<info 340 A/>

Client-Side (Web) Development

Joel Ross
Autumn 2026

View of the Day

  • Introductions

  • Syllabus and course structure

  • Making a Web Page!

    • HTML & CSS

About Prof Ross

Teaching Professor

Email joelross@uw.edu        
Zoom https://washington.zoom.us/my/joelross

Your TAs!

Let's get to know each other!

 

Ice-Breaker Activity: Human Bingo

Introductions

Syllabus

https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/1919336​

The Experiment

I propose we intentionally trial and experiment with using LLMs and AI tools for programming.

  • Spend time evaluating, critiquing, and improving LLM code instead of writing code from scratch.
    Learn through reading code more than by writing code.
  • Same material and assignments (mostly), but different approach.
  • We'll be learning to do this together. It may be rough/awkward.

 

You have autonomy to choose! Collectively can decide what to do.

 

How does that feel? Does it make you excited? Worried?
What would you like to do?

Assignments

Problem Sets

  • Directed practice problems to make sure you can apply the material in code.
     
  • Auto-graded on completion basis
     
  • Due each week (mostly Friday) to keep you moving
    • Grace period: can turn in 2 days late at no penalty
    • After 2 days, earn up to 80% credit
    • Treat these as having "hard" deadlines - don't put them off!
       
  • As a learning strategy, no AI assistance for these

Assignments

Group Project

  • Develop an interactive web app of your own choosing to creatively apply your new skills
  • Completed in small teams (up to 4)
  • Deliverables throughout the quarter:

    • Proposal, Draft 1, Draft, Final Version

    • Project deliverables have hard deadlines

    • Iterating: fixing problems in subsequent drafts can boost earlier scores by up to 20%
  • Short reflection assignment with each deliverable
  • Additional small check-ins each week (do during lab)
     
  • We'll be learning to use AI assistance for these!

Assignments

In-Class Activities & Discussion

  • We're going to practice with LLMs and AI tools during "lecture" time. The learning will be in the discussion of those activities.
     
  • Attendance is required for class (sorry!)
    • Can miss up to 2 activities at no penalty
       
  • Extra credit option: lead a reading discussion!

Resources and Tasks

Course Textbook: https://info340.github.io/ (required)

Video Demos: linked from Canvas (optional)

 

The course schedule has an ordered list of resources and tasks. The best way to approach this:

  1. Do the reading ahead of lecture [skiming okay!]
  2. Come to class and participate [required!]
  3. Optional: if still have questions: watch video [2x speed?]
  4. Complete the exercises/assignments [by the deadline!]

 

And ask lots of questions throughout!

Time Expectations

Class & Lab Work (5 hr/week)

  • practice + activities + later project work (4 hr)
  • project + review work in lab (1 hr)


At Home Work (10 hr/week)

  • reading (1 hr)
  • problem sets (4-5 hr)
  • project work (3-4 hr) <= but "spiky"!

5 credit course = 15 hour per week commitment (link)

Questions so far?

Client-side Web Development

protocol

domain

resource

"Hi Wikipedia, I'd like you to send me the Informatics page!"

two

t
 

(how to handle info)

(who has info)

(what info you want)

Web Server

Response

Using the Internet

Request

+

=

Let's make those files!

Making a page with Purple

Purple (https://purple.uw.edu/) is UW's AI tool. It is basically a branded version of ChatGPT/CoPilot that theoretically provides some data privacy. This provide a chat interface for engaging with these tools.

 

Let's try and have it build us a webpage!

Create a simple website that is the home page for a web development course

Editing the Page

Visual Studio Code

HTML

Hyper Text Markup Language

Adds meaning to otherwise plain text, telling the browser how to render it.

"this is a heading, this is a paragraph, this is a definition, this is a hyperlink..."

for documents that link to one another!

HTML Syntax

<tag>

Content

</tag>


<tag>content</TAG>

open/start tag

close/end tag (leading slash)

content

}

ignores whitespace and tag case (use lowercase)

Annotate content by surrounding it
with <tags>. The tags and their content are called an HTML Element

HTML Attributes

Elements can include attributes in the start tag, which specify options or add further meaning. 

