HTML-3: FAQ

Start-Up Reality Check: Is this Class Really for Me?

If you're the type of student who is serious about taking college level classes; if you don't shy away from some hard work; if you are truly interested and excited to learn the skills and be able to apply them; if you are willing and even eager to commit yourself to putting in the time and expending the effort required; if you are willing to budget your time each week, and to get started on your reading and assignments early; then this course IS probably for you, and you will likely be successful.

Since this is a full semester, 17-week, class condensed into only 8 weeks during the summer session, you can expect to spend from 12 - 20 hours each week in reading, studying, practicing, and doing the assignments. The best way to approach this is to schedule 2 - 3 work sessions each week, rather than one long, intense marathon; and to schedule them earlier in the week, so that there is time to request and receive help. Humans learn better with shorter sessions, and with breaks in between them, to allow the unconscious mind time to assimilate what has been learned; and also when not jammed up against a deadline. Several sessions will also allow time for you to ask questions, get the answers, and try applying the answers to the problem you were having, and if need be, to ask more questions.

On the other hand, if you are the type of student who has the habit or expectation of sliding by without breaking a sweat, if your primary strategy is to skip the reading and DVD videos, and jump right into the assignments, believing you ought to be able to work it out using trial and error, if you think that an hour a week is all the time you should be expected to spend on homework and study; and if you manage your time in such a way that you regularly wait until just before the deadline to look at what you need to do for the class, if you believe that you deserve a C (or even a B), just for bothering to show up, without doing any of the reading, or studying; if you believe that any type effort you make should be praised and rewarded, even if it fails to meet the criteria for the assignment or the project ... If you are that type of student, then this course is NOT for you, and it's very likely that you won't be successful with it.

Instead, you'll be stressed and frustrated when you discover that you can't do all of the work required in the hour or so before midnight of the deadline day. When that occurs you'll be tempted to take the easy way out by stealing someone else's work and submitting it as your own. If that happens you'll be very unhappy with me when I discover that you've cheated and stolen another student's work (and I often do), and when I give you a 0 for the assignment. You'll also probably be unhappy as you continue to receive poor grades on your assignments because you haven't made a commitment to yourself to make sufficient room in your life to give the course the time it really needs. And perhaps you'll even angry with me for having 'unreasonable' expectations for you.

If all of this is true for how you approach classes at SRJC, your current work habits will prevent you from passing this course, and my strong suggestion is to drop it right away, in order to avoid an F, and to make room for someone who is serious about learning HTML, XHTML, and CSS, and who is willing to put in the time required for reading, study, practice, and assignments.

Do I really have to purchase the text?

Absolutely! The text is the central core around which the course is built. It will be your friend for the duration of the course. It is an excellent text, and easy to read. All of the assignments and quiz questions will be based on the content of the text.

Do I really have to purchase the DVD?

I strongly encourage you to purchase the DVD. Most students love it and depend heavily on it because it gives clear, concise instructions on how to get the assignments done. Also, it includes videos, so if your learning style is visual or audio rather than read/write, the DVD will be indispensible.

How can I do well in the class?

The best strategy for doing well in this class has 4 aspects:

1--The first aspect is to spend sufficient time each week. You will need to arrange your schedule so that you can devote 9 - 10 hours each week for reading, study, practice, and doing your assignments. For some students who find the subject matter particularly challenging, the time needed may be much longer than this. It depends completely on how quickly you absorb and retain new concepts and ideas, and quickly you are able to begin applying those new learnings to other situations.

Several shorter sessions (2 or 3) are MUCH BETTER than one long marathon on the day that assignmets are due. If you have any difficulty understanding the material, or being able to make it work in the way the text describes it, you need to have enough time before the deadline for the following steps: first, to be able to walk away from it for a bit, to clear your head, and then come back to it with fresh eyes; second, if necessary, to search the Forum to see if anyone else has already encountered the same difficulty and to try the solution(s) posted there; and third, if there is no resolution to your difficulty in the forum, to post a request for help and wait for a response.

