sheet for every page.

Simpsonmania

URL: http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~rebelsky/Courses/CS151/2003F/Examples/HW1/Simpsons/

Authors: Michael Billups, Austin Dean, and Cole Henderson

Content:

• It's a bad idea to start your first page with a typo.
• Copyright violation is evil.
• Trademark violation is evil.

Links:

• Page names are inconsistent.
• Only the "here's how to get to every page" links. At minimum, you should have considered links whenever you included a name.

Code:

• File links are generally a bad idea.
• Some code (e.g., centered images) is invalid.
• You need alt tags for your images.

Boycott the Bookstore

URL: http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~rebelsky/Courses/CS151/2003F/Examples/HW1/Bookstore/

Authors: Luis Zuleta-Benavides and Dan Krasinski.

Content:

• Your citations need more details. A citation should give sufficient informatino that someone could track down the info for more details.
• Lots and lots of typos.
• Fallacious arguments in some places.

Linking:

• Generally good - you lead us through an argument.

Design:

• Some text is hard to read on your background.