Course Intro - Web Design & Computer Principles

Web Design & Computer Principles

Introductions
What is involved
How this course works
What to do now
Conclusions

Introductions

This course

Introduction to Web Design & Computer Principles

Official description:

Introduces students to both the practice of web design and the basic principles of computer science. The practice component covers not only web design but also current graphics and software tools. The principles section includes an overview of hardware and software, the history of computers, and a discussion of the impact of computers and the Internet.

Me

Foo Barstein

discord: @foo.barstein

You

Probably an aspiring content producer.
Perhaps a designer.
Perhaps even an aspiring computer scientist.
Hopefully interested in making things and solving problems.
Willing to hack your way through code and detail-oriented media production.

What is involved

Front-end web development

Mastering the code.

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
Javascript (JS)

Back-end web development

Sorry… we’re not covering this!

Databases

Sorry… we’re not covering this!

Mastering tools of the trade

A good code editor
A good code editor
Web browser developer tools
Web servers
file transfers
a small bit of Git
a small bit of GitHub
basic UNIX commands

Mastering media production

Photoshop
Illustrator
Wireframe and site map diagrams
Multi-track audio
Video
A very brief look at Animation

Understanding Internet culture

Copyright law
The free software movement
Web ethics and the surveillance state

How this course works

Lecture

I will speak for 125 minutes, four times per week.

That’s 500 minutes (8 hours 20 minutes) of talking each week.
For your sake and mine, I sincerely hope that you will interrupt me.
Ask lots of questions… comment upon the material… anything, please.

Notes

I write notes for most lecture topics. You may find them useful but incomplete.

Slides

I try to keep slides as a list of topics and points, for your future reference.

They are, by nature, incomplete, unless I were to simply read from them like a robot.

Reading

Reading assignments from the textbook and elsewhere each class.

The textbook is quite thorough, but not exactly necessary if you pay close attention and are willing to do some self-study.

Assignments

You will have somewhere around 10 assignments.

You lose 10 points for each day late and we do not accept submissions more than 3 days late.
See the syllabus for the complete lateness policy.

Extensions

Please do not ask for an extension.

You are hereby granted 2 free extensions for work submitted up to 3 days past the due date.

Quizzes

For every new topic, you will take a simple multiple-choice online quiz.

These are meant to help you self-assess your own mastery of conceptual material.
Try your first quiz!

Exams

You will take 2 exams.

They are likely to consist entirely of multiple-choice questions.
Students who come to class do better.

Grading

35% assignments
25% first exam
25% second and final exam
15% quizzes

Messaging

We use Slack for all communication outside of the classroom.

You must create a private channel in Slack with the name following the pattern, fb1258, where fb1258 is replaced with your own NYU Net ID.

Tutoring

Tutors are waiting to answer your questions virtually all day every day of the week.

See them often. See them fast.
Check the syllabus for the complete tutoring schedule.

What to do now

Review the syllabus

The syllabus contains basic information on how this course works.

Bookmark the schedule

The schedule contains a day-by-day breakdown of everything you need to know and do in this course.

Your consent is necessary since we use software that is not obliged to abide by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

https://goo.gl/forms/uxxgA3D9F3kA0KAR2

Contact me if you have concerns about privacy.

Download and install a decent code editor

A decent code editor, such as Visual Studio Code, is indispensible. In fact, you are required to install Visual Studio Code:

https://code.visualstudio.com

Download and install a file transfer program

In order to publish web pages, you must be able to transfer files from one computer to another on the Internet. Cyberduck is a perfectly adequate free program to do so.

https://cyberduck.io/

Install Git

Git is “version control software” to help keep an archive of all changes in the code of a project.

OS X users: https://git-scm.com/
Windows users: https://gitforwindows.org/

Set Up Bash on Windows

WINDOWS USERS - you should use Git Bash or Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) rather than Windows’ default Powershell or other command line shell program.

Set Git Bash or WSL as the default terminal shell within Visual Studio Code on Windows by following the instructions in the second answer here by Mahade Walid and edited by FruityOatyBar (ignore the first answe, which is outdated).

Create a GitHub account

GitHub is a website owned by Microsoft for sharing and collaborating on code projects that use Git.

https://github.com

Conclusions

Welcome!
Look around the web… see what interesting things people are doing.
Try to look at a diverse array of web sites and apps, not just Google, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, etc.
Thanks. Bye.