If you make the choice of waiting until the day of the deadline to begin the lesson, you're only setting yourself up for stress, frustration, and possibly for crashing and burning. Be kind to yourself by budgeting enough time during the week, to work without being frantic.

2--The second aspect is to do the required reading from the text CAREFULLY and COMPLETELY ! And if necessary or helpful, take the time to watch the videos on the CD.

DO NOT skim, or just flip the pages and glance at the pictures. Read EVERY word, take notes, and then go back and re-read it. Skimming is for finding a particular passage that you recall from when you read the chapter carefully before, it isn't an appropriate tool for something you're reading for the first time.

3--The third aspect is to do EVERY expercise and practice task presented in the text -- even the cross word puzzles. When the text suggests that you do an exercise, actually PICK UP A PENCIL or GO TO YOUR COMPUTER and DO IT, before you go on to the next page!

4--And the final aspect of the strategy for doing well, is to read the assignment instructions CAREFULLY and COMPLETELY -- again, don't skim them. Then, follow them. Do each step. And before going on, double check that you've done each step and haven't overlooked one.

If you put in the required time and effort, if you understand the material being presented, if you can reproduce the material in the practice sessions, and if you are able apply those principles and concepts to creating your own pages, then you will almost certainly be successful.

Why Should I Bother with the Check In?

It is each student's responsibility to officially Check In to each online class they are taking.

In an in-person, face-to-face class, the instructor and the students can see each other, and when the instructor calls the roll, students respond that they are present, and it is clear who is participating, and who is not.

In an online class some other system needs to be used, as the instructor and the students cannot see or hear one another.

Some sort of Check In procedure is the only way that instructors of online classes can determine, right at the beginning of a class, that a student has found the class website, and is ready to begin participating.

As part of the Check In process that is used for this class (and for most online classes at SRJC), students also create a username and password which allows access to the Online Gradebook for the particular section they are checking in to.

NOTE: each class section has its own gradebook, and requires a username and password. This username/password combination may or may NOT be the same for every class you take. You create the pair on each Check In form, so WRITE IT DOWN somewhere safe and indicate which class gradebook it is connected to. Once you become familiar with it, you can destroy the written copy.

Students Not Checked In Are Dropped as No Shows

Following current College policy, students who don't show up for a class are dropped as No Shows. For an in-person, face to face class, the Online Check In procedure isn't necessary to weed out the No Shows, as calling the roll determines who has shown up, and who has not, but for an online class it is crucial.

For Full Semester Courses Meeting More than Once a Week:
Failing to attend the FIRST TWO (2) classes = No Show

For Classes Meeting only Once a Week:
Failing to attend the FIRST Class = No Show

For Online classes:
Failing to Check In by Midnight of the 3rd day (ie Start Date + 2 days) = No Show

If your section is full, and you are dropped for not Checking In on time, you may not be able to get back in, so DON'T MISS the Check In Deadline.

Check In Requests MUST Be Approved By Instructor

Also NOTE: I MUST approve your Check In before your username and password will work. When I approve it, the system will generate an automated confirmation email which is sent out to you immediately. Once you receive this confirmation email, you will know that your Check In is complete.

I normally approve Check In requests every morning, and if I happen to be at the computer later in the day, I will approve them as they come in, but please give me 48 hours to approve your check in.

If You Don't Receive Your Confirmation

DO NOT WAIT for a whole week for your confirmation email, assuming that it may take a long time to get to you. First check your Junk/Spam/Graymail email box. Sometimes certain email systems automatically direct the confirmation messages to Junk/Graymail, rather than to your Inbox.

If AFTER 48 HOURS, you still haven't received your confirmation, please contact me immediately, via email, to let me know WHEN you submitted the Check In.

