Originally,
one of the assignments for the class was to have students work collaboratively
to redesign the class web site. But circumstances changed, and now there are
three "teams" of students working to revise the English Department
Graduate Studies web site-- you can see the assignment
here, if you're curious.
Anyway, because of the changes, I decided to go ahead and redesign this web site myself.
A couple of things you perhaps might want to know:
- This is my first "serious attempt" at using Cascading Style Sheets to do more than change some fonts and colors of text. There are no tables here. All the positioning was accomplished with the "div" commands in CSS, with extensive help from Dreamweaver's "Layers" feature. Having learned more about CSS made me willing to give this a try, but without Dreamweaver, there's no way I would have had the patience to figure out how to do this.
- In the future, I think I'd like to have students create style sheets (either individually or collaboratively) that change the look of these pages, sort of like a watered-down version of the ultra-cool design you see on csszengarden.com.
- When all is said and done, I'm not really all that sure that this is "easier" than creating tables. It strikes me as a tool that provides both better flexibility and control, but I think it's a lot more work, too.
- The color scheme of the page is based on the photograph you see here, which is of a tropical plant by my in-law's pool in Florida. The picture doesn't mean much, other than I like it and it was a picture taken by my seven year-old son while he was playing with my digital camera.