Lecture: The ‘DIY-web’: service oriented architecture (SOA); web services; widgets, gadgets, APIs, & mashups.
What is SOA?
Designing custom sites with widgets
GWT-Ext (Google Web Toolkit)
“GWT-Ext is a powerful widget library that provides rich widgets like Grid with sort, paging and filtering, Tree’s with Drag & Drop support, highly customizable ComboBoxes, Tab Panels, Menus & Toolbars, Dialogs, Forms and a lot more right out of the box with a powerful and easy to use API.” GWT-Ext is licensed under the LGPL v3.0.
» http://gwt-ext.com
WidgitBox
» http://www.widgitbox.com
Mashups and using mashup editors.
Multisource mashups; presentation mashups. Content mashups; functionality mashups; RSS. You are already used to the idea of ‘widgets’–you’ve used them in your WordPress blogs, drag-and-drop mini-applications that add functionality to your blog. This week we’ll look in more detail at how you can design and build custom web sites using mashups.
First, we’ll look at the simplest example of all, requiring absolutely no technical knowledge: Ning.com for creating ’social networks’. (Good alternatives would be Dolphin, Webs, or SynthSite.) We’ll create a sample network for this module.
Next, we’ll take a close look at some of the mashup editors listed at:
» http://chrishutchison.org/web2/web-20/mashup-editors/
… specifically:
- Google Mashup Editor [Tutorials]
- Yahoo! Pipes [Tutorials]
- Dapper [Video tutorial]
- Mooshup [User guide]
- OpenSAM [Tutorials]
- Wavemaker [Video tutorial] [User guide & Tutorial]
- openkapow [Tutorials]
- IBM QEDwiki [Tutorials]
Get a feel for what each of these do. (Note that most of this will require registration on your part, when you come to use them in the workshop.)
Finally, we’ll look more generally at some common APIs at WSfinder and ProgrammableWeb.
Workshop: in the workshop, and to be continued and completed as your second assignment for this module, you will [i] create a ’social network’ using Ning, and [ii] use a mashup editor to commence the design and build of a custom web site for some specific theme, topic, or purpose. You may use any of the applications and editors that we’ve viewed today, though obviously the more complex products are likely to attract the higher grades. A prototype made with Pipes, for example, will almost certainly be awarded a higher grade than one developed with Ning alone.
Begin the workshop by reading the introductory documentation and tutorials for each editor, and–where available–look at examples in demo galleries.
Readings:
Feiler, J. (2007). How to Do Everything with Web 2.0 Mashups. London: McGraw-Hill Osborne. ISBN: 0071496270. [Amazon]
Yee, R. (2008). Pro Web 2.0 Mashups: Remixing Data and Web Services. Apress. ISBN: 159059858X. [Amazon]
No Comments Yet