Writing and Designing for the World Wide Web

Welcome to Writing and Designing for the World Wide Web (English 4814). This course is offered as part of the Professional Writing Program in the Department of English at Virginia Tech. This web site supports James Collier's section of the course (CRN: 92738) for fall 2008.

Course Description

We will examine how users read on the web, how authors should write their web pages, and, accordingly, how to design rich, appropriate content for web sites. In so doing, this course offers a practicum in the novice and intermediate use of (X)HTML, HTML editors, graphics, and presentation software. Students will learn the basics of (X)HTML (and HTML editors) and Style Sheets in constructing web sites. By analyzing how on-line communities organize, use, and distribute knowledge and information, we will evaluate and build web sites that communicate simply and effectively.

"Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live." — John Perry Barlow, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, 1996.