If you do nothing, when you haven't received your confirmation, you may not really be Checked In, and if that's the case, you WILL be dropped as a No Show.

So stay alert and watch for the confirmation email.

Help! I'm confused about all the different usernames and passwords! AND What is the default password for my account at student

Yes, it can be confusing. There are 3 username/password combinations for this class -- for your web account at student; for the class Forums where you submit your assignments, and where you look for, and ask for help; and for the CATE system, where you previously Checked In, and where you'll take the Quizzes, and view your grades.

Some details for the 3 are listed below. I suggest that until you get familiar with them all, you write down the 3 username/password combos, and the URL you point your browser or your SFTP application to, to get the login page. Keep this info somewhere safe, until you've memorized it, and then destroy the paper that it was written on. You might also want to do yourself a favor, and invest in a Password Vault, like SplashID from SplashData.com, which will keep all of your sensitive information in encrypted format, right on your computer. It costs $19.95. Or you can do some research on the web, and choose another.

1) Your login for your web account at student (http://student.santarosa.edu) ... This is the location where youll upload all of the web pages you create for your assignments. Your username for your student account is your first initial plus the first 7 letters of your last name -- all lower case. If there was already an account for another student with those same 8 letters, yours will have a number instead of a letter for the 8th, and possibly also for the 7th character of the username. Your original, default password for your student account, was the first letters of your first and last name, in UPPER CASE, plus the last 5 digits of your social security number. If you changed this default password, then it will be whatever you changed it to. There is no way for me to retrieve it for you if you have forgotten it. You can reset your password to the original default yourself, by re-applying for an account at student. This will NOT hurt your existing account or files in any way, it will just reset your password to the default.

2) Your login for the Class Forum account ... the class Forum is here at this site, and is where you submit the parts of your assignments that are not web pages, where you search for help, or ask for help if you question hasn't already been answereed there, and when you can post Tips, Tricks, and Web Resources that you've found useful and want to share with your classmates. Your username for the class Forum is your FULL name (first + space + last), as it appears on the official class roster. Your password is whatever you decided to make it when you registered for the forum. If you've forgotten it, you can send me an email with what you would like it to be changed to, and I can change it to that. Passwords are kept in an encrypted format, so I can't read what the existing ones are. Make sure you put CIS-58.51C at the beginning of the subject line of any email to me.

3) Your login at CATE (http://online.santarosa.edu) ... CATE (Center for Advanced Technology in Education) is one of the many websites at SRJC, and is a course management system, where many instructors have their entire class websites. Others, like me, have the majority of their class websites somewhere else, and use CATE only for a few features -- for example, the Check In procedure, Quizzes, and the online Gradebook.

Your username and password at CATE for THIS CLASS are whatever you decided to make them, when you went through the Check In procedure. Be aware that each class that uses CATE for Check In has you create a username/password combo, and the combo for one class may not be the same as the combo for another class -- it depends on how you created the combos yourself.

If you forget your login combo for CATE (to see the Gradebook and take the Quizzes), you can have it sent to you by entering the email address you used for your Check In, on the CATE Password Reminder page:

http://online.santarosa.edu/cgi-bin/autocate/student/reminder.cgi

I changed my password for my account at student, and have forgotten it. What can I do?

If you've changed your password for your student account and then forgotten it, the only thing you can do is to have your password reset to the default. Point your browser to the home page at student, (http://student.santarosa.edu) and click the "Application for Student Account" link in the Setting Up section. Enter your SID (Student Identification) number, and your birthdate. You MUST enter your birthdate in the format requested, 4-digit Year first, then 2-digit Month, then 2-digit day, with no spaces, dashes or slashes between them -- just 8 numbers. Instead of creating another account for you, your existing account will have the password reset to the default.

See the FAQ "I'm confused about all the different usernames and passwords" for info on what your default password is. It's in the section on your account at student.

How do I login to my account at student?

How and WHERE you login to your account at student depends completely on what you are trying to do, once you've logged in.

