Due before class, Wed April 9, 1997
NOTE: The "optional internet session" listed on the syllabus (for 4:00 pm on Friday April 5, 1997 in room E51-149) is strongly recommended for anyone who thinks they may need some extra guidance on this assignment. Also, Joyce Kline will be available in the Sloan Lab on Monday April 7th from 4:45 pm to 7:30 pm for consultation.
If this is your first homepage, then it should contain the following elements:
The above elements are the basic requirements for this assignment. Meeting the basic requirements will result in a "Check" grade.
If you want to add additional elements a "Check +" or "Check ++" grade may be achieved. Some nice elements are:
If you already have a homepage then you have to extend it in some meaningful
way:
So only put in information that you want everyone to know about you!
Send Joyce Kline an e-mail with the following information:
If you have modified an existing page, then include a description of
the elements that you have added.
REMEMBER: DO NOT WAIT
UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE!
ASSIGNMENTS ARE DUE BEFORE CLASS. THE E-MAIL STAMP
MUST BE BEFORE 11:30 ON WEDNESDAY APRIL 9, 1997.
DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS FOR 15.566 HOMEPAGES
These instructions provide a general guideline for how to set yourself up on the information highway. When you are finished, you should have a homepage established in your name visible to anyone with access to the internet. You will need to work through four basic steps. The four steps you will need to follow are:
(1) Secure a browser (Mosaic or Netscape), and a file transfer program (ftp, telnet, fetch, etc.).
(2) Create a text document in hypertext markup language (HTML) format.
(3) Use the browser to view your HTML document.
(4) Move your text document from your computer to a publicly visible location on the internet.
Once you have finished, send your URL to Joyce at JSKlinemit@aol.com and we will include a link to your homepage in the class directory.
All the necessary software is available as free/shareware in the Sloan Lab in the basement of E52. Good reference information on web publishing can be found at: http://web.mit.edu/cwis/publishing.html and http://web.mit.edu/consult/www/info/instr/howto.html
The password is 9852* for the Sloan Lab. If you are already comfortable using internet software, you can also login directly to net-dist@mit.edu and get any packages (for either DOS or MAC) from this location using ftp or Fetch to use on your own computer at home.
One concept you will need to know is the URL or Universal Resource Locator. This is a pathway or index to nodes on the internet. It generally has the form http://hostserver/dir1/dir2/etc. This is the information that internet tunneling software uses to burrow through the system. You will use these to add links to your homepage. Also, if you are running your internet browser from a machine with internet access, you will use URLs to tell the browser where you want to go.
For example, the 15.566 homepage has the URL: http://web.mit.edu/15.566/www/
(0) Gaining access to the internet, an Athena account.
If you haven't done so already, it is a good idea to set up an Athena account. This is extremely easy and it also gives you access to many Athena features that a guest user does not have. Many of these features, including access to library catalogs, encyclopedias, journal & database searches, programming tools, etc. may be of value to you for other classes. Also, your homepage will disappear with the end of this class if you don't have a separate account.
At any Athena cluster (there is one in the basement of E51) pick the new user button and simply type in the name of a userid you would like to use and a proposed password. If you are not a current user, it will prompt you for your MIT student ID for verification. Furnish this and you're all set. If you propose a userid that is already in use, you will accidentally be trying to log into someone else's account and it will let you know. If you have an account, none of this is necessary.
(1) Securing a browser and file transfer software
You will need Sloan Student access to the Sloan Lab in the basement of E52. If you don't have a Sloan account see Virginia Gifford x3-3618. Mac help is available from Logan x3-5138 and PC help from Buck x3-3617.
The most popular browsers are Mosaic and Netscape. They have similar functionality although Netscape is the commercial product (free to students) written by most of the programmers that wrote the public domain product Mosaic. Netscape runs on both DOS and Mac so it is probably your software of choice. The purpose of these programs is to tunnel through the network, to view hypertext markup language (HTML) files, and to launch other applications such as image and sound processors.
