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SESSION 2432

Web-Based Engineering Courses: Getting Started Professor Joe King University of the Pacific

Introduction

The World Wide Web, or simply the Web, was developed in 1989 as a graphical version of the originally text-based Internet. However, few outside of academia and research sites heard of the Web until Marc Andreesen and a few of his friends at NESA at the University of Illinois founded their company Mosaic Communications in Silicon Valley. The company was later renamed Netscape Communications. In 1995, the Netscape Navigator Web browser began the craze we now call Web surfing.

Netscape Navigator, like the browsers that followed it, decodes text files that are written in a markup language called HyperText Markup Language, or HTML. The term hypertext refers to the ability to create links between files, allowing a user to use a mouse button to click on a word, phrase, or image and cause the browser to jump to and display another Web page. The term markup refers to using tags to “mark up” the contents of an HTML file. The tags tell the browser how to format text, display images, and form links to other HTML files.

Some Definitions

™ HTML. Hypertext Markup Language, the programming used to create Web pages. HTML tags tell browsers how to display the text, images, and links referenced by HTML code (see Table 1). ™ HTTP. HyperText Transfer Protocol, an Internet protocol for transferring HTML files. ™ Browser. A program that reads, decodes, and displays text files that contain HTML code. The resulting display is called a Web page. Example browsers include Mosaic, Netscape Navigator, and Microsoft Internet Explorer. ™ Search Engine. A program that one uses to search millions of Web sites all over the world for information on a given subject. Examples include HotBot and Yahoo! ™ Home page. That web page on a multi-page Web site that the user is expected to visit first. Links to other pages on the site can start at the home page. ™ Web site. A collection of related Web pages that are linked together. This paper teaches you how to create your own Web site, which will consist of a home page, which is linked to a course page for each course you teach. Each course page will then be linked to pages that contain information such as the course policies and course outline.

Web Publishing Basics

The first step in putting together a Web site is to specify its layout, that is, specify the required pages, their content, and the links between them. Some might call this storyboarding or drawing a flowchart like the one shown in Figure 1.

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King, J. (1998, June), Web Based Engineering Courses: Getting Started Paper presented at 1998 Annual Conference, Seattle, Washington. 10.18260/1-2--7526