Providing an integrated services portal is a common task for a web construction team in real companies. The service may vary, and the user-audience may change from assignment to assignment, but the problem-pattern remains the same:
some audience needs a web-based interface to some cluster of services
You will form up in teams of no fewer than three (3) and no more than five (5) today. You work for a large company that has a sales force which is on the road in the San Francisco Bay area a lot of the time, and often has connectivity. They sell the e-Baby®. Your sales force needs a one-stop place to accomplish the following tasks online:
A design mock-up website with CSS, XHTML, and any images needed to display your design. You can assume they have to get through a logon screen before they can get to your design mock-up page(s). You can assume that a separate team of JavaScript programmers will build whatever is needed to run any menus or drop-down lists or other user-interface components you want in your design. You are responsible for putting some sort of placemarker (a graphic or text or color or whatever you wish) wherever you want to have an active/dynamic page element (a pull-down list, a scrolling thing, you name it). You are also responsible for making that placemarker an anchor to an XHTML page explaining the active/dynamic design element which will go there.
All XHTML has to be valid (strict) and well-formed, and all CSS must be valid and well-formed. A "last modified on xxx" statement and the usual "revalidate me" XHTML and CSS buttons shall be at the bottom of all XHTML pages.
Each group will have 5 minutes to present their design during the first hour on next Monday. Teams will be judged arbitrarily by the teacher or whatever random person is kidnapped from the hallway. All decisions of the judge or judges are final, and complainers will be shot out of cannons.