Description
Features of the Book
To help students master the fundamentals of web development, this book has the following features:
■ Covers both the concepts and the practice of the entire scope of web development. Web development can be a difficult subject to teach because
it involves covering a wide range of theoretical material that is technology independent as well as practical material that is very specific to a particular technology. This book comprehensively covers both the conceptual and practical side of the entire gamut of the web development world.
■ Focused on the web development reality of today’s world and in anticipation of future trends. The world of web development has changed remarkably in the past decade. For instance, fewer and fewer sites are being created from scratch; instead, a great deal of current web development makes use of existing sophisticated frameworks and environments such as jQuery, WordPress, HTML5, and Facebook. We believe it is important to integrate this new world of web development into any web development textbook.
■ Sophisticated, realistic, and engaging case studies. Rather than using simplistic “Hello World” style web projects, this book makes extensive use of three case studies: an art store, a travel photo sharing community, and a customer relations management system. For all the case studies, supporting material such as the business cases, use cases, design documentation, visual design, images, and databases are included. We have found that students are more enthusiastic and thus work significantly harder with attractive and realistic cases.
■ Comprehensive coverage of a modern Internet development platform. In order to create any kind of realistic Internet application, readers require detailed knowledge of and practice with a single specific Internet development platform. This book covers HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and the LAMP stack (that is, Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP). Other important technologies covered include jQuery, XML, WordPress, Bootstrap, and a variety of third-party APIs that include Facebook, Twitter, and Google and Bing Maps.
■ Content presentation suitable for visually oriented learners. As long-time instructors, the authors are well aware that today’s students are often extremely reluctant to read long blocks of text. As a result, we have tried to make the content visually pleasing and to explain complicated ideas not only through text but also through diagrams.
■ Content that is the result of over twenty years of classroom experience (in college, university, and adult continuing education settings) teaching web development. The book’s content also reflects the authors’ deep experience engaging in web development work for a variety of international clients.
■ Tutorial-driven programming content available online. Rather than using long programming listings to teach ideas and techniques, this book uses
a combination of illustrations, short color-coded listings, and separate tutorial exercises. These step-by-step tutorials are not contained within the book, but are available online at www.pearsonhighered.com/connolly-hoar. Throughout the book you will find frequent links to these tutorial exercises.
■ Complete pedagogical features for the student. Each chapter includes learning objectives, margin notes, links to step-by-step tutorials, advanced tips, keyword highlights, end-of-chapter review questions, and three different case study exercises.