Project   The Coding Phase

Coding Guidelines

Time to build your website! This is where all the hard work put into the design phase pays off. Following your design, carefully assemble the project. Do this one piece at a time, testing as you go. Be sure to set time aside in your schedule. Start early and work often. Sometimes the simplest task takes the most time to complete.

Here is some information that you will find useful during this phase:

Documentation

Documentation of your work is an important aspect of the development of the project. It will help others, who will possibly try, at some point, to extend or modify your site, to figure out what is done and how it is done. Documentation will also be a big help to you, the creators of the file, when, during the next phase - the debugging phase - you will come back to tackle existing problems.

You insert documentation through comments in all your files. We can distinguish the top-of-file comment from comments spread along the file. The top-of-file comment consists of a paragraph that gives information about the creator of the file, the time of its creation and the purpose of the file, as well as its modification history. Someone should be able to get a good idea of what a certain file is doing, and how it is doing it, just by looking at the top-of-file comment.

A normal, uncomplicated file would just have a comment like this at the top:

<!--
FILE NAME: research/index.html
WRITTEN BY:  Wendy Wellesley
WHEN:  April 2012
PURPOSE:  describe the general research area and provide links to other sites
-->

As an example of a comment in a more complicated file, here is the top-of-file documentation taken from one of the CS110 files:

<!--
FILE NAME: questionnaire.html
WRITTEN BY: Stella Kakavouli
WHEN: March 15, 2012
         
PURPOSE: Create a simple questionnaire about flowers. The
questionnaire contains only text fields. The user-supplied info will
be sent to skakavouli@wellesley.edu, as an e-mail message. The format
of the e-mail message is specified in the "format.txt" file, which
needs to be in the same directory as the "questionnaire.html"
file. This form uses the "/cgi-bin/eform.cgi" CGI program to process
the user-supplied info, create, format and send an e-mail msg. The web
page uses a bit of JavaScript code to ensure that all the fields in
the form are indeed filled in by the user. If some field(s) are left
empty, an informative message will be presented to the user, and the
form won't be sent. Written for the purposes of CS110 Assignment 5, 
Spring 2012.

MODIFICATION HISTORY: On March 25, 2012 modified by Stella Kakavouli
to contain also a group of radio buttons.  JavaScript code was added
to verify that one of these buttons is indeed checked by the user.
-->

If more than one person worked on the same file, you can just give both names in the comment.

Comments spread along the file are usually shorter, one line or a few lines long. Most often their purpose is to explain parts of the code that are not completely straightforward, for example code in Javascript or CSS rules that create certain effects in the page.

Dog Tags

Artists sign their work, and most of you will want to as well. Therefore, you may want to put, in a small font, your names and maybe the year, at the bottom of the page. These are called "dog tags," by analogy with the name and address information hung around the necks of dogs, cats, and soldiers.

Using Other People's Code

We teach you a lot, but only a small fraction of the many things you can do with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. We love it when students go beyond what we learn in class, in order to add cool features to their websites, so we encourage you to do so. In addition to the resources on the CS110 website, there are many websites out there with tricks and tips, tutorials and code to borrow and use. We'll call this outside code. Using those is fine, but there are some bounds on this:

  • Always give credit to the source. You can do this just with a comment in your HTML, CSS or JavaScript, as appropriate, giving the URL of the website you got the idea, trick or code from. Failing to do so would be a violation of the honor code.
  • Understand the code. Don't just mindlessly copy/paste and cross your fingers that it will work. Take the time to understand what the code is doing and how it works. Simplify it if necessary. Remove extra features that you don't understand. Ask for help in understanding their code; we'll be glad to help. If we were to ask you about any code that you submit as part of your project, you should be able to comfortably explain it to us. If you can't, maybe you should drop that feature.

Our point here is not to scare you. We do want to your expand your capabilities, challenge yourself, build amazing things and have fun doing it.

Browser Compatibility

For the purposes of the course, your pages must display properly using the Chrome browser, and will be viewed and graded using Chrome. However, it may by important to you or your client that the pages work on other browsers, as well. If that is the case, we suggest that you worry about that after the semester.

P2.5 Project Status Report

Midway through your project coding, we'd like a brief status report (see Schedule for date). If you think we're trying to check up on you, you're right; we are, but in a good way. If everything is going fine and you're on schedule, you need only say so. If problems have arisen and you've fallen behind schedule, let us know, and tell us how you're planning to remedy the problem.

This is not a graded component, and there will be no penalty if you report that you've fallen behind. However, the coding phase is graded, and so it's to your advantage to let us know if there are problems while there's still time to correct the problems. We will be far more upset if we don't find out that there are problems until just before the coding is due, when there's no time to fix it.

This is also a good time to get together with your partner (if you haven't already), to check on how each other is doing. Some groups work very autonomously, which can be good, but it can work out badly if one team member has fallen behind and her partner doesn't know it.

Some of the biggest challenges of doing a big project in a group are coordinating with your partner and staying on schedule; learning how to do this is an important part of why we use group projects in this course.

So, don't let this deadline stress you out. It's only here to help.

How to report your status

Email your advisor with a few sentences or paragraphs, saying whether you're meeting the schedule as you put it in your design document. If all is well, this need not be more than a sentence saying so. If your plans have gone awry, as they so often do, say so and say what you'll do to get back on track. In particular, say what isn't done, and a schedule for getting it done by the coding deadline.

