Web Software Year 11

Objectives/Amcanion Understand the browsing elements of web software Understand the techniques of creating a website Know what RGB colour is and the advantages/disadvantages Know the advantages/disadvantages of web pages

Two types of web software Browser software – used to search for and view websites. Web development software – used to create webpages/websites.

Browsing Browsing the internet is one of the most popular activities undertaken on a computer. A piece of software called a web browser can be used to view web pages on the internet.

Browsing When you browse a website what are some main features you use? With web browsers you can use:

Browsing Analyse two existing websites and think about: House style – How the website uses image, colour etc. to portray their organisation Audience – who the website is aimed at Size – How many pages there on the website (try to find something called a ‘site map’). Techniques – What design skills were used in producing the web pages. Search – You can look at search engine rankings when you search for a website and you can look at the accuracy of a search box on the website itself.

Browsing What interactive features are used? Games (free online games can be created using Adobe Flash) Online Forums (Filling in information) What interactive features are used? Email (Can you contact them by email?) Quiz/Questionnaire (used to gather opinions)

Creating Technique Explanation Templates Home page Site navigation Master pages enable you to create a basic outline of how each page on your site will look. All new pages can then use this template to create a consistent structure. Home page This is the first page visitors will see and should link to the other pages. Site navigation A series of common menus or buttons should be added to each page for consistency. Golden triangle An eye-tracking study has shown that when we use search engines, our eyes focus on a particular part of the screen known as the golden triangle. When designing, we should put most of our web page content away from the edges, closer to the screen centre. Hyperlinks Hyperlinks enable you to move from one page to another page. These can be graphical (whole-image links), hotspots (where different parts of an image take you to different pages), rollover buttons (buttons which change colour when you move your cursor over them), or polygon links (links using different shapes). We can also use anchors to take us to different parts of one, very long web page.

Creating Bookmarks Navigation bar Banners Web icons HTML Bookmarks are a list of favourite websites which we use most often. Navigation bar This browser toolbar contains the following buttons: back (to go back a page), forward (to go forward a page), refresh (to re-load a page), home (to go to the page which loads whenever you open your browser) and stop (to stop loading a page). Banners These are usually animated advertisements. Leaderboard banners appear at the top of each page and skyscraper banners appear down the side. Web icons Sites can use some common icons that are easily recognisable to people, e.g. a shopping trolley can take people to an online store and a letter to an email form. HTML HyperText Markup Language is the code used to make websites. It tells web browsers how and where to display the different parts of a web page. If browsers only displayed this code, websites would look a lot more complicated!

Creating How can you publish a website on the internet? To publish a website on the Internet, you need to purchase suitable hosting for your website A host provides you with a web server so that your page is always available to others Some web hosting is free but supported by banner advertisements

Creating It is good to have multimedia such as images, video and sound on your website however having a lot of multimedia assets means that it will take a long time to upload files to your web server. What can help this problem? Compression

RGB Colour So that all web browsers will display the same colour, designers have to use a colour system called RGB (which stands for red, green and blue). Different amounts of these three colours of light can be mixed together to make all other colours. The different amounts of each coloured light are written as a six-digit hexadecimal colour number. The HTML code of each web page will tell the browser which colour to show when displaying the different parts of a web page. It tells this to the browser by giving it a hexadecimal colour number.

RGB Colour Advantages Colour numbers give a standard way of displaying colour with all web browsers. A web designer knows that using these numbers will give the same colour on all computers. Disadvantages Six-digit numbers can be difficult to remember, but there are websites which help you find the correct colour number.

Use of Web Pages Advantages Disadvantages Multimedia like video and sound can now be watched or listened to on websites at any time. Hyperlinks make it easy for anyone to find all different kinds of information at any time. Disadvantages Videos and sounds can take a very long time to download without a broadband connection. Advertising banners can also be annoying. People without computers cannot access web page information. There are worries that this will create a two-tier society of the 'information rich' and the 'information poor'.

Task Do you agree that the Swansea Bay website is better than the Cardiff Bay website? Explain. Key words: House style Audience Size Techniques Search Interactive features

Questions in booklet Explain the term URL and explain where it would be used in a web browser. (3 marks) Explain the function of a hyperlink. (1 mark) Give four types of hyperlink used in website design. (4 marks) Explain what is meant by HTML. (4 marks) Describe two advantages of using web pages. (4 marks) Describe one advantage of using hexadecimal colour codes in web design. (2 marks)