Web 2.0 Application Development Course

This course provides participants with advanced coverage and hands-on exercises using the latest and most common tools, frameworks, and design patterns for building Web 2.0 applications. 

This course serves as a follow-on to the course entitled Web 2.0 Developers Overview.  Continuing in the exploration of technologies promoting collaboration, content-exchange, and rich internet application development, this course discusses more advanced JavaScript techniques, mashups, RSS, Flash (Flex 2 using ActionScript 3), microformats, collaborative tagging, REST-based architectures, and other Web 2.0 related topics.

Specific topics designed to help enrich and improve your Web 2.0 applications include: AJAX cross-domain requests, protecting against cross-site scripting and data injection attacks, keyboard and mouse event detection with JavaScript, creating and processing syndication feeds, mashing data, developing basic Flex 2 ActionScript 3.0 apps, GWT, and DWR. 

This course is intended for developers seeking to improve the quality and capabilities of their current applications.  It is designed for developers already familiar with HTML, JavaScript, and AJAX basics and those skilled with server-side development.  It is not intended for any specific development platform, although several important languages are used in examples during the course, including HTML, XML, JavaScript, MXML, and ActionScript.   While there is no requirement for in-depth knowledge of any specific programming language, students are strongly encouraged to take the previous course to this one: Web 2.0 Developers Overview.

Web 2.0 Technologies Review
Web 2.0 Principles
Collective Thinking Concepts Applied
Think Read/Write
Ruby and Rails Primer
AJAX and JavaScript Libraries Revisited

Advanced JavaScript Issues
Creating the Web2Dev Wiki Project
State of JavaScript Today
Event Handling in the Wiki
Making Areas Clickable
Events and Anchors
Event Delegation
Forms and Actions
Submitting Forms Dynamically
Forms and Dojo, YUI, and Prototype
AJAX-Based Form Submission
Rolling AJAX Forms
Sending Parameters
Sending Parameters with the Libraries
Handling Responses
JSON-Based Response Handling
JSON and Ruby
More CSS Manipulation
Request Caching and Related Issues
Caching Requests
AJAX Cross Domain Requests
Dynamic Script Tags

RSS and Feeds
What are Feeds?
Why RSS?
RSS and Web 2.0
Reading Feeds
Which Feed Format?
Feed Content
RSS 2.0/Atom/RDF
Manually Creating Feeds
Automatically Creating Feeds
Rails and Feeds
Setting up a 2-minute Feed
AJAX-Based RSS Reader
YUI and Reading Feeds

Mashups
What are Mashups?
Mashup Public Data Sources
Mashup Examples
Why Consider a Mashup?
Service-Oriented Architectures
REST-Based Solutions
REST vs. SOAP
Creating Mashups
Mashup Consideration
Tools for Creating Mashups
Using Services Like Digg.com
Other services
Building the Mashup

Mashups and Mapping APIs
Service APIs
Mapping APIs
Mapping Comparisons
Google Maps API
Adding Markers
Adding InfoWindows
Google GeoCoding
Yahoo GeoCoding
Creating the Mashup

More with JavaScript Widgets
Dojo, Dijit, and Dojox
Creating Widgets
Accessing Widgets
Dijit Form Controls
Dijit ComboBox
Dijit TreeWidget
Dojo Effects
Dojo Drag and Drop
YUI Widgets
YUI Buttons
YUI Skinning
YUI DataTable Widget
Prototype and Scriptaculous
Scriptaculous Pane Swapper
Using ExtJS
ExtJS Widgets

Developing Collaboration and Push Technologies
What are Microformats?
How Do Microformats Work?
Examples of Microformats
Utilizing Microformats
Installing and Using Operator
Collaborative Tagging (Folksonomies)
Tag Clouds
Creating a Tag Cloud
Push Technologies
Comet and “The Slow Load”
Dojo and Comet
Creating a Comet-based Dojo App

Incorporating Flash and ActionScript 3.0
What is Flex?
Flex Development Framework
Flex History
ActionScript
How Flex Works
Authoring ActionScript Applications
Flex Builder
Setting Up Eclipse for Flex
MXML
The Flex Model
Flex Class Library Overview
ActionScript Language Reference
Flex Applications and MVC
MXML with ActionScript
Using Layouts and Boxes
Form Controls
Handling Events
Data Binding
DataGrids
Processing XML
Binding Variables
An HTTPService Component
Creating a Feed Reader
Dynamic Links

Introducing Google Web Toolkit
What is GWT?
Advantages and Disadvantages to Using GWT
Installing the Toolkit
Creating Applications
Testing and Debugging the Application
GWT’s RPC mechanism

Direct Web Remoting
Why Use DWR?
Configuring the Web Application
Creating the JSPs
Writing the Client-Side Scripts
Reverse-AJAX

Appendix A - More with Rails for Developers
Ruby on Rails Revisited
ActiveRecord
Rules of ActiveRecord
ActiveRecord Finders and Associations
Mapping Associations with Rails
Generating and Updating the Model
Working with Embedded Ruby
Managing Layouts
Using Form Helpers
Data Validation
Processing Errors