Web Skills , Technologies, and the Industry

ITP 104

As a Medium 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.

As a Medium

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.

As a Medium

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?

A Social Phenomenon

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

A Social Phenomenon

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

A Social Phenomenon

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

A Social Phenomenon

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 Social Phenomenon

A whole crop of "mash up" , when Google opened its mapping functionality to everyone

What are some other popular Web 2.0 mash-ups?

A Social Phenomenon

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.

Technologies

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.

Technologies

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.

Technologies

Databases house much of the core information for most major sites.

Technologies

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.

Technologies 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.

Basic Web Technologies and Skillset Design

Graphic Production

Specialized graphic production Flash Video Mobile

Basic Web Technologies and Skillset 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

Basic Web Technologies and Skillset 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.

Basic Web Technologies and Skillset Database Design, Production,

Administration, Optimization (programming)

DB Web Development (Server-Side Scripting+SQL+DB)

Security

Working in the Industry 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

Working in the Industry 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.

Working in the Industry

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

References

Web Skills, Technologies, and the Industry Patrick Dent