<tag attributeA="value" attributeB="value">
    content 
</tag>

Attributes are a space-separated list of names (think: variables) and values.

Values are (almost) always Strings.

NO SPACES!

Nesting Elements

The content of a tag can contain
other HTML elements.

<h1>Hello <em>(with emphasis)</em> world!</h1>

open h1

close h1

open em

close em

What's wrong here?

<p>I <strong>never<strong> make mistakes</p>

important text

did not close tag!

HTML Tree

HTML documents are structured as an ordered tree of elements.

HTML for the Web

A particular structure is needed to make the HTML pages valid:

<!DOCTYPE html> <!-- browser instruction: doc's type is HTML -->
<html lang="en"> <!-- the document itself-->
  <head> <!-- metadata information (not shown) -->
     <!-- support non-English characters -->
     <meta charset="utf-8">
     <!-- for searche engines, etc -->
     <meta name="author" content="your name">
     <!-- title in tab-->
     <title>My Page Title</title>
  </head>
  <body> <!-- the body content (shown) -->
     <h1>Some content...</h1>
     ...
  </body>
</html>

Make some changes!

Based on what is here and we've talked about so far, make some changes to the content (don't worry about appearance).

 

  • Can you make up and add more detail (more paragraphs)?
  • Can you add a link to another website/resource?
  • Can you add another image?

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets

A language that defines rules for styling

"use this color and font for the first paragraph in the article; this picture for the page's background..."

(kind of like Styles or Themes in PowerPoint, but way, way more powerful!)

Not this...

(see also: https://websitesfromhell.net/)

...but this!

Hello CSS

Create a new file (File > New File)
Name it style.css 

h1 {
  color: rebeccapurple;
}
<head>
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="my-style.css">
</head>

Link stylesheet in your HTML's <head>

relation between this page and reference

no content,
no closing tag

CSS Syntax

List rules for formatting properties for a particular kind of element.

Rules list what values to assign to different formatting properties (variables)

Selectors tell which elements the properties apply to

/* A rule with many properties */
h1 {
  font-family: 'Helvetica';
  color: white;
  background-color: #333; /*dark gray*/
}

"font"

selector: apply to all  <h1> elements

Class Selectors

Have a rule apply to only a particular elements by specifying those elements' class attribute and then using that class as the selector in the CSS

/* CSS */
.highlighted { 
  background-color: yellow;
}
<!-- HTML -->
<p class="highlighted">This text is highlighted!</p>

dot specifies class name, not tag name

Why two languages?

Separation of Concerns

Keep content separate
from appearance

Allows the same styling to apply to different content.

The same content can be presented in different ways to different users.

HTML vs. CSS

HTML specifies the content semantics.

CSS specifies the appearance.

<!-- HTML -->
<p>This text has <i>emphasis!</i></p>
/* CSS */
em {
  font-style: normal;
  text-decoration: underline;
}

why is this italicized?

change what emphatic text looks like

HTML describes the meaning, not what it looks like!

<!-- HTML -->
<p>This text has <em>emphasis!</em></p>

says nothing about appearance!

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets

The Cascade

Multiple rules can apply to the same element (in a "cascade").

p { /* applies to all paragraphs */
  font-family: 'Helvetica'
}

.alert { /* applies to all elements with class="alert" */
  font-size: larger;
}

.success { /* applies to all elements with class="success" */
  color: #28a745; /* a pleasant green */
}
<p class="alert success">
  This paragraph will be in Helvetica font, a larger
  font-size, and green color, because all 3 of the above
  rules apply to it.
</p>

two classes (space separated)

Action Items!

  • Finish the "Start Here" steps on Canvas

  • Complete task list for Week 1 (all items)

    • Do all readings (skim at least)

    • Watch Command Line Basics

      • ​(Need it ahead of next week)

    • Reading for next week: Ch 3 in PS4DS

​​​Next: Git and GitHub

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By Joel Ross

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