Welcome to CS110

We think this is a wonderfully exciting course that will introduce you to some of the cool things that computers can do and put some of that power in your hands!

There are a few things you need to know right away:

Everything's online on the cs110 website (even these notes!):
http://cs.wellesley.edu/~cs110/

(FYI, the Computer Science Department's server is known both as “cs” and as “puma”; we might use either name.)
On your own time, please read (don't skim), the following.
- Course goals and requirements
- Course administration
- NOTE: If you are taking CS110 during the summer, carefully read all the course web pages. Then, carefully read about special considerations for the summer offering.
There is a course conference: it is something like CS110-S08. It has several subconferences:
- CS110-Announcements
  Drag this conference to your desktop so that you can see the red flags. Read all the announcements on a regular basis.
- CS110-Q&A
  This conference is for you and your fellow students to ask and answer questions. The faculty and tutors will monitor it as well, but you should try to answer other students' questions, because it's helpful to the other person and also to yourself, because it will clarify things in your own understanding. Drag this to your desktop, too. Read the conference posts on a regular basis.
- CS110-Staff
  This conference is just for the faculty and tutors; ignore it.

Outline

Big Ideas
Course Overview
Course Administration
Brief Introduction to HTML

Big Ideas

Representation of Information: numbers, text, images, video, sound, web pages, programs, encryption, compression.
Problem Solving: divide/conquer/glue, abstraction, modularity/reusability, programming.
Project Development Lifecycle: requirements, design, implementation, testing.

Course overview

HTML - HyperText Markup Language
CSS - Cascading Style Sheets
Some programming in JavaScript (not Java)
Concepts and tools for graphics, sound, forms, animation, movies and so forth.
Social and ethical issues in the era of cyberspace.
Designing a web site and implementing it using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Why Programming?

Computer Science is about computation as a tool for understanding the world: building models, experimenting, and finding implications
Programming is a formal notation for specifying algorithms = computational recipes = procedures for doing things
Programming constructs are the trees, computation is the forest

Term Project!

Form teams of two students and an advisor.
Find a client in need of a web site.
Specify client's requirements.
Design, implement, and test web pages.
Deliver final product.
Present your website in class.

See syllabus for schedule details.

For the summer offering, there will be just two phases: design (30 percent) and coding (70 percent). See the syllabus page for due dates. Also, you will work by yourself and for yourself, not with a partner or for a client. The design document will describe the set of pages you will create, their names and interconnection (the navigation structure of your site). Your minimum requirements will be:

At least five pages
A form validated with a JavaScript function
Rollovers or some other JavaScript application

Course Administration

About your instructors

Behold! The power of links.

Course Texts

The required texts are listed on the administration page. All the texts are available in the bookstore. Additional books are in E101 and on reserve in the Science Center Library.

Grading

In-class exercises are not collected and graded. They are for your benefit. Graded assignments are listed on the requirements page.

Choosing a password

You will need to use an account on our department server (you'll fill out the request in a minute) in order to do the work for this course. Before you apply for an account, it's worth thinking about passwords for a minute.

Why is it important to choose a good password? There really are people trying to hack into computers on the net (many of them use programs searching for unprotected computers). A good password is therefore necessary for two reasons: 1) To protect your own information from theft, unauthorized perusal, or destruction (and to prevent others from using up your storage). 2) To protect others in the community from the same problems should someone use your account as a beachhead to mount an attack.

What are some good rules for passwords?

Getting Started

Today, in class, please fill out an account request, which helps us set up a course account for you. This form requires a "magic word"; your instructor will tell this to you in class.

Classroom Computers

In this course, we meet in E101, which has 15 Macintosh computers running Mac OSX. If you're unfamiliar with OSX, please read the following Introduction to Mac OS X

Using C110-Q&A

Drag this conference to your desktop and read it regularly.
If you have a problem, scan recent message titles to see if your question has already been asked/answered.
Use meaningful titles in your own messages.
In the body of your messages, provide an informative description of your problem. "My page doesn't look right" or "my code doesn't work" are not informative.
Never post HTML, CSS, or JavaScript code. However, if you want the instructor to look a a private page, please include the URL to that page in your message.
If you posted a question, but then figured out the answer, please post another message indicating that your problem is solved. Even better, explain the solution to help out others.
When you pick a project, post a message that you've taken that project.
Be patient in waiting for answers. The 110 staff regularly monitors the Q&A list, but is not available 24/7. In particular, questions posted at night may not be answered until the next day.

A Brief Introduction to HTML

Exercise

Use View/View Source in Safari or Firefox to look at the source for this web page. Use your intuition to answer the following questions. You'll learn better if you write out the answers and compare them with your neighbor's answers. Discuss any discrepancies or ambiguity.

How is the title of a web page specified?
How is a TITLE different from H1? (each web page should have a distinct title)
How is H1 different from H2? from H3?
What does BLOCKQUOTE do?
How is the beginning and end of a region marked?
Are there any tags that don't have both a beginning and an end?
How are bullet lists done?
How are hyperlinks done?

Ask questions about anything you don't understand. For now, don't worry about the LINK tag, just notice its existence and location; we'll talk about LINK in the next lecture.

HTML syntax

Computer scientists distinguish between the syntax of a language (the alphabet, punctuation and word order) and the semantics of a language. The syntax of HTML is fairly straightforward:

Every tag starts with a left angle bracket and ends with a right angle bracket
Most tags, such as TITLE and H1, come in pairs: a beginning tag and an ending tag. The ending tag is always exactly the same as the beginning tag except it has a forward slash (/) at the front.
Some tags don't have an ending tag, and for some, the ending tag is optional.
Regions must always nest properly, like measuring spoons or Russian dolls.
Whitespace (e.g., spaces, tabs, and line breaks) in the source usually don't matter. We'll warn you when they do.
Case doesn't matter in HTML: uppercase is the same as lowercase. BLOCKQUOTE is the same as blockquote is the same as BlockQuote or even BlOcKqUoTe (but don't do that). Pick a style you like and stick with it: it'll be easier on your eyes.

Tell Us About Yourself

To help us get to know you, please send your instructor an email describing a little about yourself, what you're looking forward to (or dreading) about the class, or anything else you'd like to say. Send it to your instructor by the end of today:

© Computer Science 110 Staff
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License
Date Modified: Monday, 16-Jun-2008 12:24:23 EDT