IT 231 Web Development I

Fall 2011

Instructor

Dr. Craig Miller
Office: 745 CDM Building, 312-362-5085
Email: cmiller@cs.depaul.edu
Web page: http://facweb.cs.depaul.edu/cmiller
Office Hours: Announced on Web page

Course Meeting

Wednesday 5:45-9:00
CDM 200 (but verify with CampusConnect)
Loop Campus

Text

Useful online references

• HTML tutorial
• CSS tutorial

Overview

Students design and develop dynamic web applications. Basic skills in programming, databases and web design are reviewed and developed as needed. As the final project, students create a database-backed web application that supports user login and allows users to post content.

We will use the Ruby on Rails framework for web development in this class.

Preparation

The official course prerequisite is IT 130. Students should be familiar with elementary programming concepts including the use of variables, assignment statements and conditionals (e.g. if statements). Students should also have prior experience with formatting web pages using HTML and CSS.

Goals

By the end of the quarter, students will be able to:

• Develop a dynamic web site
• Explain the different components of a web application
• Write scripts for accessing a database
• Write simple page templates using HTML, CSS and dynamic tags
• Design and implement a web application with multiple tables and access control

Tentative Projects

• Automatically generated web application. Install Rails. Construct a simple web application with scaffolding.
• Interactive lab. Add data to database with scaffold. With interactive ruby interpreter, retrieve and modify data in database. Write simple scripts for data manipulation.
• Creating non-scaffolded controllers and views. Create application with additional controller and views that work with a scaffolded components.
• Custom web application. Modify all scaffolded MVC components for customized web application.
• Preliminary project. Develop a web application with multiple tables.
• Final project. Final web application with multiple tables, user authorization and relations between tables.

Grade Determination

Students receiving more than 90% of possible points are guaranteed at least an A-, more than 80% at least a B-, more than 70% at least a C-, and more than 60% at least a D.

Policies

Students are expected to attend every class. Attendance will be informally kept even though it is not a part of the course grade.

Tests and quizzes can be made up with a serious documented excuse (e.g. illness, death in the family) and must be arranged as soon as possible. Arrangements involving other excuses require prior permission from the instructor.

The goal of assignments is to practice the concepts taught in class. You are expected to do your own assignments. However, some collaboration with other students is allowed and even encouraged. The following types of collaboration are allowed:

• Discussing strategies for solving a problem
• Explaining why a Web page does not work
• Reviewing and testing someone else's Web pages
• Using code provided by the instructor and texts

The following types of collaboration are not allowed:

• Copying someone else's code
• Literally telling someone what code to write

Engaging in these last two types of collaboration will be considered a violation of the university's policy on academic integrity. Violators will receive a 0 for the corresponding assignment and will be reported as required by the policy.

Late assignments will be accepted up to 3 days late, with a penalty of 10% for each day that is it late. Assignments submitted more than 3 days after the due date will not be accepted.

Additional assignments for extra credit will not be offered.

All grade challenges must be submitted in writing and include an explanation why the given score or grade should be reconsidered.

School policies on instructor evaluation, email, plagiarism and incompletes.

Tentative Schedule