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T171 news and tips, ETMA information

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T171 News. Tips

1 Required Programs

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3 Page Appearance

4 Colour RGB System

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5 Tables

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11 Uploading

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15 Site Design

16 Forms

99 Web Glossary

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T171 news and tips

Updated 4 Mar 03

T171 news and tips - PageContents

Prepare for the Course
Tip	Save all your Work OFTEN
Your OU Web Space New	The URL The importance of index.htm Exercise 1 Possible security breach
Your Web Page has problems New	Utilise the Possible security breach
ECA
Set Books
Module 3	Useful links
E-Business	by Professor Jim Norton
Word Count
ETMA	Uploading more than one file Uploading to ETMA site Flat file structure.
First Class Posting to Web Page	How to Copy 1 or more postings from first class that includes all the header information without doing several copy/pastes.
Delete Temporary Files in Windows 95/98	How to Delete Temporary Files in Windows 95/98. Advice from Microsoft
Accidental Empires	A students notes

Prepare for the Course

Produce a simple web page and upload to a Host

Produce a simple web page

You will need an editor to do this. Read HTML Editors and Lesson 1 besides an editor you require an ISP in the next step.
You need the basic code. Lesson 2
Practice with your editor or try some different ones. Become proficiant with one of them before you start the course.

Upload the file to a Host

You need a host, a free one will do for this. For an intoduction to hosting read Lesson 1 then for a list of hosts read Hosting
You also need an ISP.Read Lesson 1
You need to upload your file to the hosts server. My lesson on this has still to be done. But many hosts have programs on there site usually called control panels or something similar that do this for you. There are also free ftp programs that also upload your files to a server.

Test what the page looks like in different browsers

By testing see what your page looks like using different browsers.

Now add a graphic to that page, upload, and test.

Tip

Save your work OFTEN

The work you do on the course is important to you. Accidents do happen, computers crash, the kids delete files.

Make a habit of backing up your work. Besides having a backup folder on your hard drive also save to some seperate medium, such as a floppy, external drive ect.

To find out that a vital file is missing 2 hours before a TMA deadline is more than frustrating.

The "it won't happen to me" is not a guarentee. BE WARNED - backup frequently - so it takes 2 or 3 extra minutes, but could save you hours or weeks.

Your OU Web Space

On Open University courses such as T170 T171 TT280 you are provided with a small amount of Web space on the OU Server.

The URL

You acesses your web space using the following URL
http://oufcnt2.open.ac.uk/~your_name

your_name is obviously your open university name, which may include a number if you have a popular name.
Use only lowercase
Replace spaces with the underscore _ that's the shift - key on UK keyboards. ALWAYS REMEMBER that spaces in URLs and file names such as graphics should NEVER be used.

You should follow the instructions provided on how to activate your Web space.

And the instructions to upload your files

You view your Web space with a Web browser such as Netscape (Provided on the course disk) or IE etc. If you access your space before you upload any files to your space you may see your resume if you have done one.

The importance of index.htm

The first file you normally upload should be a file named index.htm. This name is a default name and means that the actual file name does not need to be inserted. So that:
http://oufcnt2.open.ac.uk/~your_name would display the file
http://oufcnt2.open.ac.uk/~your_name/index.htm

Exercise 1

So that you see the implications of using an index.htm file as the first file, this exercise will use a different file name as your first upload.

Produce a very simple web page, you can use notepad, composer or a better HTML authoring package. See tutorial 2 for full details of the following code that puts the words Hello World into your web page

<HTML>
     <HEAD> 
             <TITLE>My First Web Page</TITLE>
     </HEAD>
     <BODY>Hello World
     </BODY> 
</HTML>

Save this as web_space_test.htm and upload it to your OU web space.

Using a Web browser Enter
http://oufcnt2.open.ac.uk/~your_name

The default file of index.htm can't be found, and instead of displaying the usual "Page can't be found" message the OU server will display a directory of your Web page contents which should include the uploaded file web_space_test.htm. Double clicking this file should open it up in your browser.

The implication of this is in a way a possible security breach. Any body can see any file on your Web space. If you have TMA material there you don't want the public looking at it.

The uploading of an index.htm, even if empty prevents this. Normally index.htm would be an introductary page with navigation to files that you wish to be viewed by the general public..

TMA material in preparation or being tested would be given a secret name and not have links to it from index.htm

A Group Project TMA is a typical example of using a secret name. In this case the name can be given to your groups excusive conference, and would be accessed via
http://oufcnt2.open.ac.uk/~your_name/your_secret_name.htm

Your Web Page has problems

Not to be used for TMA material

The possible security breach mentioned above can be used by experienced students to help you solve your problem.

If you have problems with a web page, say the graphics are not working, or a link does not work then you can assist investigation by other as follows:

Make sure the faulty file is not named index.htm
If you have an index.htm file temporaly rename it to something else say xxindex.htm
Make sure you do not have any TMA material on your Web space.

Any student trying to help you can then easily see what files have been uploaded.

