Courses/Design & Technique-Essential Web Design

Summary

• Consolidate the difference between the Web and the broader Internet.
• familiarize you with the tools allow for the creation content for the Web, namely HTML and CSS
• gain an understanding of the processes that involve a Web-page opening in your browser

As this kwartaal has as topic who are you in articulation with the tools and techniques you'll learn we'll explore how your identity can be created, confused, or turned into profit on the current Web.

We'll do this exploration by observing and investigating works of art and interventions for the Web, as well as services like Google Search or Facebook, in which identity plays a central role.

You'll be encourage to experiment with the design and expressive possibilities offered by the Web, but also simply by navigating and finding surprising and inspiring websites, which you are welcome to share with the whole class.

Method

Classes will take the form of an informal seminars, where observation of examples, critical thinking and hands-on prototyping (writing code, seeing the result, changing it, breaking it, fixing it, sharing with others.

At each session participants will develop simple prototypes that put into practice the subject presented. And as a long term goal participants will be asked to create an experimental browser-based work, that can be anything but a typical webpage.

Aims

This course has as its aims to:

• ...
• find online help for the problems you encounter
• ...

Previous courses

• Courses/Essential_HTML
• Courses/Browser_as_Canvas

Software Required

   XCode 
   Git - http://git-scm.com/download/mac
   Github - https://mac.github.com/
   Pandoc - http://github.com/jgm/pandoc/releases
   Sublime text - http://www.sublimetext.com/ 
   Firefox (latest version - 40) - http://www.getfirefox.com/
   Chrome - https://www.google.com/chrome/
   Filezilla https://filezilla-project.org/
   Inkscape - http://inkscape.org/en/ 
   Calibre - http://calibre-ebook.com/ 

Classes

In total we'll have 10 classes

week 1 - The Internet and the Web

• Introductions & presentations
• What do you I use the Internet for? Map uses in post it notes.
• Are the internet and the Web the same? What is the difference between them?
• 2 documentaries:
  • On the Internet: The World Brain Episodes 2,3
  • On the Web: ???? The Virtual Revolution ??
• Separate the uses marked on the post it notes that happen inside the Web and those that outside the Web in th Internet
• Distinguish the Internet (the infrastructure, like a highway) and the Web (one of the vehicles of the highway)
• (Briefly) Describe the history of the Web. A documentation

Films

Degoutin, Stéphane, and Gwenola Wagon. World Brain Stéphane Degoutin & Gwenola Wagon, 2012. http://worldbrain.arte.tv.

Optional Reading

Stephenson, Neal. “Mother Earth Mother Board.” Wired, http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html.

Material

• Post it notes
• Markers
• Masking tape
• AV

week 2 - HTML: a language for browsers humans

• What is a Web page?
• What happens when I save a web-page? What files do I save?
• Open those files in a text editor
• Can you understand anything from is there? What can you read? Is this file for humans or for computers?

• HTML
  • tags: ways of saying this = a image, that = a paragraph
  • Essential HTML page structure
  • Basic content tags: p, b, i, img ...
  • hyper-links

Prototype: scrible a simple webpage

Homework: save any website and make into something different (the most drastic change receives a prize)

week 3 - HTML: head, squares, styles

• Inspector
• images
• Local images (or other media): relative path

week 4 - CSS: the clothes of HTML

Courses/Browser_as_Canvas

• Inspector for CSS

Homework: save any website, keep its content and structure as it is, but simply by styling its CSS it make into something different (the most drastic change receives a prize)

week 10 -

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• What happens when I navigate the web?
• Enact the process that take place from opening a web-browser to getting a webpage.
  • (computer): Browser
  • Type URL to browser
  • URL: a request and address to that request
  • Server: receives the request, gets content for the request and sends it back to the browser
  • Browser gets the text content, "reads" it and displays it in a graphic form.

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topics

• Internet and Web:
  • History of the Internet:

Critical Art Ensemble "Flesh Machine: Cyborgs, Designer Babies, & New Eugenic Consciousness" - Appendix (p.140) offers an concise description of the motivations behind the creation of the Internet.

• Homepages
  • It was understood as the way you presented yourself on the Web world
  • Homepage used to be your home on the Web, now all very similar. my home on facebook is very similar to yours.
  • Geocities closure in 2009 - rescue of pages by Archive Team and screenshots added everyday under http://oneterabyteofkilobyteage.tumblr.com/

• Identity
  • Malleable: No one knows youŕe a dog
    • Mouchete
  • Static and unique: One single identity