Basic Info

Time/Place

Instructor

Description

The World Wide Web (WWW) continues to be the most successful by-product of the Internet. It is used daily by millions (billions?) of people in order to find, manage, track, and manipulate information. Over the years, the Web has developed from a relatively simple system of hyperlinked documents using presentation and structure markup to a distributed platform for computing and application development. In this course, we will explore the fundamental principles and technologies behind the WWW including how information on the Web is generated, represented, transmitted, and manipulated. The course will concentrate on key client-side and server-side technologies that are essential for dynamic content generation and interactivity including XHTML, CSS, HTTP, JavaScript, DOM, event-driven programming, AJAX, RESTful web services, PHP, and databases.

Textbook

There is no required textbook. Instead, the course will draw heavily on web-based resources which I often find to be much more up-to-date and easier to use for the topics in this course. The programming languages that will be used in the course are JavaScript, PHP and SQL. Students may find reference books on these languages to be helpful. While I do not think that purchasing any of these books are necessary, if asked, I would recommend titles published by O'Reilly such as:

Prerequisites

Students are expected to have some experience programming in a high-level computer language either in a high school or college-level introductory computer science course, as a hobbyist, or through work experience. Highly motivated students that do not have this experience are still welcome in the course, but may find that substantial extra time may be necessary to complete the programming assignments.

Grading

Course grades will be based on the following components:

There will be approximately 7 to 10 assignments and 1 midterm.

Outline of Topics

The following is a tentative outline of lecture topics and is subject to change.