Mansfield University CIS3306 Project

Design of a Menu-Driven Web Site for Course Delivery

John Phillips

June 18, 2002

Summary

An advanced web site was created that combined the best features of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Java, PHP, and XML into a menu-driven program for the presentation of college-level course notes and practice quizzes. The PHP programming language was used on the server-side to coordinate the other technologies. PHP Perl-like regular expressions were used to parse the XML quiz documents and the HTML notes documents and prepare them for display. JavaScript on the client-side enabled the use of drop down menus when combined with CSS. In addition, JavaScript was used to provide instant feedback on quizzes and to manage cookies used in scoring.

Flexibility is the key feature of this program. By changing the headings in the file menuItems.php and by changing the logo.jpg banner, this dynamic program is ready to serve up material for a different course. In addition, the material can be introduced gradually with menu items added on as the course progresses. Likewise, the course notes, which are written in plain HTML and the quiz files can be added on as the course progresses.

Project Deliverables

report - View the report

project demo - View the website in action (try the quiz under electronics/theory).

Source Code

nav.php - the site's main program

menuItems.php - headings for all menus

getnotes.php - reads in and displays class notes

quiz.php - reads in and displays quizzes

main.css - cascading style sheet controls much of the look

nav.js - JavaScript code to do the drop down menus

i1.xml - sample of one of the XML quizzes

i1.html - sample of one of the note pages.