Notes on Homework 1: A CS151 Web Site

Summary: In this document, you'll find my too-public notes on the various Web sites submitted for homework 1. You can also use it as a chance to explore your colleague's sites.

Intent: This summary of evaluations is intended to help you think better about Web design. I'll admit that my personality leads me to reflect on negatives, rather than positives. I hope you'll deal with it.

Contents:

• Things to know for CS 151
• Andy's, Amanda's, And Kirsten's Ideas on Workshop Classes
• Comparison of Introductory Computer Science Courses
• How to Make a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich
• Computer Science Concepts

Things to know for CS 151

URL: http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~leachale/index.html

Authors:

• Povilas Dapkevicius
• Alex Leach
• Yvonne Palm

Positives:

• Fun topic.
• Good combination of text and graphics.
• Mostly funny text.
• Good cites.

Negatives:

• Uses frames. Frames suck. See Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for December 1996: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9612.html.
• I don't like here as the only text in a link. It's not clear. Think about those with screen readers.
• I'll admit that I don't like scatalogical humor in course sites.
• Don't use images for text (as in your header).
• Centered text is hard to read.
• No interesting linking from page to page (simply a table of contents at the left).
• Be careful on your use of all caps. Boldface is better.
• Weird title: What can possibly go wrong?

Andy's, Amanda's, And Kirsten's Ideas on Workshop Classes

Authors:

• Andy Cook
• Amanda Perry
• Kirsten Plowman

URL: http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~cooka/homeworkassignmentone.html

Positives:

• Lots and lots of good information.
• It's clear you've thought about the internal links.
• Lots of interesting external links.
• Clearly a research paper :-).

Negatives:

• Um ... Green, small caps, for level 1 headings?
• Pages need better titles.
• homepage is still an awakard term.
• False claims about workshop at Grinnell. Chemistry has a workshop-style introductory course; Bio's new 150 course is often taught in a workshop format; some sections of MAT 215 are also taught in workshop format.
• Needs some editing. For exmalpe, you have "Taken from the syllabus from workshop one" twice.

Comparison of Introductory Computer Science Courses

URL: http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~lauzenat/home.html

Authors:

• Jennifer Karam
• Nathalie Lauze

Positives:

• You clearly studied a wide variety of sites.
• Consistent and logical formatting of pages makes it easy to compare schools.
• I like the personal opinions.

Negatives:

• Um ... a black background. Striking, but hard to read.
• The Berkeley page does not load well.
• Typos abound. For examlpe disscussion on the hard-to-load Berkeley page, tey on the University of Arizona.
• I'm not thrilled with how you separated your roles on the assignment.
• It would have been nice to see compare and contrast links.

How to Make a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich

URL: http://www.math.grinnell.edu/~nemchono/

Authors:

• Daniel Nemchonok
• Ben Wallenberg
• Richard West

Positives:

• Two fun external links on front page. Three more interesting links on the citations page.
• Good linking.
• A fun site.

Negatives:

• Click here sucks. Think of people who scan links for their purpose.
• Citations give only URL.
• Your jars page shows only mason jars.
• Less detail than we worked on in class.

Computer Science Concepts

URL: http://www.math.grinnell.edu/~wyliedav/

Authors:

• Mike Claveria
• Davis S. Wylie

Positives:

• Nice formatting of individual pages.
• Good metaphor.

Negatives:

• Don't use images for your text. It's hard to search.
• Always use alt tags for your images.
• Bad initial URL. What happens when you want to put something else in your home page?
• No interesting linking. For example, do any of your seven issues relate to any others? You could contrast early stopping to enlessness: "Of course, it's just as bad to continue endlessly." You might also have beena ble to set things up with some more interesting relationships if you'd separated programming concepts and tree-climbing concepts into different pages.