COAP:COAP-2100/week1

Week 1

Topics Covered

• Using the World Classroom (if needed)
• Using Web 2.0 services
  • Reading and managing news feeds (RSS)
  • Creating web sites with various online services
  • Web Widgets and using widget code
• Connecting to the Internet (if needed)
  • Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7/8 Features
  • File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
  • Browser extensions
  • Searching the Internet

Teaching materials

Tutorials

• Creating websites with online services. This short tutorial covers various online web site creation services we will use.
• Using web widgets. A short introduction on how to use web widgets.
• Browser extensions. A list of useful Firefox extensions.

List of online web site creation services

• http://sites.google.com/ (web site generator)
• https://www.blogger.com/ (blogger service)
• http://www.ning.com/ (social network creator)
• http://netvibes.com/ (start page/webtop)

Optional reading (background information): Social software, weblog, webtop

Classroom activities

Monday

• We shall start "playing" with various services to create web pages (Google sites and Netvibes)

Wednesday

• We shall "play" with Ning and Blogger
• We will insert widget code in one of the on-line services
• We will install some browser extensions for Firefox (if time left, else on week 2)

Homework

Homework 1 summary

Objective: Create a web site with one of the four visited online services

Requirements:

1. The web site must have a clear objective (of your choice)
2. The site must be available to the public (so that other students and myself can have a look at it). Of course, you also can create private pages within the same environment
3. You should explicitly state the website's purpose in some place (e.g. with a little text widget or welcome message)
4. The website must include minimal contents. However, except for the little purpose message, you don't need to create the contents by yourself. You just can add various web widgets or other similar constructs that pull in data from other sources. It is up to to you to decide how many pages you need. E.g. one webtop page would be enough, one single Goggle sites page or blog entry is not. Pages are not a relevant criteria for a Ning social networking website.

Submission:

• Deadline: Wednesday, week 2 before the start of class. Unjustified late submission will get you a lesser grade (see the syllabus)
• Procedure: Connect to the worldclassroom, click on "Homework 1 upload" and simply type the URL in the "Submission" form. Then hit the "submit" button.

Remarks:

• You may use your real identity or not. That's up to you. All I need is a URL I can connect to.
• This exercise can evolve into a term project (but must not).

Term project start

Topic: Configure a web2.0 application such as a webtop or a private social network (style, menus, layout and contents). In other words: homework 1 can get you started.