Hi, I'm Colleen Van Lent and I'm happy
to welcome you to Introduction to HTML5. I am very excited to teach this course
because I love the idea that we finally will have some course that really
will explain the basics to as many people as possible. I love working with people and
I love working with technology and I think the best thing we can do is
have as many people involved as possible to really make sure that we're
building things that everyone can use. In this course,
we will be covering the basics. I really can't emphasize enough
that we will be starting at the very basic building blocks. We'll start off talking about
what's called syntax and semantics. What are the actual codes that people
write In order to make a webpage a webpage? Are there any special meanings behind any
of these words that can convey special information to those who may not be able
to access the web the same way I do? Perhaps, someone who uses
special accessibility tools. After we cover the syntax and semantics, we're going to talk more about the
accessibility idea that I just eluded to. This idea that if we're going to build
a webpage, what do we need to do to make sure the most people as
possible can access the information? We're also going to be talking about
getting started in technology and writing code. When I mean talking about getting
started I mean really talking about getting started, right down to you and I are gonna walk through together on
how we're going to create a file. One of the things I think that really
trips people up when their starting to learn computer science or any type of
technology based criteria, or curriculum, is that professors or instructors say
let's get started, here's your homework. Go ahead and do it and everyone just kind of stops cuz
they're not sure where to get started. I really want to be there for you to show you how to get started and
get off on the right foot. Let's talk about what we'll
cover in this course. In Week One the focus is on questions. It's not on coding, it's on questions. I want you to understand what happens
when you type something into the URL. If you type in www.introwebdesign.com, how is this page magically
appearing in front of your browser? I also want to talk to you about what
types of tools you are going to need in order to code. We're gonna talk about editors and
browsers and other different software tools because
I want you to know right from the start what you're going to need in
order to succeed in this class. Finally, we're really
going to talk about HTML5. What happened to HTML1? What happened to HTML2? What is this evolution of what's going on
with web design and the languages we use? In Week One, again, almost no coding. Really, just giving you an idea
of how the web works and why it's important for
you to be able to interact with people and with code that's being
used to create your sites. Week Two, we're gonna talk a little bit
of theory, and then, unfortunately for some people, a lot of code. There's this idea of something
called the Document Object Model, upon which all webpages are built. If I can get you to understand just
a little bit about that, then later on, if you decide to go off and use WordPress
or some other software to make your own website, you're gonna be able to really
understand what's going on so much better. We're gonna talk about things called
contextual tags and headings and different things we can use to make
our site have different meanings and different appearances. We're going to talk about links,
images, lists, tables, and also multimedia in case you would like
to add any video or audio to your site. Week Three,
we're really going to put it all together. At this point, you should know just enough
about HTML5 where you'll be dangerous. Where you can create something that
works but doesn't work all the time. In Week Three, we're gonna put it
together, and I'm gonna talk to you about some of the things that are often
overlooked, such as validating your code. How can we make sure that the code
that you wrote doesn't just look good, it's syntactically correct? It's going to work everywhere. Again, when we validate your code,
we'll talk about the syntax but we'll also talk about accessibility,
which is hey, we validated your code to make
sure the rules are there. Let's also validate and make sure
that the meaning is there, as well. Finally, we'll talk about what's
called domain name registration and web hosting because it's a lot more fun to
make websites if you can actually put it out there on the internet and let your
friends and family see it, as well. Finally, we'll work on a final project
where you'll put together a lot of different things that
you've been learning. You are going to create what we call,
syntactically valid multipage website. Your site will have at
least two to three pages. After you've done your coding, you'll run
it through to make sure it validates and it's very accessible. Your final project is actually going to
be something that's a little bit ugly, I'm gonna admit to right now because we're
not going to be talking about styling, we're not talking about different things. I really just want you to
understand the HTML5 language and that's all about content. Let's talk logistics. Let's talk about who this class is for. Who am I aiming for for my star student? I'm really looking forward to
teaching the complete beginner. This class is not for those people who
were building a computer down in their basement when they were 12 years old. You are very welcome to
hang out with us but we are really here to talk about how we,
through persistence, can create a website. One of the things that I'm kind of
anti about is the word passion. Now, I'm passionate about
teaching you this material but I don't really feel like you need to
be passionate about technology or passionate about computing to
really get a lot out of this class. Instead, it's about persistence. I'd like you to just hang in there and
learn enough that you can go off and really help people build
better technology. A little bit about of who I am,
I have a PhD in computer science which is really the least important part of my
qualifications to teach this class. Instead, I have two decades
of teaching experience and I've taught a wide range
of different students. My emphasis is always been on
education and I'm somewhat famous for running around the classroom
helping people debug their code, finding out what's going on here,
finding out what's going on there. This whole idea of teaching this class is novel to me because I am
sitting here not moving. The important part is that I really do
care about people succeeding and so I am hoping that I can help you
take your skills to the next level. Here is that what everyone wants to know. In this class, what kind of workload will
there be and how will you be evaluated? There are going to be weekly videos. Some of them are like this,
a lecture format. You should really feel free
to watch them anywhere but I also like to include some videos that
are going to be much more demo format. By that, I mean you really want to watch
the video with a computer next to you, so you can type along and
test it out and try it. There will be weekly readings. Most of them will be from
a free online textbook but there may be some other online
articles I include as well, if I happen to come across something that's
very timely for what we've been learning. There will be weekly assessments,
typically, in the form of quizzes. There will be that final project and
I put in here warning, it will be ugly. I don't mean that
the process will be ugly. I think you'll find it
very straightforward. It's just again,
I can't emphasize enough that this class is about the language HTML5,
it's not about creating beautiful sites. It's about you really learning just
the building blocks and it's always so much easier to build something ugly the
first time than build something beautiful. How will you succeed in this class? In a perfect world, you would be coding
with two or three other people and you'd be talking and
you'll never be coding alone. I'm hoping that you'll create a community,
probably through the message boards. I need you to work smart. One of the things that kills me is
when people say I spent three or four hours working on this. I never want to hear that from a student. Instead, I feel that if you've ever
run into a problem when you're coding, you should stop after 10, 15,
20 minutes max and go walk away. Go get help from someone, take a break,
think about something else. It's all about working smart,
not necessarily hard. Next, you really need to learn
to look things up on your own. There is no way I can teach you
everything you need to know about HTML5, and you wouldn't want me to,
it would be very boring. Instead, you need to feel
the confidence to go out and use search engines to look up
the topics that you're interested in. My job is to give you those key words and
key ideas so you know what it is you
want to search for. Finally, you really need to practice,
practice, practice. You will not succeed in this course unless
you've written the code yourself and really tried to muster your way
through some of the mistakes and typos that you're going to have. Let's just review. Once again, this class is for beginners,
and I'm excited to have you join us. When you're done with this class,
you will have the ability to write and understand HTML5 code. You're not leaving as a developer but you are going to leave as
someone who understands code. Finally, one of the key things that I'm
gonna stress throughout this whole course, is that you will understand the importance
of accessibility in technology. If when this course was done, I had even
one student who said, hey you know what, I'm gonna go on and I might not be a coder
but I am gonna go work with somebody else to help make their code more accessible,
I would be thrilled with that. Welcome to the course and I hope you have a lot of fun
as you learn more about HTML5.