Each project group is responsible for installing, demonstrating and evaluating a particular web technology. This can be done on the group web server provided in CSIL.
You should focus on the overall aspects of the tool, as opposed to lists of features.
Some notes on choosing topics have been posted. As they are determined, presentation topics and dates will be posted as well.
Deliverables
| Item | Weight | Date | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Demonstration Web Site | 7% | Week 8 | |
| Written Comparison | 8% | Week 8 | |
| Presentation | 8% | Weeks 7–8 | (during lectures) |
| Presentation summaries | 2% | Week 8 | (individual marks) |
| Total | 25% |
The groups will present in a randomly generated order.
It is expected that all group members will complete an approximately equal share of the technology evaluation.
Demonstration Web Site
Construct a web site that illustrates the technology you have chosen in an application of your choice.
Your demonstration web site can be used to support your presentation and written evaluation. Since your written evaluation is web-based, it may make sense to link to relevant parts of your demonstration site.
In most cases, you should deploy the demo site on your group's web server. If that is not possible for some reason (likely because the technology cannot be installed on Linux), you can use another server: talk to Allen for details/info.
Written Comparison
Write an evaluation summarizing the technology you have chosen and compare it with at least n-1 comparable technology alternatives suitable for similar applications (where n is your group size). This evaluation should be roughly 200n words in length. It should be written in valid HTML and posted on your web site.
The definition of “similar applications” depends on your chosen technology, and could be interpreted quite broadly if necessary.
You should focus on the overall aspects of the tool, as opposed to lists of features.
Presentation
You will be responsible for a presentation that demonstrates the technology you have chosen. The presentation should be no longer than 20 minutes, including some time for questions.
The presentations will begin in lecture in early February.
The presentation should give overview of the tool to a technical audience (the class). For example, since the audience is generally looking at the technology from the perspective of developers, it's reasonable to show code and technical features. Don't focus too much on your comparison here, since the presentations of the other groups will contrast other technologies.
Try to give the class good tools by which to evaluate your technology for use in a project (not necessarily the course project). You should tell us what sets this tool apart from others and give us an idea of when we would want to use it to solve a problem.
You should focus on questions like (but not limited to) these: Why is X useful? What kinds of problems does X solve well? What makes X cool? Does X have surprising features?
Note that explaining the highlights of a technology in a reasonable way in 20 minutes is not easy. It requires a fairly deep understanding of the technology, and certainly more than reading the “about” page on their web site.
Presentation Summaries
You will be responsible for submitting short written summaries of the presentations given by the other groups.
Submitting
You will submit:
- The URL where we can find your demo site (on your group's web server).
- An archive (TGZ, ZIP, RAR) file containing the source code for your site.
- [optional] A plain text file
about.txtcontaining any usernames/passwords we need to fully explore the system, as well as any comments you want to make about how the pages were created and what we should look for. - The URL of your written comparison.
- Written presentation summaries - done in class, not submitted online.
Submit it through the Course Management System.