what's the module about?
Web Design Principles isn't solely focused on coding complex e-commerce websites, nor is it for designing the most attractive and unique website design imaginable. It is more an emalgamation of the two. As the module title suggests, its purpose is to explore the fundamental elements and guidelines behind web design. In following solid design and coding principles, the student will recognise good practice and the website will be easy-to-update and simple to use.
The first semester, thus far, has focused on the coding side of the module, looking at both XHTML and CSS. HTML can be used independantly, free of any stylesheets, with both content and HTML styling tags in the file. However, it is much more efficient to use the two: XHTML Strict linked to a Cascading Style Sheet. CSS allows the web designer easy manipulation of the website styles as, often, very few property values need to be changed. XHTML and CSS is also required to meet modern day web standards, making your website as clean and easy-to-use as possible.
CSS or 'Cascading Style Sheets' allow the web designer to manipulate the colour, size, shape and other attributes of many elements contained on the structural HTML page. HTML should solely contain the key tags, i.e. head, body, paragaph, and CSS should deal with all styling. CSS is described as 'Cascading' due to the ability to determine one rule which will then affect similar elements. For example, if the body text is made to be blue and size 1.2em all of the text will be styled like so. If the web designer requires a header to be blue and size 1.6em, he/she is only required to change the size, as the colour attribute cascades down.