A particularly easy package to use is Fetch, a public domain package that automates procedures from the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) package with a very nice icon and menu driven interface. Fetch is only available for Mac. FTP software is also available on the PC/Windows machines and Athena.
Mac
Both Netscape and Fetch are available in the Communications folder within the Utilities folder in the Sloan Software Library.
If you already have an account set up, you may also log in to Athena using the NCSA telnet package in the same folder.
PC
Both Netscape and ftp are available from the start menu.
(2) Create a text document in hypertext markup language (HTML) format.
There are two basic options here. The easy way is to use the web page authoring facilities that are part of Navigator Gold on both the Macs and PCs in the Sloan Lab. (There are many other equally friendly authoring tools.). The Navigator Gold is pretty self explanatory. To create your Home Page using Netscape, simply go to the File Menu and select New Document from Template; this command will teake you to Netscape's Templates page; read the instructions carefully, then scroll down the page until you reach the "My Home Page" link; click on it; this command will take you to Netscape's "My Home Page" template page where you can easily follow the instructions provided.
On the Mac version, you go to the file menu and pick new document and you'll be off and running. Probably the PC version works the same way. You can compose directly in Navigator, or cut-and-paste (text, graphics, images) from a word processor (although you may lose formating, highlighting, etc.) When you "save" your page, Netscape will automatically save it as HTML.
The hard way is to use a standard word processor to create ascii text and to add HTML commands yourself by hand. (Make absolutely certain you save your document as text if you take this approach. You may not use any formatting characters or page layout routines native to your word processor. ) If you choose this approach, you're on your own as far as help from the TA (Joyce Kline) or Prof. Fichman, although there are many resources around MIT to help with this. See, for example, http://web.mit.edu/consult/www/info/instr/howto.html (the most targeted reference), http://web.mit.edu/cwis/publishing.html or http://web.mit.edu/is/help/html/
An excellent source of ideas is the homepage list of other MIT students. If you would like to see other examples, use Netscape according to the instructions below. The unofficial MIT homepage is located at http://www.mit.edu:8001/ and it has links to most many student homepages.
Once you have located this page, you may examine any linked page by clicking on it. You can also see how someone achieved a particular effect by using Netscape's document source command in the view menu. Note that particular images are probably items that they created.
This also raises a point about internet etiquette. If you find an image which you particularly like, although you clearly have read access to their file, it's bad form to simply steal it and put it into your homepage. You should usually give them credit by using their full URL (and not simply copying the file to your area) or you may create something similar on your own. Image editing and scanning software is available to you through the Sloan computer facilities.
(3) Use the browser to view your HTML document.
When you launch Netscape, the program will automatically try to connect to the homepage of the developers of Netscape. If you're on a computer without internet access, this step will fail but you can still view local files. The computer clusters in E52 and in E40 should have such access, and if you are there, the startup page has several useful links on it which you can explore by clicking on the hypertext links.
To view the results of your homepage, use the open file command of Netscape to examine the text and layout of your document. (If you used Netscape Gold to create your page, you have to save it first, then open it using open file). If you are viewing it on your home computer, and you do not have internet access, the links appearing in colored text will not be accessible (yet) but that's OK. You just want to get the feel of how your biographical sketch is coming along.
(4) Move your web page from your computer to a publicly visible location on the internet.
This involves two phases (a) creating a publicly readable space on the internet and (b) moving your homepage to that location using FTP.
Prof. Dellarocas together with Virgina Gifford of the Sloan Lab have developed tried and true instructions for doing part (a). Please see: http://web.mit.edu/consult/www/info/instr/howto.html and go to the link called set up.
This site also has other handy information, particularly if you decide to use raw HTML to do your site.
To move the file to the publicly available space, use ftp or Fetch. See the following URL for instructions on using FTP on the PC or MAC: http://web.mit.edu/cwis/faq/file-transfer.html
To test your homepage, try to link to the URL for the place where you have moved your file. You can do this within Netscape running on any computer with internet access. It will be a URL like this:
http://www.mit.edu/username/www/home.html
where username is your Athena username and home.html is the name of your homepage file.