Emergent Web Technologies Spring 2009

Introduction

With a title like "Emergent Web Technologies", I was tempted to make this class focus on the most cutting edge web technologies I could think of. Unfortunately, when I looked around for what was at the bleeding edge today in the web world, I realized that I have no idea what's going to be relevant a year, 5 years or ten years from now.

So, instead of making this class about the latest buzzwords, I've decided to focus on some of the more exciting things that are happening as standardized and open source web technologies continue to evolve and solidify.

The undercurrent of this class will be sustainability and standardization. We will discuss web technologies that not only are moving in some exciting directions, but are also developing in a way that insures they will be relevant in the future.

Who's teaching this class?

My name is Matt Ephraim. I am a web developer at Webitects and I'm currently working on a Master's degree in Information Architecture at IIT.

Tools for This Class

This is a list of tools that may come in handy for this class. I will be updating it as we go along.

Web Development

• Firebug (Amazing Firefox Extension that will make your life easier)
• Web Developer Toolbar (Another Firefox Extension that will make your life easier)

Local Web Servers

• MAMP (Develop with Apache, MySQL and PHP locally in OS X)
• XAMPP (Develop with Apache, MySQL and PHP locally in Windows)

Validation and Good Style

• W3C Markup Validator (Make sure your sites validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict)
• JSLint (Check your JavaScript code for common errors and bad coding style)

Class Schedule

• Class 1 (1/28/2009): Introduction
• Class 2 (2/04/2009): A Crash Course in JavaScript
• Class 3 (2/11/2009): More JavaScript
• Class 4 (2/18/2009): Object Oriented JavaScript and Some APIs
• Class 5 (2/25/2009): Microformats and Intro to Server Side