For what we are doing in THIS class, you do NOT go to the student.santarosa.edu website and look for a login or sign in page or area. The only section of your student account which you can access from the student main website, is your student EMAIL account, which comes along with your student web account. Most HTML-1 students never use the free email account that comes with the free web account. Whether you use that email account is up to you, but it is not part of what we're doing in this class. You probably already have an email somewhere else, and you will likely continue to use that email account.

So, to repeat, if you are working on ANY of the assignment steps for this class, you DON'T login at student.santarosa.edu. See below for the 2 ways you login to your student web account for the work in this class.

If you are working on Step 1-9 from the Lesson 01 Assignment Details page -- getting your account ready for web access (the sudo wwwme or public_html folder step), you need to launch SSH and type student.santarosa.edu into the host name box, and your username in the username box, and click the Connect button, then enter your password in the password window that pops up.

If you are trying to upload web pages and graphics files to your student account, you need to launch your Secure File Transfer program (SFTP for windows users, or Fugu for mac users), and again

I've forgotten my username and password at CATE so can't see my grades, or take the exams. How do I find out what it is?

You can have your CATE username and password emailed to you by the CATE system. All you need to do is visit the CATE Password Reminder page

http://online.santarosa.edu/cgi-bin/autocate/student/reminder.cgi

and enter the email address you used when you filled out the Check In form.

If you have more than one email account, and don't remember which one you used for the Check In, you may try different ones, one at a time.

If you DON'T receive an emailed response within a few minutes, that almost certainly means you've used a non-functional email account -- meaning you typed it in wrong, or your Inbox is full and isn't accepting any more incoming mail, or another problem exists (such as spam blocking where your email provider is blocking the message, or you received it, but it went to your Junk Mail folder instead of your Inbox, etc).

If you don't receive the message, look in your Junk Mail folder, and then try again, being very careful when typing your email address. If you still don't get the message, send me an email so I can help you.

Remember to put CIS-58.51C as the FIRST part of the Subject line, in ALL emails to me.

How do I know what the assignments are?

The assignmens are grouped by Lesson. To see the navigation tabs for all of the lessons, click the Assignments tab, in the navigation panel at the top right of every page, or in the text navigation links at the bottom of every page, (except the Forum and Gradebook pages). That will open the Assignments Calendar, where you'll also find a link in each week to the details for that week's assignments. You can use either the Lesson tabs at the top right, or the links on the Assignments Calendar, to view the details for each set of assignments.

How do I know when the assignments are due?

Look on the Assignments Calendar (click the assignments tab in the main navigation panel, top right of each page). In each box for Tuesday on the calendar, the deadline for each assignment is displayed. Also on the Assignment Details Page for each lesson, the deadline is displayed at the top, and again with each step where you have to submit something.

WORKING AHEAD: Is it ok if I include features in my website that we have not yet covered in the class, or that the assignment doesn't ask for?

No -- Please DO NOT work ahead in any page that you are submitting for grading.

In addition to making the process of finding and grading the specific elements of an assignment much harder for the instructor, it often ends up confusing the student who tries it.

Please do not work ahead, or include ANYTHING else in the assignment except what is requested, at that point.

If you do get excited about what you are learning and want to move forward because you're inspired, CREATE a COPY of the assignment page, name it something like 'workingAhead-lesson2.html', and then have at it -- be creative, experiement, put your skills to the test, have fun! This way we both win. I get to look at your page with just the elements I'm looking for, and you can follow your interest, creativity, and enthusiasm in a different page. And in the event that you do get confused, or make some coding mistakes that break your page layout, or prevent the page from displaying, you haven't lost anything, and your assignment page is still intact.

What is the difference between an absolute path and a relative path?

An absolute path is a complete or FULL path 'giving the directions' to find a file, by beginning at the very top of the folder and file tree, at the root folder, and tracing down through each subfolder involved, to the file itself. Because this type of path begins at the root folder, it is not dependent on, not relative to, the location of any other file. It is an independent or 'absolute' path, and contains all the info needed to locate the file, in every situation.

A relative path is an incomplete or PARTIAL path, 'giving the directions' to find a file, by beginning at the location of some other file, and tracing from THAT CURRENT location to the desired file. Because this type of path begins, NOT at the root, but at the current location of some other file, it is NOT independent, not absolute. It is dependent upon, or relative to, the location of the current file. In order to use a relative path to find a file, one MUST be at the location which the path is relative to, otherwise the directions "make no sense", and the file will not be found.

Everyone uses both absolute and relative type directions all the time, in real life. If someone is giving you directions to find a cafe, the relative directions (or relative path to the cafe) will start from where you are, at the moment, and include left turns and right turns, which depend completely on your current location, and which side of the street you happen to be on -- the directions are relative to where you are at the moment. On the other hand, the absolute directions to the cafe will start from a well known landmark, a "root" location, not from where you currently are, and those directions don't depend on where you are right now. They are absolute.

To follow absolute instructions (an absolute path), you need to go first to the well known landmark -- the "root" for the directions, and proceed from there. To follow relative instructions (a relative path) you can proceed right away because relative instructions begin from where you currently are -- they are relative to your current locatiion.

Relative directions/paths assume you are at a particular location, and are ONLY accurate for finding the desired destination if you are actually starting from that assumed location. If in reality you are somewhere else altoghether, the relative directions will fail, because they are dependent on you being at a particular location and starting from there. A relative path says "start where you are and follow these directions."

Absolute directions/paths will always get you to the destination, though they may not use the shortest distance, because they begin from a known starting point -- the root. So even if you aren't currently where the person giving the instructions thinks you are, the directions will still work, because they require that you go to the root location first. An absolute path says "start at the root, and then follow these directions."

In looking at a link, if the link path is just a file name, or if it begins with a folder name followed by a file name -- for example 'contact.html" or "resources/contact.html", it is relative. The first assumes that "contact.html" is in the same folder as the file containing the link ... no need to go up into a higher level folder, nor down into a lower level folder, the file is on the same level, in the same folder. The second indicates that the contact file is a level below, inside the resources folder AND the resources folder is at the same level as the file containing the link.

If a link path begins with a / (the slash character is the shortcut name for the root folder) it is an absolute path, starting in the root folder of the current site. You might also see link paths that begin with http:// and a domain name, like "http://www.insideSkills.com", or a domain name and an account name "http://student.santarosa.edu/~username", or perhaps a domain name plus a folder name, or maybe several folder names all separated by slashes /, like "http://www.insideSkills.com/classes/html1/09spring" -- these are all absolute paths too.

In the code for a web page, if a link begins with http:// it is an absolute link to a file in a DIFFERENT website. If the link begins with just a slash, /, then it is an absolute link to a file in the CURRENT website. For absolute paths in the current website, there is no need to repeat the http:// and the whole domain name -- the slash character means 'root folder of this website'.

If the link begins with anything besides / or http://, it is a relative link. It could begin with the file name itself, or a folder name and a file name, or even a ../ which is shorthand for 'the folder above this one'.

ONE FINAL CAUTION: If your link (or the URL in the browser address box) begins with file:// rather than http://, it is an absolute link pointing to a particular location on your HARD DISK, not at your website. Keep an eye out for any links or URLs that begin with file:// because they are NOT valid paths for a website and will lead to 'file not found' errors. They only work with YOUR browser, on YOUR computer, looking at a file or files on YOUR hard disk. If you upload a file to your website with links or paths that begin with file://, no one will be able to use those links, because the web page, on the web, doesn't have access to your hard disk.

Why does my apostrophe (or quotation mark or dash) show up as a question mark (or some other strange character) on my webpage?