ECA

There is no exam on the T171 course. In its place you do an ECA (Electronic Computerised Assesment). Basically the ECA is a students reflection on the work that the student has done through the course. For the 2002 ECA the student had to produce a 12 page web site. A template was provided for these 12 pages.

The student also had to provide evidence and provide references for quoted words.

References

The course is very hot on the use of references and how to use references is covered in Module 2. This means that a lot of work you did in Module 1 is not referenced adequatly.

Preparation

When you are doing Module 1 exercises and TMA 01 ensure that you make a note of additional information to make the process of referencing easier.

The information collected will depend on the source of the quote eg book, e-mail, web page, conference etc.

The quote should be exact and placed in quotation marks
The authors name
Name of article or book
Page number or location
URL of web page, and very important the date you accessed that page, this is because web pages change or vanish.

Download

You should download the ECA and print it out as soon as available. Work on the ECA as you do your coursework.

Exercises and TMAs

Ensure you save all your work, you may need it for your ECA

T171 Set Books

Click any of the 3 links below for more details

Accidental Empires.
A Brief History of the Future
Blown to Bits

Module 3

Here are some relevant and/or interesting links which you may want to look at supplied by my tutor:

http://cyberatlas.internet.com/

http://www.digitrends.net/

http://www.nua.ie/surveys/index.cgi

http://www.which.net/surveys/intro.htm

E-Business by Professor Jim Norton

http://www.raeng.org.uk/news/publications/lectures/#9 Winning in the Race for e-Business by Professor Jim Norton 2506kb Acrobat file

Word Count

TMAs require accurate word counts, or marks can be deducted.

From a HTML Editor

Select every thing on your page this can be done with Shortcut keys:
Ctrl A

Copy what you have selected. Shortcut keys:

Open Word.
Paste. Shortcut keys:
Ctrl V

From the tools menu select Word count. Take a note of the count. Close word. Because you have just used word as a word counter there is no need to save the word doc. If you wish to check spelling and grammar in word use the Edit in Word method below.

ote:- Word counts bullets as a word.

Edit in Word

You could alternatively write, edit, check spelling and grammar, and do your word count all in word.

Do not waist time on any formatting, because the format will not copy and paste. Tables and Images do not copy and paste although the text in tables will, and separated by a space after pasting.

Do not save the file as a Web page, the code produced is unreadable by a beginner. You can save as a document if required.

Select and copy(as above)

Open Composer or your HTML Editor.

Paste in the text.
Insert tables if required, move text into the cells
Format the text as required
Insert Images

Remember to save your HTML files at regular intervals. Losing your work with a computer crash after 6 hours work of unsaved work is frustrating.

Top.

ETMA

Uploading more than one file

If you wish to upload more than one file such as:

A single page containing an image, remember a file for the page and a second file for the image.
Two or more pages.

Then you must zip the separate files into a zip file. Check that the extension is .zip , a self extracting zip file with extension .exe is NOT acceptable. See the booklet "Using the Electronic TMA System" Page 7 and Nigel Cubitts Flat file structure.

Flat file structure.

For more information see TMAs flat file structure

Uploading to ETMA site

See the booklet "Using the Electronic TMA System" Page 9.

Up to 80% off for Students from Adobe. Plus FREE Shipping Offer

Search this site for a word or phrase. Place phrases inside "double quotes"

Top.

First Class Posting to Web Page

Copying a posting from first class that includes all the header information

In the conference listing highlight the posting or several postings that you wish to copy.
Click Conferancing
Click Summarise Selected Messages.
These messages including the header information, will open in a new window, each message separated by a line.
Select the whole lot Ctrl A.
Copy Ctrl c
Paste into the correct position in your HTML editor.
Note that the line will be converted to ----------------- which you can leave, delete, replace with <HR>, etc. as you require

Here is a sample of my own posting

Friday, 01 March 2002 04:34:16
T171 Forum II
From: John McGuinn
Subject: Copy Posting to Web Page
To: T171 Forum II

A copy of this sent posting will be on my web page in about 3 mins. Check out how to do it.
http://www.tutorials4u.com/html/t171-news-tips.htm PostingToWebPage

John

How to Delete Temporary Files in Windows 95/98

Microsoft state that "You should never delete .Tmp files from within the Windows 95 graphical user interface"

Read the article:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q131944

I would think that the way many people do it should also work, that will avoid the problem mentioned.
Assume you have booted you PC today(Important), then delete in the normal manner all files older than today's date in the temp folder with tmp extension.

Accidental Empires. A students notes

This information was posted by my tutor. Posibly yours has done the same, but if not Read on:

This url for notes on Accidental Empires was sent to a tutor conference today. They are excellent notes, apparently made by a student on a course at Tulane University in New Orleans. They shouldn't be used to replace reading the book (!) but are a very good resource, if only to demonstrate successful note-taking:

http://courses.freeman.tulane.edu/StrongMkStUG/AxidentalEmpires.htm

Do your OU studing in the sun

Tenerife guide
and
San Marino Apartments to rent
in
Los Cristianos

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