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Students of any age are notoriously unorganized. Think back to, for example, your bedroom in high school, or your dorm room in college. More than likely, "neat and tidy" is not a description that comes readily to mind. While a messy desk is often the sign of a busy and dedicated individual, these qualities can quickly fall by the wayside if you can't find what you're looking for, when you need it!
The administrators at the Center Park School were facing the same conceptual problem in trying to organize and disseminate information about the school to various audiences, including students, tutors, and parents. At Center Park, there are always multiple events occurring at any given time, from PTA meetings to sporting events, and the school administrators wanted to ensure that their Web site had the ability to organize and neatly present all this information so everyone knew what was going on and could plan accordingly.
However, in addition to general information, the school faculty were particularly interested in using the new Web site as a mechanism to organize student work, including homework assignments and tests. They envisioned "student-specific" calendars, so that as individual students logged in to the site they would see their own custom schedule. That way, the old excuse of "But, I didn't know the assignment was due then!" would cease to be plausible (if it ever was in the first place…)!
Listening to all of these requests, you—as JavaScript Web developer—quickly realized that dynamic calendars could quickly solve many of these issues. In addition to other well-designed information delivery features (such as rotating banner ads), the calendars would serve two vital functions: presenting information and—most importantly—organizing information.
This chapter will cover two different types of online calendars. The first type will be the kind of calendar that you may have already used in your e-mail client. The second type of calendar is one that will aid in the filling out of form fields. Both of these types of calendars are easy to implement, easy to use, and will make your Web site more attractive and user-friendly. And, as you will see, both fit neatly into the overall Central Park School Web site design.
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