Web Technology

Period 3

Level: 100

COURSE OBJECTIVE
Everyone uses the Web, but how was it originally built, how has it evolved to what it is now, and how might it further develop in the future? This course will introduce you to the key ideas, languages and protocols underlying the Web, including URI, HTTP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript. You will develop the skills you need to apply these techniques to create basic Web content yourself, and to systematically validate and assess more advanced Web content made by others.

These techniques constitute the basis building blocks of the Web as it is today, and understanding how they are related will also help you understand future developments. You will learn how to master new topics by finding your own learning materials on the Web and how to assess their relevance and trustworthiness. At the end of the course, you have communicated the results of your assessments in a (oral) presentation to your peers, and have written both a technical report and a short news article for the general public.

While the course is primarily focused on technological aspects, as a professional in academia or industry, you need to be able to relate technological developments to relevant trends in science and society in general. In this course you will assess the impact of Web technology on important issues such as privacy and security concerns; copyright, cybercrime and other legal aspects; accessibility and net neutrality; social media usage and Web ethics.

COURSE CONTENT
During the course, you will:

• create your own HTML content and formally validate it on syntactical correctness
• create you own CSS style sheets to render the same HTML content differently on different devices
• apply JavaScript code made by others and use it to enrich the interactive behavior of your own Web content, and learn how to debug such applications
• build a full-text search engine in the R toolkit
• build a Web server with a RESTfull HTTP API
• write a technical report in which you evaluate a third-party website on international accessibility criteria
• present the evaluation results to your peers

TEACHING METHODS
Lectures, practical sessions, assignments, presentation

TYPE OF ASSESSMENT
Written exam, 4 assignments

RECOMMENDED BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE
A introductory programming course