The Writeup

Purpose

The purpose of this page was to create a framework for a web site for the robot building course taught by Professor Moriarty. It needed general information about the course, a quiz for the students to take, and reference links, such as one to the 6.270 page. The results of the quiz were to be sent to Professor Moriarty for him to grade.

Flexible and Expandible

The page needed two things above all else: to be flexible and expandible. The quiz had to be constructed so that new questions could be added and submitted without rewriting the entire html page and accompanying text file. It had to be possible to add pictures which could be used in the quiz. The information page had to have open sections so that information could be added. And all of this had to be accomplished on an underlying frame because I did not have the actual information which would end up on the page.

Steps

The first step was working on the cgi mailer. I created a page which used five different types of question fields. These were examples of the types of questions which could be asked. So if another radio box question is needed, the first question could be copied and the wording replaced. This and changing the variable is all that's needed to create a new question. Instructions are given in the html code as comments in order to accomplish this. The answers given were placed in a template which could be mailed to anyone for simple grading.

Then the frame for the site was necessary. I used frames because I find a simple navigation bar easy to use and it makes it easier to move around within a site. As I added the other pages, I just added links in the menu frame. This makes it unnecessary to change links in every page, which would have been the case without frames.

Although I did not have much information to include,information can be added to the information page easily. There are links within the page, so any visitor can jump to the middle of the page to find out general info.

What I learned

Working on the quiz, I learned how to work with the cgi-mailer, and I learned how to use forms and tables. Working on the actual site, I learned how to use frames. The project as a whole taught me how to create a web site which can expand.