An example of what a website can become...

Hi, I helped a colleague out yesterday who was having trouble with his departmental website. On the face of it, it's a good site. It looks quite good and is fairly easy to navigate, although it has a low of content and could use a better menu system. What I found really interesting though was it's use of so many different server side programming langauges. The site generally uses ASP but some of it is written in Javascript which was never really used very much and some in VBScript which although was used greatly (and was the first language I learnt) is not used so much today since the release of ASP.Net.

There is also some CGI stuff using Perl which is completely outdated now. The most useful thing to do here would be to start again using PHP. The design could then be changed to give a better nav system and the current data still used since it is stored in databases. However, this would of course be at a cost but worth it if the site was required to expand.

So you see, by getting different developers to bolt new functionality onto a site you end up with a beast that is very hard to decipher. It's best to plan from the start what you want to do, how you want to do it and figure out as best you can what might need to be added to it in the future and work this in somehow. It's called scalability and is a very useful concept in web design.

Ok, that's enough of a rant for now. As I said the site doesn;t look to bad from the outside, but from a programming view point...

http://www.swslim.org.uk/

Ian

Facebook

One of the most used social networking sites on the web is Facebook. I'd say that well over half of all students use Facebook regularly and some instituations have even started setting up their won groups for freshers so that they can meet people via the site before ever setting foot at the university.

I'm currently creating the University of Exeter's first Facebook application to inform students of important information from the site's profile section. Since I imagine more students use Facebook than the University's own site, this seems like a good way to get our information across.

Facebook apps are written mostly in PHP and hosted on the developers own server. However, the real power of Facebook development coes from using the data provided by the site, such as profile information or friends details. This can be done by using FBML (Facebook Markup Language) and FQL (Facebook Query Language) which is run on a 'canvas' page. These pages can then update the info seen on the user's profile page itself and there is even a hack to be able to change all users profile pages who have the app installed. Very powerful stuff!

I'm continuing to develop this and meeting with other academics later this week. It has the go ahead from the head of school so expect the University of Exeter on a Facebook near you soon.

Ian

Start of the New Academic Year

Hi,

The new academic year is about to start and this year I've been asked to teach a new moddule - Talking Technology - which, as the name suggests, invites students to present a 30 minute seminar on an agreed topic chosen from a list of computing issues. The range of topics cover cyber terrorism, internet security, social networking sites and virtual worlds like Second Life (something that I've got to try...but have never quite found the time!).

I've also been put forward as an invigilator for our ECDL (European Computer Driving License) module which requires students to pass an copmputer based test in real time (as opposed to going away and completing it like an assignment).

Both of these courses are offered through CMIT, Creative Media and IT, who are based in the Queen's building on the mainsite so I'll be going up there quite regularly from now on.

So, with these new modules and my four distance learning courses I'll be very busy with teaching over the next two semesters. But, I wouldn't have it any other way!

Ian

Work Update - Web forms

Hi,

Now that things have quietened down during August, I've been left with a web project while my co-workers have hotfooted it out of the office to take advantage of the warmer weather.

The web project involves a set of forms, each of which send the user's input to a database before moving onto the next form. In subsequent forms the user is asked to choose some of the input from the previous forms and extend upon it or remove it from a summary that is compiled at the end.

So, I now have the task of designing the database structure before writing the code to save the input in the database and (this is the difficult bit) offering previous input in subsequent forms.

Believe it or not, this is an excellent task, one that stretches the web developer to use all of his or her knowledge. It's really chased the boredom away form the long summer days stuck in the office!

I'll let you know how I get on.

Ian

Visual Basic.NET

One of the modules I tutor is called 'Programming with Visual Basic.NET' and as the name implies, it covers all of the basics regarding the VB.NET programming language using the Visual Studio IDE. It's a good course and always attracts a lot of students, mostly due I think to the freely available IDE and the monopoly than Microsoft have on the worlds software applications.
You can use VB.NET to construct windows like applications and get them to interact with MS Office software such as Word and Excel. The language is also used in a slightly different form (Visual Basic for Application) in these MS Office applications themselves, particulalry in Access.

Anyway, due to a colleague's illness I've been marking the assignments for the 'Advanced Programming with Visual Bais.NET' module over the past few weeks which deals with connecting to databases and working with larger, multiform projects. It's taught me a lot more about the language and how powerful it is.

So, if you don't know VB.NET it's an excellent, versatile language to learn that can be used with to enhance any MS Office appliaction and more. Plus, there are plenty of jobs in it!

Ian

Book Review: DOM Scripting by Jeremy Keith

I've been looking for a new book for the 'Progrmaming with Javascript' module that I teach for the University of Exeter since the present course material is a little outdated and it's getting more and more difficult to update it every year.

After a great deal of research, the book I've chosen in DOM Scripting by Jeremy Keith. It's very up to date, even though it was released in 2005, and focuses on scripting in the Document Object Model rather than just teaching handy Javascript code like other books I studied.

The author begins by covering the basics of Javascript before launching into the DOM and using examples to build up your knowledge. Then the author describes some 'best practice' concepts and revisits the examples covered earlier to bring them into line. CSS is also covered later in the book and how this can be altered using Javascript and the DOM.

The whole book is only 12 chapters so the student will not be put off by the number of pages as in some textbooks.

Some points I particularly liked about this book are it's well designed examples (so many books use old designs with fonts like comic sans ms - urrrggghhh!), the use of getAttribute and setAttribute when accessing the elements on the doucment instead of the mor direct old fashioned methods and the understanding that Firefox and not Netscape is now the main contender to IE.

Worth a read if you want to further your Javascript skills!

Ian

Java Powerlinks for WebCT

OK, something I've been workig on that is quite interesting is a Java powerlink for Exeter University's WebCT VLE (Virual Learning Environment).

Essentially, a Powerlink is exactly that, a powerful link from the WebCT system to another bespoke system, bypassing the normal user login screens since the login details are taken directly from WebCT. Cool!

It's all written in Java in a particular way to work with the existing WebCT system, which is also written in Java. Since there are not many people at the university that know how to program in Java, I was given the task! The first thing I did was read the instruction manual and log on to the website. There's a whole site devoted to building Java Powerlinks for WebCT since the VLE is used extensively all over the world. On the site, developers from many different countries ask questions and use the resources provided to create their own powerlinks. As you can imagine, this made the job a lot easier!

It's being tested at the moment so I'll keep you updated as to it's progress.

Ian

I'm back

Hi,

After a manic start to the year including getting all of the new Distance Learning courses up and running for the end of January, marking assignments for the Exeter University modules and marking the Open University TMAs (Tutor Marked Assignments) plus an OU tutorial in March, things are finally starting to quiet down.

Hurrah!

I honestly cannot remember such a busy start to the year as this. Still, now that summer seems to have arrived, there should be time to look ahead and plan for the new academic year.

And do some more blogging too...watch this space!

Ian

The OU: Milton Keynes

Hi

I'm due to start tutoring the OU course: 'Putting Java to work' next month and as an induction all of the tutors for this new course were invited up to the OU headquarters in Milton Keynes.

Overall it was a very worthwhile experience. I was able to meet the course team, the staff tutors from Bristol including Barbara and Rita who iterviewed me in September and the other tutors including Anthony Lees who lives in Chudleigh and will be tutoring the Plymouth group. I've got the Bristol group.

So, I'm now looking forward to Saturday's new tutor induction in Taunton and then the start of the course on 3rd February!

Ian