CPSC 470S Building Web Applications with Ajax

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CPSC 470S Building Web Applications With Ajax

A course offered in the Computer Science Department at the University of Mary Washington The instructor for the course is Ernest Ackermann


Tentative due dates:
3/12: Prototype
4/13: Beta Release
4/27: Last day of Class

Prerequisite: CSPC 230

Computer Science 230, Computer Science II This was chosen as the prerequisite so that the students in the class would have at least 2 courses in the major program thus guaranteeing some facility with problem solving, programming, and the methods and technology of program development. Some students will have had a course in software engineering as well. There is no course in our curriculum that covers software development and technologies needs for developing server-side applications. If there were then that course or that sequence of courses would have been required prerequisites for this course. All the current advice says that to fully deal with Ajax one needs to have had experience developing Web applications. We'll see how that plays out in this course.

It seems then that the students should be surveyed to see what skills they have. This will to put them into teams, and also alert them to the skills they will likely need. We can do a similar survey at the end of the class to see if/how things have changed. It would be nice to find an existing survey for the students to take, but i haven't found one yet. I did find one on basic Web design skills, Basic Survey of Web Design Skills

About Ajax

Ajax is a collection of technologies that are used to build responsive and dynamic Web pages. The term Ajax is shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. The technologies used include XHTML to build the HTML elements of a Web page, JavaScript to functions for communicating with a server and dealing with input from a user, DHTML to update HTML content dynamically, and the Document Object Model (DOM) that works with the structure of the HTML and XML returned from a server.

Jesse James Garrett writes in his article "Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications," 

   * standards-based presentation using XHTML and CSS;
   * dynamic display and interaction using the Document Object Model;
   * data interchange and manipulation using XML and XSLT;
   * asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest;
   * and JavaScript binding everything together.

About the course

We will use Ajax to build dynamic Web applications, concentrating on the client side or user experience. The course is project based. Working in a small groups students will define and implement a project that demonstrates effective use of Ajax.

Readings

Libraries

http://script.aculo.us/ (COOL!)

Ideas for class projects

  • Question to the professor; tied in with webmail? (This will only allow people with webmail to e-mail the professor)
  • Appropriate Good Game
  • links to course pages
  • SSH/SFTP to paprika in a web-page? (needs java?)
  • open class ticker
  • course descriptions
  • personal calender
  • Personal homepage (with RSS feeds of homework etc.)
  • Job searching/internship searching
  • dead link tracker
  • take a look at the info currently available and see what can be enhanced through the Ajax experience

Tutorials

Other resources

== Links

Retrieved from "http://rosemary.umw.edu/mediawiki/index.php/CPSC_470S_Building_Web_Applications_with_Ajax"