T-111.5360 WWW Applications (4 cr) P

08.01.2009 The course's web page is now on Noppa.

23.04.2008 The feedback form is now open.

15.04.2008 Timetable of the workshop has been published.

11.02.2008 The SVG lecture will begin at 16:45 on 5th of March.

30.01.2008 Presentation topics have been assigned to the pairs.

28.01.2008 The lecture on SVG has been confirmed. It will be on 5th of March.

Topic
Requirements
Enrollment
Lectures
Presentation Topics
Presentation Phases
Exercise Topics
Exercise Instructions
Exercise Phases
Timetable
Workshop
Grading
Personnel
Old Pages

Topic

The objective of the WWW Applications course is to study recent developments in web technologies. The course focuses especially on WWW based applications and compound documents.

Requirements

To pass the course, the students have to do the following. The presentation and exercise assignment are done in groups of two.

Attend to the lectures and the workshops.
Give the presentation.
Do the exercise work.
Act as an opponent in the final workshop.
Give course feedback.

Enrollment

The number of participating students is limited to 20. Enrollment to the course happens through Web topi and it will be closed on 20th of January 2008. After the enrollment, please submit following information to Mikko Pohja by email (see contacts below):

Name and student number
Home university and study program
Major and minor subject
Current study year
Courses taken in multimedia/digital media

The students will be selected to the course based on the given information. The results of the selection process will be send by email.

Lectures

Lectures will be in room T5 on Wednesdays at 16:00. First lecture is on 23 January 2008.

The dates and the topics of the lectures are:

23.01.2008 General Arrangements (Mikko Pohja, TKK)
30.01.2008 Widgets (Mikko Pohja, TKK)
06.02.2008 Compound Document Formats (Petri Vuorimaa, TKK)
13.02.2008 Approaches to Web UI authoring: XForms and HTML5 (Mikko Honkala, Nokia)
20.02.2008 Time and animations in Web Applications (Guido Grassel, Nokia)
05.03.2008 at 16:45 Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) (Ossi Nykänen, TUT)

Presentation Topics

The course topic will studied further in student presentations, which will be given in the end of the course. The topics will be more specific than the lectures.

The topics of student presentations are listed below.

XML Binding Language 2.0 (XBL 2.0)

The XML Binding Language (XBL) can be used to bind scripts, event handlers, CSS, and more complex content models in another document to elements. It can also be used to implement new DOM interfaces. Finally XBL allows arbitrary tag sets to be implemented as widgets. For example, XBL could be used to implement the form controls in XForms or HTML.

Window Object

Window object provides a global namespace for web scripting languages, access to other documents in a compound document by reference, navigation to other locations, and timers.

Window Object 1.0, W3C Working Draf

AJAX

Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) is a web development technique for creating interactive web applications. The intent is to make web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user requests a change.

AJAX Toolkits

Compare few most popular AJAX toolkits. For example:

Google Web Toolkit
Dojo
Zimbra's Kabuki AJAX Toolkit
Yahoo! AJAX Library
Microsoft Atlas

Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML)

Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) by Microsoft is a declarative XML-based language used to define objects and their properties, relationships and interactions. XAML is used extensively in the .NET Framework 3.0 technologies, particularly in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), where it is used as a user interface markup language to define UI elements, data binding, eventing, and other features, and in Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), in which workflows themselves can be defined using XAML.

Extensible Application Markup Language, Wikipedia

Mobile Web Iniative (MWI)

The aim of the Mobile Web Initive (MWI) is to improve mobile web browsing. It includes a Best Practise, Device Description, and Test Suites working groups.

Mobile Web Iniative

XPath

XPath is a language for addressing parts of an XML document, designed to be used by both XSLT and XPointer.

Web Mashups

Web mashup combines data from more than one source into a single Web application.

OpenLaszlo

OpenLaszlo is an open source platform for creating Web applications. OpenLaszlo programs are written in XML and JavaScript and transparently compiled to Flash or DHTML. The OpenLaszlo APIs provide animation, layout, data binding, server communication, and declarative UI.