This is probably because you copied one or more characters (such as a smart-quote or a smart-apostrophe or a dash) from a document that you created using a Microsoft product like Word, and pasted it into your HTML document. If you go back to your HTML document and retype the character by hand the problem should be fixed.

Smart quotes are special types of quote marks, that don't use the normal, single or double quote mark which you can type from the keyboard. The opening, or left, quote mark looks different from the closing, or right, quote mark -- they're opposites of each other and come in pairs. Since they don't belong to the normal character set (ISO-8550-1 or UTF-8), and since the <meta> tag in your page is calling for one of those two character sets, the browser doesn't know how those special characters are supposed to look.

Make sure that when you re-type it, the quotes (or apostrophe) look exactly the same at the beginning and ending of the quote, not curved to the right at the beginning and curved to the left at the end.

Also, make sure you have your preferences set in Notepad or TextEdit to use plain text rather than rich text format (rtf).

I've uploaded my new webpage to the server, but my browser still shows me the old page. Why is this?

Browsers commonly save a copy of each page that they display, to save the time of having to retrieve it from the server if the user asks to see it again. Unfortunately, this means that if you want to see the new, updated version of the webpage, you have to click on the refresh (or reload) button in your browser. Some browsers have a preferences setting to make it so that pages are always retrieved from the server each time they are loaded, and I strongly suggest using this setting if you can figure out how to do it. Unfortunately, one of the (few) things I dislike about Firefox is that it does not allow this preference to my knowledge, and with each new version of IE it gets harder to find this preference.

It's easy to forget to do this, and when you do forget it causes stress and frustration because you can't figure out why the changes you just made aren't visible. Form this habit -- once you view your page (from the web) leave the browser window open; switch back to your text editor to make changes to your page; save it; upload it; switch back to the open browser and refresh or reload the page, to see the changes.

Why does the validator say "no referer header found" when I click on the validation icon?

There are 2 possible reasons for this:

First, make sure that you clicked the icon when you were looking at your webpage as it is posted ON THE WEB in your student account, NOT your local version of the file from your hard disk.

If you just used the "file open" menu command in your browser to view your page, or if you just double clicked the file icon, in an Explore or Finder window, you ARE looking at your LOCAL copy of the page, NOT the copy on the web, and the Validator icon won't work. Upload the file to the web server (your student account) first, then type the URL of your webiste (student.santarosa.edu/~yourusername) into the browser address bar to view the WEB COPY of your file, THEN click on the icon.

DO NOT try to validate your files BEFORE you upload them. Upload them FIRST, then view them from your account (the URL in the browser address bar MUST begin with http://, NOT with file:// ), and then click the Validator icon.

Second, if you are clicking the Validator icon from the copy of the page on the web and you are still getting this error message, it means your Anti-virus, Anti-spyware, or Firewall software is blocking something which is preventing the validation by clicking the icon.

What your security software is blocking is the ability of the browser to report the previous URL visited (the 'referer header'), when you switch to the Validation site, by clicking the icon. The purpose of this blocking is to prevent your browser from revealing your browsing history to marketing companies who track which sites you visit.

The security software should be able to be configured to allow the browser to pass the previous site URL (the 'referer hearder') to the Validation site so that it knows the URL of the page you want validated, but if you don't know how to do that, you can validate your pages by another route.

Go directly to the Validation website (validator.w3.org) and type in the URL of the webpage you want validated, by hand.

Why, when I validate my page, does the validator say "Sorry, I am unable to validate this document because on line ## it contained one or more bytes that I cannot interpret..."?

Also, make sure you have your preferences set in Notepad or TextEdit to use plain text rather than rich text format (rtf).

HTML - Level 3

CS-50.11C, section 8412, Summer 2010

presented by Muiz Brinkerhoff

FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

Getting Started, Preparation, Class Materials

Usernames and Passwords and Accounts

Assignments

HTML, XHTML, and CSS issues

Browser Issues

Validation Issues