Good Blogs

Here's a really good blog post by Bruce Eckel (famous for writing Thinking in C/Thinking in Java series) talking about how the web environment is different (and perhaps a biased view of Adobe Flex): http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=193593

Some blogs that are updated quite frequently that I read are:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/ - ReadWriteWeb often times has some really insightful comments about the new web

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/ - Ryan Stewart talks about Rich Internet Applications and technologies emerging out of it. He's a little biased and doesn't believe in the AJAX as an Rich Internet Application tool

http://www.techcrunch.com/ - TechCrunch keeps up-to date with news items about companies forming or new products coming out. It's usually not too insightful but still very good to keep up with

Hopefully at some point, I'll post a list of all the blogs I read, but this will be good start for now. I really recommend getting an RSS read and subscribing to these places (you can even subscribe to this blog!).

If you have some good blogs or news sites, post it in the comments.

-Ryan

Updates as of 1/26

I let people in off the waitlist who've been coming to class. If you're still on the waitlist and want to get into the course, please let me know. Also, if you are not planning on attending class, please drop it, so we can have a better idea of how many people we can expect and let others off the waitlist who want to get in.

Next week we are planning on covering CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).

Please note that we will be in DH1112 again this Wednesday 1/31 6:30-7:50 (this will be the last time).

Lecture 2

Here's lecture 2. Topics covered were HTML (yes, a little boring) and HTTP Requests.

Lecture 2 (PPT)

Siva did a really neat demo of how you can just telnet into a webserver and request documents. Just try something, like:

telnet www.google.com 80
GET / HTTP1.1
Host: www.google.com

Siva also mentioned a cool firefox extension called firebug (you can get it here: Firebug). The newest version, 1.0, just came out on 1/24/07. To monitor traffic, open up firebug (tools->firebug->open firebug). Then select the net subheader. Now you can monitor traffic on the site you are looking at.

Siva also began a demo for the Carnegie Mellon Delivery Service (CMDS), and the current progress for that page is here: CMDS. We will be using this throughout the course and updates will be posted accordingly. To look at the code, right click in the browser and do view source.

Good websites for help and further info:

• Understand Application Layer Protocols: HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
• Quick reference to HTTP headers
• HTML 4.01/XHTML 1.0 Reference
• Info about Doctypes

Lecture 1 Resources

Here are some of the resources mentioned in lecture 1 as well as some other useful ones.

Defining Terms:
What is Web 2.0, Tim O'Reilly
Wikipedia: Web 2.0
Wikipedia: Rich Internet Applications

Popular/Cool Web 2.0 Sites:
Flickr - Photo Sharing Website
del.icio.us - Sharing Bookmarks
Zimbra - Open Source email application/Collaboration Suite
The ESP Game - Really fun game, harnessing the collective intelligence of the people. Made by a professor at CMU.
Go2Web20.net - More complete list of Web 2.0 sites

Good Books to Read about the "Revolution":
The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman
The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, Chris Anderson (abridged Wired Article)

Some Good Web Development Sites:
SitePoint
DevShed
W3Schools
Webmonkey
PageResource
JavaScript Kit

Lecture 1

Here's lecture 1. It helps define what the course is and what topics we will go over. It also attempts to define the very ambiguous term, Web 2.0.

Lecture 1 (PPT)