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Q1 Describe the difference between an XML Sitemap and a HTML Sitemap. List the benefits and disadvantages of using each.
  • An xml sitemap is made for search engine crawlers, whereas a html sitemap is made for people to use.
  • Xml sitemaps:
  • - Allows search engines to find and index your website’s pages more efficiently.
  • - Not user-friendly
  • Html sitemaps:
  • - Allows users to find all the links on your website. Particularly good for large websites.
  • - Overcomplicates things for the search engine crawlers.
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Q2 Evaluate three IDE’s (Integrated development environments) and provide a brief summary on the positive and negative aspects of each. Also, in your own words include how it would suit an entry level trainee code developer.
  • Notepad++:
  • A free program avaible for download on Windows, .Supports several programming language. Supports plugins. Allows for auto complete when typing out code.
  • Visual Studio:
  • Available across three of most commonly used OS, Windows, MacOS and linux. This software is free and like notepad++ supports plugins. Like Notepad++, it supports autocomplete when coding.
  • Notepad:
  • Comes pre-installed on all windows machines. Very basic software, you’ll need to manually add file extensions depending on what you want to do, E.g., .htm for webpages .css for style sheets. Only available on windows devices. Free and simplistic design allows the trainee to focus on learning to code.
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Q3 Provide a brief history on web browser development and the issues encountered by web developers, specifically, the adherence to web standards.
  • - Gopher, an information retrieval system in the early 1990s, provided a menu based user interface to give links to files, other menus and computer resources.
  • - In 1993, Gopher stated it was going to charge licensing fees, causing organisations to seek out alternatives to it.
  • - CERN had an alternative, a document type called hypertext, as well as a program meant for reading them, which he called WorldWideWeb.
  • - On the 13th of April in 1993, CERN released WorldWideWeb’s source code into the public domain.
  • - Due to the web becoming popular, several different companies formed which created their own different web browsers, later called the browser wars.
  • During the browser wars Microsoft and Netscape would build new features rather than try and fix what was already implemented. The competition resulted in features that were similar, yet incompatible with each other.
  • Developers were ever increansingly confused when designing web sites, having to build two different versions of the same page just so they worked on both browsers. Often they would choose to only provide support for one browser and block the other.
  • - In 1994 Tim Berners-Lee Founded W3c at MIT with support from CERN, DARPA, and the European commision. The purpose was to standardise the protocols and technologies used to design the web so that as many people could use the content as possible. They then spent the next few years publishing recommendations for html 4.01, png images and CSS versions 1 and 2. None of their recommendations are enforced, however in order to call your products W3C compliant, you needed to follow them. Most people didn’t know or care about the W3C and as such, problems continued.
  • - In 1998, a beta version of Internet Explorer 5 was released and used a new dynamic HTML. Web developers now needed to know five separate ways of writing JavaScript.
  • - A group of pro web developers created the group, Web standards Project, aka WaSP. They believed calling the recommendations “standards” would make companies like Microsoft take them more serisously.
  • - In 2000 Microsoft released IE5. It complied with many of W3C’s recommendations and WaSP managed to convince Netscape to postpone their release of Netscape Navigator 5.0 until it was more compliant with with the standards and recommendations.
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Q4 What are website testing methodologies? Your answer MUST cover browser compatibility, and website functionality.

These are methods used to test your websites functionality and compatibility with different browsers. You can use validators online, like https://validator.w3.org/, to check for any errors in your code, as you will often make mistakes as you write. There are also tools like www.caniuse.com that provides information on whether individual elements are compatible with specific browsers. Caniuse, will also tell you what versions of the software support the element you are searching for.

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Q5 What are the endorsed requirements of accessibility for all NT Government webpages?

The Northern Territory Government supports the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Version 2.0. The NTG requires all of its websites and web content meet the WCAG 2.0 level AA compliance.

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Q6 How do you think it’s best to organise all the assets used for a specific webpage? Think locally on your computer AND within the root folder of the website.

In a dedicated folder meant for each type of asset. E.g. images can be kept in an images folder, style sheets in folder for css, etc. You should keep your html pages and sitemap.xml file within your root folder.

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