Chemistry Laboratory Web Pages: Photographs

Author's Note

This article addresses but one facet of developing web pages for teaching, a topic covered by Scott Van Bramer in the Spring 2002 Newsletter (see Part I). Scott gives good ideas on what to put on the web; photos would fit in his "supplemental" section. I agree with his comments on style, in fact, these pages reflect many of Scott's suggestions: the font is not specified, the image sizes are set in the html code, alternative text for graphics is employed, and my favorite, the KISS principle. Note that I've use "thumbnails" throughout, which are small versions of the larger photograph: this saves loading time.

My own web site for the organic chemistry lab students has undergone many changes since I first started it; some of the sections still have photos taken on a 1 megapixel camera. I get a lot of feedback from students, mostly comments about organization, and I take their comments seriously. If students can't find what they are looking for on the site, then it doesn't help them.

Items that I've found especially popular on a teaching web page:

• Contact information for the profs, teaching assistants, etc. including e-mail links.
• Exam times and places, and what will be covered on the exams, especially if the exam place changes during the semester.
• Exam archives.
• Practice quizzes for the laboratory.

A use for photographs which I did not note elsewhere in this article is as lab quizzes. Take a picture of an experimental set-up and ask them: What's wrong with this picture?

• Example of this type of quiz question.

Adobe GoLive

I started my first web page in the early 90s, and learned to do web pages in html code. When the first html editors became generally available, I began using Adobe PageMill. It was a love-hate relationship from the beginning: using the html editor made the work go faster, but dealing with the idiosyncrasies of the program sometimes made the work harder. I switched to Adobe GoLive several years ago, and while this is a bloated program, I like enough of the features to continue using it. Whatever program you choose to use, it is always helpful to understand html code. GoLive realizes this, and makes it easy to see the page you are working on in html and page-mode at the same time. Other GoLive features that I like are:

• In the site-mode, you can ask the program to list all of the external links in your site. Then, you can ask the program to check all of those sites on the Web and it will tell you which links are currently broken.
• If you find a broken link, and if you link to that broken link from more than one page in your site, you can globally update the information.
• You can move a page from one directory to another within your site, or if you re-name a page, GoLive will update all the appropriate internal links.
• You can check your site for link errors: internal links that are not correct, external links that you forgot to type in or to which you forgot to add the http://.
• You can spell-check or search the entire site at once.
• Tables are easy to work with in GoLive.

GoLive has other features that I do not use, such as scripting and cascading style sheets; I use it mainly as a wysiwyg and for the site features. GoLive works well with the Adobe suite of programs. I especially like the current version of GoLive for Mac OSX - it displays the pages exactly how they will appear on the web, and it is fast. I actually wrote this entire article in GoLive, it is that pleasant an interface.

--Patty Feist, Sept. 2002

This page is maintained by Patty Feist, Lab Coordinator, Organic Chemistry Teaching Labs at CU Boulder.
Please send any comments, corrections, or suggestions to feist@colorado.edu.
CU Organic Chem Homepage: orgchem.colorado.edu