Homework Assignment 7

Due: 11/29/11

This assignment is due on Tuesday, November 29, 2011 at 9:00pm.
The assignment is based on 30 points.

Note: This assignment is not due on a Friday!

Resources:

While doing this assignment you will find it helpful to:

Requirements:

  1. Put your answers to the following questions in the message text of an e-mail message with a subject of:
    CS403-n Assignment 7 - *yourname* (where n is either 01, 03, or 04, depending upon which section you are in and *yourname* is replaced by your name) in the subject field. Send it to Kyle (our grader) at: krb57@wildcats.unh.edu. (Don't forget to Cc yourself.)
    1. Go "ego-surfing" - Search for your name using two different White Pages and two search engines. Describe your results for each by identifying which tools you used and how many hits were returned. Did you discover any surprises??
    2. Examine three search engines by reading their help information. (Do not include metasearch engines in this exercise.) Include the following information for each search engine:
      • The name of the search engine and its url.
      • A summary of how to pose an effective search. In other words, the rules for submitting a search query.
      • The actual syntax you used to find information about your favorite musician/band OR about your favorite sports team/athlete.
      • The number of hits that are returned for each of the three search engines using the query syntax that you specified for each.
    3. Why do you suppose that submitting the exact same query to different search engines yields a different list of matches?
    4. Based on the information you collected in part b, which search engine do you prefer? Why?
    5. Now select a metasearch engine and use it to search for information about your favorite musician/band OR about your favorite sports team/athlete (use whatever you searched for information about above). How many hits were returned? Do you feel the metasearch engine was more effective than any of the three search engines you used above?
    6. How is the metasearch engine different from a regular search engine in terms of how it works?

  2. Create a Web page with a guestbook form for soliciting feedback from your users. You should call the Web page file assign7.html and there should be a link to it on your homepage (index.html).

    The form you create will allow your users to enter specific information (more specific than having them send an email, that is). When the user clicks on the form's submit button, it will email the information entered in the form to you nicely formatted. This guestbook form can be used later (with some minor modification) as part of your final project for requesting feedback from your users. For this assignment the Web page should use form elements to ask the user for information like (but not limited to):

    • name
    • email address
    • comments

    For assignment 7 include at least one of each of the following form elements:

    • select box
    • set of check boxes
    • set of radio buttons
    • text box
    • text area box
    • submit button
    • reset button

    In addition, all the form elements should be preceded by a label to tie the description to the form element.

    In the action attribute of the form tag, use cgiemail as described in class.
    Suggestion: try to get the form working using a mailto url as the value of the form action attribute first. Check out this form example. Here are more form examples.

    (Note that some of my examples do not include the label tag so be sure to add that to your form...)

    As always, this page should validate for XHTML as well as CSS so make sure you use the XHTML template that I provide on our class site (see the Examples page).

  3. This Web page is optional so if you feel like you want to improve your current grade you should consider doing this part...
    This page should be called assign7calendar.html. It should contain the following:
    • A heading and title that identify the page as Assignment 7 Calendar and your name and section number.
    • A relative link back to the page that originally linked to it (which is assign7.html). You will also have to include a link to this page from assign7.html.
    • A table that represents a calendar of your birthday month for your next birthday coming up (so for some of you it will be in 2011 and others will be 2012). Include days of the week at the top of each column and the name of the month spanning across the top of the calendar (that is, in the first row within the table). Indicate your birthday as well as any other holidays during that month on the day. For those of you who have birthdays in August, you can mention that August 15 is the birthday of Napoleon Bonaparte as the holiday. :-) In addition, use the caption tag to identify this as " My Birthday Month".
    • Use embedded CSS rules in the head of the document to change at least three of the following things:
      • background color and/or image
      • margins
      • font
      • links
      • table presentation
      • plus any other features you want to change...
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