Please also remind us (and/or update us if you've changed this since your design document), what your four required JavaScript applications are, and who is responsible for each. We want to check and make sure that you've chosen applications that meet the criteria (if you haven't, this gives you a chance to fix that before your coding is complete). Now that you've learned more JavaScript, you might want to replace your JavaScript applications with something better; this is a good time to talk to your advisor about that.

We only need one email per team, but please cc your partner on the email so that we know both of you are in agreement with the status.

P2.9 Project Check-up with Advisor

Often, students make simple mistakes in the coding phase of the project that could be easily remedied if they only noticed them. So, just before the coding deadline, you should review your code for errors. Here's how to avoid some common ones that we've seen in the past:

  • Pages validate (HTML and CSS)
  • No code errors (test each page with the Console)
  • Clear navigation structure
  • All features work correctly
  • No broken links
  • All code properly cited (see the honor code with respect to this course)
  • Appropriate comments (must be at top of each page, but also within CSS, JavaScript, and HTML)
  • Proper nesting of code (CSS, HTML, and JavaScript)
  • No unnecessary duplication of code from page to page (use SSI or JavaScript to avoid this)
  • Appropriate ALT attributes for all images
  • All pages have appropriate titles
  • Aesthetically pleasing layout/color/font
  • Properly sized images with correct aspect ratio
  • No typos in the text

You can, of course, check these on your own and help one another, but sometimes a more experienced pair of eyes can help. We are offering the opportunity for a checkup: a quick look-over of your site with your project advisor. In the week before the coding phase is due, your advisor will meet with you and spend up to 15 minutes checking your code and pointing out problems.

A face-to-face checkup may be scheduled in the days before the coding phase is due, at times your advisor has specified as available. At least one of the project partners must be present at the meeting.

If you are unable to schedule a face-to-face meeting with your advisor, you may alternately request an online checkup (your advisor will view your beta site online, and give you feedback via email). However, you must request the offline checkup by the deadline shown on the schedule, so that your advisor has time to look at your code and give you feedback in a timely fashion).

WARNING

This checkup is not intended to be a guarantee of a perfect grade! It is simply a way to help you identify some common defects. Of course, there is more to a great site than just avoiding defects, just as a paper without typos and spelling errors isn't necessarily a great paper. Still, we hope you'll find it valuable to have this checklist and the opportunity for a checkup.

What to Submit

Gather together all the files and folders of your website and place them into a single folder, called beta. Upload the beta folder to the public_html folder of your team account on the CS110 server. Make sure you do this by the deadline given in the schedule.

Your beta version should be debugged and ready for the end user. All links, graphics, sounds, animations, dog tags, should be in place. Links and animations must work. All images should have ALT attributes. Your instructor may partially base your grade on how well a tester (randomly selected from your intended audience) fares with your site.

You must also submit an accompanying HTML document named P3_changes.html to your team's Documents folder. This document should detail and justify all substantive changes from your design, so that we won't think it was just a mistake or oversight. Although your site should match the design in most details, we understand that you're still learning web design, so you will probably discover that you'll want to change some of your design decisions by the time you get to the coding phase. Similarly, your client may make some changes during this time. Your document need not be as long and elaborate as your design document, but it should clearly describe what changed.

What specifically should you include in your changes document? Your P3_changes.html file should contain a LINK to the start page for your website (you'll have many many files in your directory, we need to know where to begin touring your site). For example, in P3_changes.html, you could write something like this: Start touring our website here where the here is a link to your home page.

The P3_changes.html file should also include:

  1. How each of the team members fulfilled their minimum requirements. For example:
    Rachel fulfilled her JavaScript requirements with a user-defined function on intro.html and rollovers on members.html. Angie validated form inputs on orderform.html, and implemented the pull-down menu for each page.
  2. Explicitly state (since it may have changed since the design document), which person worked on which files, including CSS and JavaScript files, and who produced the artwork (banner and button design, etc.).
  3. Indicate how the modularity requirement was handled (where and how either Server Side Includes (SSI) or JavaScript were used for modularity, and who was responsible for the implementation).

Both your website and the P3_changes.html document are due by the coding deadline in the schedule, and may not be changed after the due date.

Late Policy

The lateness policy is that you may turn it in up to 24 hours late, with a 10% penalty. The coding is a big portion of the project grade, so try to avoid turning it in late.

Grading

Points will be awarded in the following categories:

  • Basic site function
  • Aesthetics, design, and readability
  • Usability, navigation, accessibility
  • Documentation
  • JavaScript minimum requirements met
  • Modularity
  • Spelling, grammar, punctuation and other mechanics of writing
  • Above and beyond

Above and Beyond

The top 5% (5 out of 100 points) of the coding grade is reserved for teams who demonstrate conspicuous excellence in their project. How can you get those extra points? You must, somehow, go above and beyond ordinary achievement. There are many ways, but there is no checklist, any more than there is a checklist for great writing, great science or great design. An excellent website may have clever coding (e.g. Javascript code that you wrote on your own, beyond examples seen in class or taken from the Web); extraordinary beauty and harmony; unusual scale or some combination of all these. It is our expectation that we will award relatively few of these extra points - if you get any of these points, you should be very proud of yourself.

Example

Here is an example of a P3 changes document from the project Nan Nan Art Studio, which is featured in our Hall of Fame.