Plans for the rest of the semester

Based on the analysis of current students' backgroounds, skills, and computing environments the plan for the rest of the semester is the following:

This week you will deal with XML as a basis for many Web communication methods and protocols which together with refreshed HTML creates the foundation of the main information formats pushed over HTTP. After that we get into CSS styling to see how they can be applied to HTML and XML allowing to separate Web design aspects (pretty looks) from Web development (basic functionality). Then different people/departments can handle these issues separately.

After that we get into JavaScript to learn popular client-side development technologies and how JavaScript can be applied to XML and HTML documents. After that you will move to Ajax to learn how the previously learned technologies can be enhanced by more advanced client-server interactions where a page will be seen not as a document but a number of rather independent action parts with each allowed to communicate with servers whenever the situation calls for it without complete page reloading or other parts' participation.

After that we move to the server side of the development learning PHP and MySQL that can not only enhance the power of asynchronous communications of AJAX but give you the full spectrum of development tools includeing both client- and server-side.