OpenLaszlo

Flex

Flex is a framework for building dynamic, interactive rich Internet applications. Flex applications are delivered on the web via the Flash Player or to the desktop via Adobe AIR.

Flex.org

Presentation Phases

The student presentations are done in four phases:

Topic (Deadline 28.01.2008)

First, the students have to form a group two persons and select 2 or 3 most interesting presentation topics. Then, they should send the topics in priority order to Mikko Pohja by email. The topics will be assigned to student groups on 30 Jan 2008.

Pre-study (Deadline 13.02.2008)

The pre-study has to include a short introduction to a topic, content plan of the presentation, and most important references. The pre-study should be written in text and be 2-3 pages long. There should be 6-12 references, of which max 2 can be so called web references. Other references should be conference and journal articles, books, standards, white papers, etc.
Here are some links to most important digital libraries:

Slides (Deadline 02.04.2008)

The final version of the presentation should be about 12-20 slides. Please, include some examples in your presentation. The slides should be send to Mikko Pohja either in html or pdf format. The dealine is 02.04.2008. After that the teachers will give feedback on the slides. In additions, student opponents will be assigned for each presentation. The opponents can ask questions regarding the presentation and give comments on the topic in general.
The corrections to the slides have to be made before 16.04.2008, when you have to send the final version of the slides to Mikko Pohja by email. The slides will be presented in full-day workshop on 23.04.2008. The presentations should last 20 minutes plus 5 minutes for discussion.

Presentation (23.04.2008, Workshop)

Exercise Topics

To get practical experience the students have to do exercise work. The idea is to implement one of the use cases described in the Section 2 of Compound Document Use Cases and Requirements Version 2.0, which is available at

http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-CDFReqs-20051219/

The students can choose the exact use case by themselves.

The use case and the used technologies does not have to relate with the group's presentation topic.

Exercise Instructions

The implementated Web application should be based on compound documents, i.e., more than one markup language should be used. Those include XHTML, XForms, SMIL, XBL, and SVG among the others. Try to utilize XML Events to deliver information between languages. The exercises are intended to be done in a declarative manner, that is, try avoid Javascript as much as possible. The prototype should run in some browser, which supports compound documents. The students must find a suitable browser for their project. Examples are Firefox, Opera, and X-Smiles. More information on compound document formats can be found from CDF home page. There are links to the relating specifications.

The focus of the exercise is on the client-side formats and combination of them. Even though the use cases describe whole applications, the exercise is mainly on the user interface part of use cases. Implement the functionality of your application through the XML languages instead of Javascript.

The server-side logic can be rather simple. That is, you don't have to use data bases etc. if you don't want to. Implement server-side logic as much as needed, but remember that focus is on UI technologies. You don't have to use separate server to demonstrate your application.

Exercise Phases

The exercises will be done in five phases:

Topic (Deadline 12.02.2008)

The student groups are the same as in presentation. Each group has to select 2 or 3 most interesting exercise topics. Then, they should send the topics in priority order to Mikko Pohja by email. The topics will be assigned to student groups on 13.02.2008.

Work Plan (Deadline 27.02.2008)

The work plan should include:

Short introduction to the topic
Used software
Goals and limitations of the exercise
Brief use case description
Main tasks to be done
Group's own milestones

The deadline for work plans is 27.02.2008.

Mid-term demo and experience exchange (19.03.2008)

In the mid-term demo and experience exchange session, the students present their topic to other students and they must demonstrate the current state of their exercise. The demo has to contain at least two markup languages, which interacts with each other at some degree.
In addition to the short demo, students should tell what problems (e.g., flaws on browser support) they faced so far and how they overcame them or, if unsolved, ask if others have solved them.

Final demo (Workshop 23.04.2008)

The exercise demos will be presented in Workshop on 23.4.2008 in seminar room A106. The demos should be final. The presentations will last 10 minutes plus 5 minutes discussion.

Final submission (Deadline 07.05.2008)

The final submission of the exercise has to be ready on 7th of May 2008. The final submission has to include:

Source code
Installation and execution instructions
List of used software
Short description of functionality

NOTE: The source code can be made clearer and better commented for the final submission, but all the features must be present already on the workshop.

Timetable

The weekly meetings take place on Wednesdays in seminar room T5. The first meeting is on 23.1.2008. A timetable of the course is given below.

Date	Event	Topic
23.01.	Lecture	General Arrangements (Mikko Pohja)
28.01.	Deadline	Presentation Topic Selection
30.01.	Lecture	Widgets (Mikko Pohja)
06.02.	Lecture	Compound Document Formats (Petri Vuorimaa)
12.02	Deadline	Exercise Topic Selection
13.02.	Deadline	Presentation Pre-study
13.02.	Lecture	Different approaches to Web UI authoring: XForms and HTML5 (Mikko Honkala, Nokia)
20.02.	Lecture	Time and animations in Web Applications (Guido Grassel, Nokia)
27.02.	Deadline	Exercise Work Plan
05.03.	Lecture	SVG (Ossi Nykänen, TUT) NOTE: Lecture begins at 16:45.
19.03.	Presentation	Mid-term Demo and Experience Exchange Session
02.04.	Deadline	Final Slides
23.04.	Presentation	Workshop (approx. from 9:00 to 17:00)
07.05.	Deadline	Final Version of the Exercise

Workshop

The presentations and exercises are presented at the end of the course in a full-day workshop on 23.04.2008 in seminar room A106. Each group is assigned an opponent group, who will comment the presentation in addition to the course personnel. The opponents have to prepare 2-3 questions both about the presentation and the exercise.

Each group should first present their presentation (max 20+5 minutes) and then their exercise demo (max 10+5 minutes). The timetable of the workshop is given in the table below.

Time	Topic	Group	Opponents
9:00	Organization
9:15	AJAX	Tapani Niemi Antti Kauhanen	Lei, Xuan
9:55	AJAX Toolkits	Miiku Jaakkola Ren Hai	Stenman, Lavi
10:35	Break
10:50	XPath	Peter Silon Abu Rashid	Rantala, Viitanen
11:30	Window object	Otto Miettinen Mikko Lampi	Sanz, Llorca
12:10	Lunch break
13:00	XBL 2.0	Juho Rutila	Silon, Rashid
13:40	OpenLaszlo	Ville Rantala Jani Viitanen	Miettinen, Lampi
14:20	Break
14:35	XAML	José Raúl Benito Sanz Jordi Gil Llorca	Niemi, Kauhanen
15:15	Flex	Jing LEI Zhiyi XUAN	Jaakkola, Hai
15:55-16:35	Web Mashups	Jenni Stenman Mikael Lavi	Rutila

Grading

The grading of the course will be based on presentation, exercise, and participation. The final grade is a weighted average of:

40% Presentation
40% Exercise
20% Participation

The presentations will be graded based on the quality of the oral presentations, structure of the presentations, and quality of the references. The exercises will be graded based on the difficulty of the topic, the amount of work (i.e., how the group has used their time and resources), completeness, originality and elegance of the implementation, and the included documentation. Quality is more important than quantity. The participation will graded based on the number of attended weekly meetings (i.e., lectures, presentations, etc.). The workshops are obligatory.

Personnel

The course personnel are:

Professor Petri Vuorimaa

Email Petri.Vuorimaa(at)tml.hut.fi
Tel. 09-451 4794
Room B121

Researcher Mikko Pohja

Email Mikko.Pohja(at)hut.fi
Tel. 09-451 5260
Room B131

Researcher Alessandro Cogliati

Email Alessandro.Cogliati(at)tml.hut.fi
Tel. 09-451 6230
Room B133

Old Pages

Old course web pages are available here:

2007
2006