Transcript Web Skills , Technologies, and the Industry

ITP 104

How the web as a medium is perceived and
used, and how that evolution of the web has
affected and changed us
 What do you do on the Web?
 What type of activities in your work and play?
 Answer:
Email. Research. Read news. Watch videos and listen
to music. Chat. Network. Play games. Write. Share
photos. And of course use Facebook.

When you go to Facebook what type of
activities do you do there?

Review other peoples sites/feeds. Search for
and add/reject friends. Chat. Mini-blog/post.
Play games. Post pictures. Comment on all of
the previous.

What creatively (as opposed to
communicatively) or artistically can you do
on the web?

Answer:
Design. Drawing/illustration? Write (blogs,
articles, etc.)? How about
Programming/development? How about
artistic and intellectual collaboration?

What is Web 2.0?

Tim O'Reilly' defined it back in September of
2005 in his dissertation “Web 2.0”
 Web 2.0 empowered everyday Web users to
become authors
 no longer necessary to know how to write html,
program code or write a database in order to
public not just web sites but write blogs, post
video, etc

Web 2.0 is also about collaboration

How is Wikipedia different than say the
electronic version of the Encyclopedia
Britannica?
 Wikipedia features social or communal definitions
that evolve as hundreds, thousands or millions of
people all contribute to definitions of ideas

The current generation of the web is about
user interaction and participation.

And what are the implications of that?
 Web 2.0 the Machine is Us/ing Us

One of the major changes in the web was the
ability to distribute and re-package
"information”

While this started with RSS feeds for news
information, blogs, photos, etc., it evolved
into ANY kind of data. So you could share
your applications or functionalities with other
people and sites.

A whole crop of "mash up" , when Google
opened its mapping functionality to everyone

What are some other popular Web 2.0 mashups?

One other major movement or evolution in
web pages and applications was the idea of
"live" or dynamic data.
 Asynchronous data allowed calls and requests for
information to take place in the background
▪ pages do not have to "wait" for data.
▪ data calls happen in the background while a user is using
an application, rather than the user sitting and waiting
or having to update.

The original version of the web was driven by
html, and then css/styles, hosted on servers.

As the web evolved additional technologies
such as database back-ends and scripting and
programming became standard components
of web sites.

All "interactive" elements of web pages
require client-side scripting through
Javascript.

As JavaScript became more prevalent and
more advanced functionality was desires,
new libraries or platforms such as jQuery
became more common.

Databases house much of the core
information for most major sites.

Server-side scripting languages drive the
back-end of most sites
 i.e. ASP/.Net, PHP, ColdFusion, JSP, Python, Ruby
on Rails, etc

Flowing information from databases into
templates that form web pages, collecting
and storing user data, generating emails, etc.

In order to distribute and exchange information
beyond and between sites, data had to be
organized through shared formats such as XML.

All of the more complex functionality was
accompanied by new vulnerabilities and "holes"
in servers and code that could be exploited by
hackers
 increasing the need for security analysis and
solutions.

Design

Graphic Production

Specialized graphic production
 Flash
 Video
 Mobile

HTML Production -- Web publishing

Basic Page Web Development: DHTML
(HTML+CSS+Javascript)

Advanced Web Development:
 Server-Side Scripting: ASP, PHP, CF, JSP, etc.
 Web Programming: Perl, VB, Actionscript (Flash), AIR,
Mobile (Android, Java, etc.)
 Web services: XML + Database/SQL + Scripting +
Programming

New development frameworks combine
multiple development areas/languages
simultaneously:
 XHTML/CSS or Flash-- display platform
 DOM -- Centralized/standardized domain object
model
 XML/XSLR -- standardized/open source
format/structure for data
 Javascript (and libraries such as jQuery) -- place calls
to other code and sites, exchange data, flow
information into pages.

Database Design, Production,
Administration, Optimization (programming)

DB Web Development (Server-Side
Scripting+SQL+DB)

Security

Traditional Web "skills" still needed: design,
production, DBA, scripting and programming

For developers, it still holds true that more
technical proficiency and diversity = more
marketable and desirable

Web 2.0 has raised the bar for "top notch"
developer talent. It requires leveraging diverse
functionality and languages/standards

First steps are still the same:
 Master the Web Publishing basics:
▪ HTML, CSS and a lite amount of JavaScript/interactivity
 Learn Web Development:
▪ Scripting and interactivity, Database Web Development, and
lite amounts of programming and security
 Advance skills:
▪ Developing apps that leverage multiple skills, abstracting
routines, consuming and disseminating functionalities/data
(Web services, etc.).
 Diversify:
▪ Flash and Actionscript, mobile, specific platforms such as
AJAX, etc.

Need to walk before you can crawl. You have
to be able to create interactive DHTML
pages, build traditional db-driven Web sites,
etc., before you can create next-generation
sites.

Starting salaries:
 Web Developer -- $53-77K
 Web Administrator -- $48-72K
 Web Designer -- $43-68K

Web Skills, Technologies, and the Industry
 Patrick Dent