School of Engineering and Applied Science
Department of Computer Science
CSci 41 -- Introduction to Computer Science
http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~csci41/fall05
Prof. Michael B. Feldman
mfeldman@gwu.edu

Lab Exercise 1, Sept. 1, 2005 -- Creating Your Personal Web Site

This file is available online at http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~csci41/fall05/41f05lab1.html

The lab may be easy for some, and less easy for others. The overall purpose is to familiarize you with the SEASCF (SEAS Computing Faculty) environment and the World Wide Web publishing process here. You'll be using this familiarity to do other assignments throughout this course. Specifically, the lab exercise has several objectives.

  1. make sure everyone's account at SEASCF is in good working order
  2. learn to use a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) web page editor to create a basic personal web page
  3. make sure everyone is able to scan graphics into the computer using the equipment here
  4. make sure everyone is able to publish materials to their web sites here
The tools involved are the Netscape or Mozilla browser and web page editor or composer, and the GW e-mail manager (GWMail).There are three parts; they are to be completed by the end of your lab session.
  1. Using the browser,go to the site http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~csci41/fall05, then click 'Student Questionnaire'. When the questionnaire appears fill it in. Don't forget to submit it by clicking the Submit button at the bottom of the page! We will use this questionnaire to make up class lists for the faculty and lab assistants in this course. Nobody but the faculty and lab assistants in this course will see your questionnaire.
  2.  
  3. Using the composer,create a basic personal web page for yourself and publish it on the SEAS web server. Your web page file must be called index.html, and must contain at least the following parts:

    1. A photo of yourself, scanned with the SEASCF lab scanner; if you forgot to bring a photo, you may scan your GWorld card. Make sure to cover the ID number before you scan the card. It's not a good idea to leave this on the web, so you must bring another photo and replace the GWorld image within one week.
    2. An appropriate web page title tag.
    3. An appropriate header, centered at the top of the page.
    4. A link to the web pages of the two Computer Science advisors:
      Prof. Feldman, http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman
      Prof. Narahari, http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~narahari.
    5. Your name, hometown, probable major, and main hobbies or extracurricular activities

    When you are finished editing your page, publish and test it:  

    1. Publish your page using the Publish dialog on the File menu. The publication address must be ftp://tangle.seas.gwu.edu/public_html/index.html,

    2. using your SEASCF userid and password to do the transfer. The address for your photo should be
      ftp://tangle.seas.gwu.edu/public_html/my_photo.jpg
       
    3. Test your page by pointing your browser at http://student.seas.gwu.edu/~your_name, where you substitute your own user ID for your_name.

    4.  
  4. Using GWMail, log onto the GW mail server and e-mail the URL of your web page to your lab assistant and to Prof. Feldman (mfeldman@gwu.edu).
By the way - Mozilla is a very nice integrated program, with a browser, e-mail client, web page composer, etc. If you have your own computer, it's very easy to download at no charge, and install. There are Windows, Mac, and Linux versions. Prof. Feldman uses Mozilla Composer (usually on a Mac) to write all his web-distributed class materials.

Last modified: Aug. 25, 2005