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Rich Internet Applications with Ajax

Dates:
June 7-11, 2010

Time:
TBD

Instructor:
Marty Hall

Location:
Dorsey Center, Elkridge, MD

Tuition:
The five-day course costs $2,395 per student and includes an extensive course notebook, a commercial textbook, exercises, exercise solutions, breakfast, snacks, and lunch.

How to Register:
Submit Registration Form PDF version link opens an adobe pdf file (286 KB) by fax at 410.579.8049, email a scanned copy, or by USPS mail. If you register for more than one non-credit course during the Spring 2010 semester or send more than one student from the same organization, enter "Multiple" as the discount code on the registration form PDF version link opens an adobe pdf file (286 KB) and subtract $200 per person per course. Bonus: Register at least two weeks in advance and receive a $50 gift certificate from amazon.com.

Course Description

"Ajax" designates the set of techniques that enable Web applications to asynchronously update small portions of the pages based on server-side data. First popularized by Google, these techniques are now being widely applied in Web applications, and increase the performance, flexibility, richness, and interactivity of Web sites and Web-based applications. However, Ajax programming is complex and poorly understood. This course gives a practical, hands-on introduction to the fundamentals of Ajax development. It covers foundational topics like JavaScript programming, core Ajax approaches, XML and JSON data handling, and Ajax development and debugging tools. It also covers more advanced topics like automatic JSON generation, JSON-RPC, and Ajax/JavaScript frameworks such as Prototype, jQuery, and Dojo. In each section, it gives details on the most important topics, surveys more advanced or lesser-used topics, stresses best practices, and gives plenty of working examples.

Prerequisites

The course consists of an approximately equal mixture of lecture and hands-on lab time and assumes that all students have strong Java skills and at least some previous experience with servlets and JSP. It does not assume any previous exposure to Ajax, nor does it presume JavaScript knowledge.

Syllabus

Please note that we are working with some of the attendees to finalize the topics, and there may still be some minor changes to this syllabus. There will be four topics per day, presented in lecture/lab format, with the time about evenly split between the lectures and the hands-on exercises. The topics are grouped below in general categories, not in chronological order. Also, please note the prerequisites above, where students are assumed to already have strong Java skills and at least some experience with Web apps in Java.

Review
  • Installing and running Web applications, JSP scripting, manipulating HTTP headers, the MVC architecture
Foundational Topics
  • Ajax Basics: Part I
  • Ajax Basics: Part II
  • Crash course on xhtml
  • Crash course on JavaScript: Part I
  • Crash course on JavaScript: Part II
  • Ajax Development and Debugging Tools
Data-Centric Ajax
  • Handling XML
  • Handling JSON
  • Handling variable-length Ajax data with JSTL
  • JSON generation libraries
  • JSON-RPC
JavaScript/Ajax Toolkits
  • Prototype (3 lectures)
  • jQuery (3 lectures)
  • Dojo (2 lectures)
Abstracting Ajax with JSP Custom Tags
  • Building JSP custom tag libraries
  • The AjaxTags library: basics
  • The AjaxTags library: advanced topics
Schedule: Spring 2010 Course Schedule by Program: Online Course Offerings: Graduate Information: