Portfolio >

Instructor: Mindy McAdams
Office: 3049 Weimer
E-mail:

Your portfolio site must contain all the items listed below. It can contain more than the items listed, of course.

The audience for your portfolio is a potential employer. Your portfolio site must be suitable for that audience and must demonstrate your intention that the audience will find your site easy to use and appealing. The site must show off your Web skills and talents.

Item Criteria
Home page Make a great first impression. Fit entirely in 800 x 600. Identify you. Provide clear navigation to the rest of your site.
Bio page Demonstrate clear communication skill and good writing mechanics. Briefly introduce yourself to the site visitor. Make yourself seem interesting and nice!
Notes section See below for list of required topics. This section demonstrates your skill at organizing content and naming items. Demonstrate clear communication skill and good writing mechanics.
Photo gallery (not Flash) Use thumbnail navigation and include at least six photos. Photos must be visible without scrolling at 800 x 600. Ease of navigation is paramount. Photos must be interesting; no snapshots of family and friends!
Photo gallery examples Link to and briefly critique 3 excellent photo galleries. Each example should have an excellent navigation interface.
Image map Your image map must link to at least five separate pages within your site. They must not be pages that are part of your photo gallery or other required sections. The image map may use rollovers, or not. It must NOT be a sliced table!
Interactive map example Link to and briefly critique an excellent interactive map online. The map may use any technology, but it MUST be interactive. It can show a real or imaginary geography.
GIF animation Your own original work. Watch out for the file size (not too large).
Web video examples Link to and briefly critique 2 excellent videos made for the Web. Each example should demonstrate qualities that make the video well suited for the Web, not for another medium.
Audio file with embedded player Use the QuickTime player for best results. The file must be of your own spoken voice (not singing) and the content must be appropriate to your portfolio. Watch the file size.
Flash animation Show off what you can do. To make the best impression, include some interactivity with buttons. Do not use Flash for your full site's navigation.
Flash photo slideshow with sound Must include at least 6 photos of your own. Photos must be interesting; no snapshots of family and friends! Audio can be spoken voice or a music loop. Slide show must be controlled with buttons -- at minimum, Stop, Play, Rewind.
Interactive HTML form A functioning HTML form that sends a user's feedback to you via e-mail.
Interactive form example Link to and briefly critique an example of a cool or interesting interactive poll, survey, quiz or questionnaire.
Database examples Link to and briefly critique 2 examples of good Web interfaces to databases.
Database front end Link to and briefly explain the group project you completed in the course.

The notes section of your portfolio can have a slightly different look and feel than the sections that show off your work. The writing should be brief and clear. The intention of each notes page is to demonstrate your understanding of the topic. Notes can also explain what you learned both in class and from the readings. Notes can serve as reminders to you later of how you achieved a certain result.

Students often incorporate the external examples (listed above) into their notes section, to separate the examples from their own original work.

Your portfolio must include notes on each one of these topics:

  • Page/screen layout
  • CSS
  • Navigation systems
  • Photoshop, GIFs, JPGs
  • Interactive graphics and maps
  • Players & plug-ins, sound, video
  • Flash
  • HTML forms
  • Databases

The goal of each notes page is to clearly show your understanding of the topic at a professional level. DO NOT COPY any text from anywhere to place on these pages!

You are encouraged -- but not required -- to use a Weblog (blog) for your notes section. That way you could just post your notes each week (for example, after each class meeting) and reformat the blog later when your site design is complete. You may use a free service such as Blogger for this.

If you have any questions about the requirements described on this page, I expect you to ask me for clarification -- before the last week of the semester.