IT 231 Web Development I

Fall 2009

Instructor

Dr. Craig Miller
Office: 745 CTI 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
• Ruby 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 common controller scripts (using Ruby and Rails)
• Write simple page templates using HTML, CSS and dynamic tags
• Write simple programs using basic objects and control structures

Tentative Projects

• Automatically generated web application. Install Rails. Construct a simple web application with scaffolding. Make simple cusomizations.
• Interactive lab. Add data to database with scaffold. With interactive ruby interpreter, retrieve and modify data in database. Write simple scripts for data manipulation.
• Custom web application. Modify all scaffold MVC components for customized web application.
• Simple application from scratch. Create a simple web application without any scaffolded components.
• Preliminary project. Develop a web application with multiple tables and user authorization.
• 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 responsible for all material presented in class by either attending class or viewing the content presented online.

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.

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