Sheila Dodson

Dodson 1

Sheila Dodson

Dr. S. Imtiaz Ahmad

End-User Computing IS215

01 March 2009

EASTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY

Computer Information Systems

IS 215 End-User Computing

Assignment No. 3

This assignment is about a business that you will set up and publicize it through the Internet. Think of a business that interests you enough to learn about it in terms of its goals, operations, the information that the business may need to maintain, and how this information is processed. Generally, a business falls in categories such as manufacturing, sales, service, and so on. In terms of numbers and visibility, we frequently come in contact with sales and service industries. All of us have been exposed to businesses that sell goods, businesses that rent items, businesses that provide services and so on. Your task is to select a business like the ones mentioned here for the purpose of gaining practical insights and hands-on problem solving and end-user computing experience in web page development. What particular business is selected for this purpose is not crucial. In reality, most businesses operate the same way despite their differences on the surface. What matters most is that there is keen interest in getting a good handle on the business that you select.

Your work should describe the business in terms of its name, location, purpose, products sold or the services provided, human resources employed, the method of conducting the business e.g. in person or remotely, and information maintenance and processing requirements. This is to be presented as a business homepage on the World Wide Web.

The following problems specify the work required for the assignment.

Problem No. 1

In presenting information, whether in print or electronic medium, there are certain considerations that apply in order to fulfill the purpose of information effectively. Access and study the following materials:

Based on the above readings and other sources, identify and describe at least four guiding principles that you will use in writing the contents of the web page for your business.

Use Multiple, Specific Headlines

Headlines and sub-headlines create immediate context when a visitor is exploring your site. Make sure they can always see at least one headline on the screen. Like magazine index headlines, they are summaries of what is to come.

You can make these headlines specific by using your keywords. When you tag headlines in your source code they will be used by many search engines to index your site.

Clearly Explain

People scan headlines to grasp meaning, and often to summarize an entire block of text. That's why being enigmatic, cryptic, or ironic is counterproductive and a waste of time. Be as clear as you can (and you won't risk irritating your readers)!

Write Your Links as Headlines

Often people scan pages by jumping from one link to another. Have you ever looked at your own site in this way? Link words look very much like headlines, or highlighted words, and should deliver your primary message. Be sure to use your keywords here as well.

Use Bullets

Bullets are essential. They break up text copy and serve you as mini-headlines with an entirely different look and feel. The ideal length for a bulleted list is 3-5 items, which is probably all most

readers scanning can grasp. If your bulleted list is too long, try combining several bullets into one.

Fonts and Typography

Fonts are the way your text looks on a Web page. And most Web pages have large amounts of text. When you're thinking of design, you need to think about how the text looks on a micro-level (the font glyphs, what font family, etc.) as well as the macro-level (positioning blocks of text and adjusting the size and shape of the text). These resources explain how to work with fonts on Web pages.

How to Use Color

Color is everywhere. It's how we dress up our world and how we see things. Color has meaning beyond just "red" or "blue" and color is an important design element. These color resources teach how to use color effectively in Web design.

Problem No. 2

Develop a home page for your business adhering to the guidelines described above. Also, make sure that the home page fully covers all aspects of business as stipulated in the opening paragraphs of your assignment. You may use a web page authoring tool. However, you are expected to master the basics of HTML scripting (programming) language. You are also required to include meta-information in your page. Insert the meta tag elements at the top of your document, just after the <TITLE> element. The general form is: <META name="something" content="something else">

You need not include a </META> at the end of the tag. The three basic types of meta tags are:

See for an understanding and effective use of these tags. Describe the purposes of the three meta tags shown above.

Much of the contents of web pages are described via text, albeit in a variety of forms, layout, and colors. The descriptions of your business in text should be well over two pages. Content articulation forms such graphics, pictures, sound, animation, and motion picture should also be employed effectively. With a view to getting a handle on these means of articulation, include in your web page at least some images, animation and sound. All of these must be properly labeled with text. The browsers normally rely on Plug-ins for handling sounds, motion picture or video, and other files. Add some links relevant to selected pieces of information in appropriate places.

There are basically four major meta tags that you can use:

<META name="resource-type" content="document">
The only resource type that is currently in use is "document" This is the only tag that you need to put in for indexing purposes, but use of the others is a good idea.

<META name="description" content="a description of your page">
Depending on the search engine, this will be displayed along with the title of your page in an index. "content" could be a word, sentence or even paragraph to describe your page. Keep this reasonably short, concise and to the point. However, don't be so mean with your description that its not an appropriate reflection of the contents!

<META name="keywords" content="a, list, of, keywords">
Choose whatever keywords you think are appropriate, seperated by commas. Remember to include synoyms, americanisms and so on. So, if you had a page on cars, you might want to include keywords such as car, cars, vehicles, automobiles and so on.

<META name="distribution" content="one of several">
Content should contain either global, local or iu (for Internal Use). To be perfectly honest, I can't quite get my head around this one; its supposed to list available resources designed to allow the use to find things easily, but I still don't quite get it. My advice is to stick to "global".

Problem No. 3

Publish your page by uploading your html file named a3.htm and related folders using FileZilla to your web space.

Test your page by using its URL. Copy and paste the URL for a3.htm for your web space into your answers document called a3.doc that also contains text for answers to Problem No. 1 and Problem No. 2, so that I can access your page for grading purposes by simply clicking on this link. Also, upload a3.doc for the purpose of grading.