Term Project -- Phase II (Peer Review)

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This project will require you to apply the things you are learning in class to a web site of your own design. We hope you will "learn by doing" and also have some fun being creative. This project is worth a significant portion of your course grade, and so the expectation is that you will spend a considerable amount of time on it. Your grade on the Term Project will largely be based on the amount of effort and time you have spent planning and developing your web site.

There will be three phases for this project:

1. Phase I -- Initial Implementation (40%)

   You will design and implement a multi-page web site of your choosing.

2. Phase II -- Peer Review (20%)

Each student will critique the web sites of three other students, offering constructive cricism and suggestions for interesting enhancements.

3. Phase III -- Revised and Extended Implementation (40%)

   You will revise your website based on the critical analysis you have received from other students. You are also expected to incorporate more advanced features into the website that employ things you have learned during the latter portion of the course.

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In this phase, each student will review websites created by three other students. Please try to offer suggestions that a student in this course can actually implement. Please offer constructive criticism -- be nice!

What to talk about in your review

You don't have to talk about all of the things listed here, and you are free to mention additional things that you think of. We are providing this list to help you to know what kinds of things are appropriate for this review.

Specifics:

• Is the purpose or main theme of the page completely obvious when you arrive?
• Are the links easy to find? Are they descriptive? Do they work?
• Are the pages organized in a logical way?
• Are there links to go "back" (if applicable)?
• Do the pages fit nicely on the screen or are they too wide or too long?
• How are the fonts? Are they aesthetically pleasing? Is the text too large or too small?
• How are the colors? Is it aesthetically appealing? Are there too many or too few colors?
• If there are background colors or images, do they work well? Are they distracting? Do they obscure the content?
• Do the pages seem visually consistent?
• Are the sizes of images reasonable?
• Is the content of each page organized well? Is it logical? Is it easy to read/understand?

General observations:

• What would you add to the website?
• What things could be improved or done differently?
• What are your favorite parts of the site? Least favorite?

How to Complete the Reviews

Hopefully this will work! You can find out which three students you are supposed to review by logging into the submit server and selecting Phase I of the Term Project. There should be a list of three students that have been assigned for you to do "code review". If you see more than three students listed, look at the column that says "project" -- we are only interested in the three students who are listed for "project 3", which is Phase I of the Term Project. Once you've identified the three students you will review, I suggest doing the reviews as follows:

1. Go to the submit server and click on the "Phase I" project to see which three students you are supposed to review. If you see more than three students listed, look at the column that says "project" -- we are only interested in the three students who are listed for "project 3", which is Phase I of the Term Project. Write down their Directory ID's, which are shown in parentheses after their name.
2. Go to this page to look at each of the three websites. (Remember that the login ID is "student" and the password is also "student".) Be sure to visit all of their pages, click all of the links, and to scroll all the way up/down or left/right on each page, if needed. Take your time! Be sure not to miss any links.
3. Type your review into any text editor or word processing program. Use plain text without any special formatting, because you will be pasting it into a text box later.
4. When you are done typing your review into your text editor, follow the steps below to paste the review into the submit server:
   1. Click the link that says "Start" for the student you are reviewing. This should take you to a page where you can see their code.
   2. On the left side of the screen, click on the filename "index.html". Be sure you are looking at the "index.html" file; otherwise we won't know where to look for your review!
   3. Double-click the first line (the one that usually mentions DOCTYPE) to enter your review. This should open up a box where you can type in the review. Here is a screenshot of how this looked when I tried it.
   4. Paste in your review by highlighting it in your text editor, selecting "copy", and then right-clicking the text box in the submit server and selecting "paste".
   5. Uncheck the box that says "Request Reply".
   6. Click "Save"
   7. Click "Publish" on the left side of the screen.
   8. It will ask you if you really want to publish your comments. Click the button that says "Publish".

Do this for all three students, and you're done with Phase II. We will grade you based on the quality of your reviews.