IMAGING THE EARTH - INDEPENDENT PROJECT

Guidelines for Developing your Independent Research Web Sites

In lieu of writing a scientific paper describing your independent research project, you will be required to develop a WWW site describing your project. Your web site should describe:

Your web site should effectively illustrate each section described above with figures, maps, images, etc. and should be written so that someone familiar with GIS can understand what you are talking about.

Your web site is due on December 5 at 5 PM, Eastern Standard Time. At that time, access to the server will be disabled.

The following are some general guidelines for creating WWW sites in this course.

1.      Your WWW pages should be appealing, but very professional looking (don't get too fancy).

2.      Your WWW sites should be easy to navigate and easy to read. It often helps to have a constant design theme throughout the web site along with consistent buttons or links in an easy to find place.

3.      All references to WWW resources must be written in the proper format (as described in Online! chapter 8) and must be hyperlinked to your literature cited as well.

5.      All figures must have figure legends and in these figure legends, you must cite your sources, and provide hyperlinks when appropriate.

6.      Most of your images should be generated as part of your research (i.e., using ArcView). If you use copyrighted figures or images in your web site, you must get permission to do so and that must be indicated in a small font below that figure or image. You should have a link to the appropriate sites if you are discussing a product sold by a particular company. REMEMBER - all images should be optimized for use on the web. That means image file size should be SMALL. Generally, most images, if properly optimized can be kept under 24k, if you need to use larger images (50-75k), that's okay, but you might consider using thumbnails that one can click on to get the larger image.

7.      At the bottom of your home page, you must put the following sentence: "This website was created as a part of a class project in the Imaging the Earth Class at Davidson College.

Remember also, to keep the width of your web site somewhat small so that it can be viewed easily with a small monitor or in a window on a large one. Generally, a maximum width of 800 pixels will suffice.

All WWW sites must contain the following:

Software:  You can use any software to you like to develop your WWW page.  We have provided Macromedia Products (Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Flash) on all laboratory computers for your convenience.