STAR Early College High School @ Erasmus
Internet Seminar: Creating Interactive Web Pages


Week 4 : JavaScript - Part II
Project: Customizing Web Pages

  1. We saw how to change the background color of a Web page by using the bgColor property of the document object. We can also use other document properties to change other colors: fgColor represents the color of the text; linkColor represents the color of "unvisited" links (which are usually blue); and vlinkColor represents the color of "visited" links (which are usually purple.)

    Write an HTML page that will allow the user to customize the color scheme of the Web page. Use a series of prompts to allow the user to select colors for the background, text and link colors.

    Make sure that your page contains some text and links also so that you can see that the colors get changed properly!

  2. A MadLib is a game in which two people cooperate to create nonsensical (but often amusing) sentences.  It works like this.  One person creates a few sentences but leaves some words blank, noting instead what kind of word is intended to go there.  For example:

    A small [animal] started walking toward [place] when a big [color] [animal] [verb (past tense)] it.

    Then the author asks the other person for words to fill in the blanks (without revealing the sentence itself).  So in this case the second person might say "porcupine," "Albuquerque," "purple," "giraffe," "ate".

    Then the author reveals the complete sentence:  A small procupine started walking toward Albuquerque when a big purple giraffe ate it.

    Some people find this funny, so in this exercise you'll create a webpage that allows users to fill in a simple Madlib.  Before you start the webpage, create a sentence with at least three blanks in it.  Your webpage should display a series of prompts to allow the user to fill in values to put in the blanks ("Name an animal."  "Name a place."  etc.).  When the user is finished the filled-in MadLib should be displayed.

You may want to refer to these examples: