Creating Websites using iWeb

An essential issue in website design is whether students, as is the case with blog and wiki design, need to learn HTML or XHTML code language, or whether they can employ WYSIWYG tools using Apple’s iWeb (with iLife) (www.apple.com/ilife/iweb), Adobe Dreamweaver (www.adobe.com/education/products/dreamweaver/index.html), Micosoft Expresion (www.microsoft.com/Expression/products/overview.aspx?key=web), or CoffeeCup VisualSite Designer (coffeecup.com/designer) (Jenkins, 2007; Lopuck, 2006; Robbins, 2006; Smith & Bebak, 2006). With sites such as iWeb (Apple iLife06) or the free Google Page Creator, students can readily create their own sites with minimal training because many of the steps involved in formatting sites have been automated.

For specific steps involved in using iWeb, we summarize a series of steps suggested by Chuck Toporek (2006):

In designing their sites, students:

1. gather up all of the writing, images, or video clips they will be placing on their site, making sure that they keep their images or clips to a minimum because adding them only slows down the download time.

2. select from the different template “themes,” each of which involves further choices for template “page style,”

3. add new pages in iWeb by going to the Site Organizer and clicking on the plus sign or File: New page. As students add new pages, a link to that page is added on the top of every page, making it easy to navigate across pages. To add in text on these pages, students simply type in material within the template blocks, replacing the existing text with their own text. They can also add additional text blocks by clicking on the Text button. And, they can format their text by going to “Inspector” and then “Text.”

4. test out their site by going to File: Publish To A Folder, creating a New Folder, name the folder, and then Choose to create a desktop folder with the site in it. Students then click on the Visit Site Now to test out their site.

5. publish their site to the school server by going to File: Publish To A Folder and uploading the folder to the service directory.

In formatting their sites, students can focus on:

- avoid using too much information on their initial by blocking out their initial page using appropriate size rows, columns, and sidebars.

- use of consistent banners and side column layout across different pages. As previously noted, given the readability principle of reduction of uncertainty through predictability, it is important that as users move across different pages, having the same over visual layout across different pages so that their uncertainty is reduced.

- clearly-identified buttons and links. To help users know where they are going when they click on buttons or links, students therefore need to identify where buttons and link are taking them.

- use of color and font. Students also need to select colors and font that will be both appealing and easy to read on the screen, avoiding background bright colors that can make it difficult to read font on top of those colors.

- use of images or logos. Consistent with principles of visual rhetoric, students also need to consider how they are using images or logos to serve as visual illustrations for their intended meanings

Jenkins, S. (2007). Web design: The L line, The express line to learning. New York: Wiley.

Lopuck, L. (2006). Web design for dummies (2nd ed.). Indianapolis: Wiley.

Robbins, J. N. (2006). Web design in a nutshell: A desktop quick reference. New York: O’Reilly Media.

Smith, B. E., & Bebak, A. (2006). Creating web pages for dummies, 8th ed. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley.

Toporek, C. (2006a). “The weekend web site,” MacWorld, 59-66. Retrieved July 1, 2006, from http://www.macworld.com/2006/06/features/iwebmain/index.php