CSci 1101 Lab 1. Due Tuesday, February 2 at 11:59pm

Goals of this lab:

Tasks for the lab:

  1. Log in to a lab machine. Use the same login that you used for the blog. The password is the same as your initial password for the blog. I can remind you your password if you forgot.
  2. Go to the menu Applications -> Internet and find the icon for Firefox browser. Press the right mouse button over the icon and select "Add to launcher". This will add it to the tools panel on top.
  3. Go to the menu Applications -> System Tools, choose Terminal and also add it to the panel. Double-click on it to open it.
  4. Start Firefox by either double-clicking on its icon or by typing firefox & in the terminal window. Go to the page http://cda/~elenam/1101_spring10/psets/lab1.html; this will bring you to these lab instructions.
    Note that Firefox may take a while to start so you might want to continue your work while it is starting up.
  5. Now you need to change your password. Type passwd in the terminal window. You will be asked to type in your current password and then your new password twice. As you are typing the password, nothing will show up on the screen -- that's a security measure and is OK.

    Your new password must have at least two different kinds of symbols, such as letters, digits, and punctuation marks. Make sure to remember your new password. It's OK to write it down somewhere in your notebook, you can discard that page later after you have memorized your password. Don't write your password in an e-mail message or any electronic format and don't share it with anyone.

  6. You also need to change your password on the server csci1101sp10. To do this: in the same terminal window type ssh csci1101sp10. If a message appears warning you that authenticity of the server cannot be established and asking if you would like to continue connecting, answer "yes" (not just "y"). When prompted for a password, type in the password that was given to you in class (not the new one that you just set).
    After you connect to csci1101sp10 type passwd again and change the password to a new one (it may be the same one that you use on the lab machines or a different one). Type logout when you are done to quit ssh.

Saving the web page:

  1. In your terminal window type cd public_html
  2. In the browser go to the web page example first_page.html (note that the page name has an underscore in it); view the page source (View -> Page Source or Ctrl-U).
  3. Type jedit & (all lower case) at the command prompt to start the text editor jEdit.
  4. Copy/paste the page source into the jEdit window and save it as first_page.html in public_html
  5. Open a new tab in the browser (File -> New Tab or Ctrl-T) and type in http://csci1101sp10.morris.umn.edu/~yourloginname/first_page.html (replace yourloginname with your login name). Make sure the page shows up. Note that it does not have any images yet.
  6. At the command prompt create a directory (folder) images by typing mkdir images. Alternatively you can go into your "home" folder on your Desktop, open public_html, and create a new folder images.
  7. Save the images from the web page into the folder images
  8. Reload the page, check that the images show up.
  9. Validate this page by copy/pasting its URL into XHTML validator. Caution: the URL should contain the full domain name of the server: csci1101sp10.morris.umn.edu (using just csci1101sp10 would work for viewing pages in the lab, but will not work in the validator).

Changing the web page

In this part of the lab you are asked to experiment with the given web page. You need to follow these guidelines:

Here are the features of the web page that you need to change for this lab:

  1. Add a paragraph anywhere in the page. The text can be anything, it doesn't have to be related to the topic of the page. Use a strong or em tag for a part of the text inside the paragraph.
  2. Add a line break anywhere in your new paragraph.
  3. Change the first list in the page to be ordered; don't forget to change the closing tag as well.
  4. Change one of the headers in the page to a different level (say, h4 to h3).
  5. Add a link to any web site using a (anchor) tag. Make sure that your page is still XHTML-compliant.
  6. Change the width or height of any image in the page.
  7. Make one of the images into a link (to any web page) by nesting it inside the a (anchor) element.
  8. Set the width and the size attributes of the <hr> element. Note that these attributes are not XHTML-compliant, that's OK for this lab.
  9. Avoid physical style tags (such as <b>). Don't use style attribute (I'll explain this later in class).

Please feel free to change more page elements than listed here, the more you try - the better.

How to submit this lab

You have untill 11:59pm on Tuesday, February 2 to finish this lab. You don't need to submit anything, simply leave your web page on the server. Don't change anything in it after the deadline until you get the grade (by e-mail). If you would like to experiment with HTML further, simply make a copy of the HTML file with a different name.

If you have any questions, please come to my office hours or e-mail me.


This page is a part of CSci 1101 course web site.