Seminar

Select a topic from the list below on which you will give a 15 minute seminar to the other students in the class. Each presentation must be given using either PowerPoint/Keynote or a web browser based medium. In addition, each presentation must be accompanied by an article covering all of the salient points of the presentation and including relevant links. This should be a blog entry that reads as an article. Your seminar slides must be made available online as a .PDF. Make sure you give yourself plenty of time to practice your presentation.

The assessment for your seminar will be based upon:

1. Quality of the materials used for presentation (clarity, design etc.)
2. Content quality (how well you understood your subject and how well you helped others to understand the subject)
3. Subject coverage (depth, breadth, focus as appropriate) of the presentation and accompanying article.

Seminar topics – choose one of the following:

1. Responsive images – what are the options? (Claire)
2. Micro-formats – what are they for and how should we use them?
3. What is the HTML <details> element, and how is it used? Does it move HTML in a new direction? (Nelly)
4. CSS custom properties – what are they and how are they used? (Roshini)
5. CSS animation – what can we do with it? (Parisha)
6. What is CSS Scroll Snapping? How can it be used to build practical interfaces? (Ashish)
7. Does the CSS @support feature mean an end to vendor prefixes? How is it used? (Nicholas)
8. CSS pre-processors, what are they and should we use them now? (Gergana)
9. There has been a lot of buzz about Tailwindcss recently. What is it and how does it work? (Emma)
10. What is “atomic design”? Does it help with an understanding of CSS naming conventions such as BEM? (Damla)
11. What is “material design”? How can it help us create better user interfaces? (Sara)
12. What are the best tools for wireframing and prototyping? (Robert)
13. What are “Progressive Web Apps” and how do they work?
14. What is version control and GIT? (Joanna)
15. Tips on measuring and improving page load speed (browser caching etc.) (Velika)

No duplication of topics allowed – each student presentation should be unique. Claim your topic on Slack in the #general channel. First claim bags the topic!

Schedule for 2021

17th February
Morning
Claire
Nelly
Roshini
Velika

Afternoon
Parisha
Ashish
Gergana

24th February
Morning
Nicholas
Emma
Damla

Afternoon
Sara
Robert
Joanna

Seminars: 17th – 24th February
Submission date (slides and article): Friday, 19th March 2021
You are advised to submit the slides and article shortly after giving your seminar so that the topic is still fresh in your mind.

Deliverables

1. 15 minute seminar presentation in class
2. Slides made available online and linked to from your coursework homepage.
3. A blog article covering the seminar topic, linked to from your coursework homepage.

Small Business Website (revisited)

This is an opportunity to demonstrate how far you have improved and how your understanding of web design has developed since completing the first project. This project requires that you critically analyse the website you created during the Design for Web Content module and redesign/reengineer the site using all your new skills and knowledge. In addition to good visual design and coding, the new site should also demonstrate good findability with well-considered SEO features (e.g. description meta tags and appropriate text content incorporating key words and phrases). The improved site should also be responsive with a mobile first approach to layout. You should also improve the ease of maintenance by applying some modularity with PHP server-side includes for common page elements (e.g. separate header, footer and smart navigation). UX features such as custom error pages and favicons should also be added. You may also like to include a sprinkling of JavaScript (e.g. is the shop open or not). Finally, you should add accessibility features such as Landmark Roles as an aid for assistive technologies. Your analysis of the original site and a summary of improvements made should be included either as a blog entry or as a separate document saved as a .PDF file.

Interim crit: 10th March 2021
Submission date: Friday, 26th March 2021

Deliverables

1. A revised version of the small business website, linked to from your coursework homepage.
2. A short analysis of the original website and a summary of all the changes/improvements you have made in the new version, linked to from your coursework homepage.