User talk:Awp-wsu-aa

Web Applications

Web Applications are web-based applications that enable users to access software type programs online. With the Internet in its current state, these web applications are taking off at full speed and creating a new way for users to increase production and interact with one another. This paper discusses the history of web applications, starting from the creation of JavaScript as well as HTML, CSS, and Ajax. The functions of these technologies are described, as well as how they interact with one another to create a proper web application. Also described are the benefits and disadvantages of using web applications such as cost reductions and the reliance on an Internet connection.

In terms of a human’s life span, the Internet seems to be leaving its infancy and entering its early childhood. An increasing number of websites and web services are no longer just a bunch of interconnected webpages but full fledge applications that live on the Internet. For the most part, the current model of websites (connected webpages) is good enough for most sites depending on their purpose but this new age of internet users need web based application structure for the experience they are looking for. Also we cannot forget to mention that the days of the stand alone desktop application are numbered and need to make way for the new implementation of applications over the web that make greater use of data, add social interaction, and up to the minute updates in ways desktop applications never could. With greater advancements in programming techniques, growing bandwidth across the world, and ever increasing number of devices connecting to the Internet on a number of different platforms i.e. desktop/laptops, mobile phones, tablets, etc., the capabilities and potential for how data is transmitted and used over the internet is far exceeding its initial implantation. In this paper, we will discuss the potential usages of web applications, their history, why they are important, and their future.

Currently, web based applications seems to be the wave of future but like most new technologies they had a very rough start. At first, each application had to be installed to have its own client program to display the user interface because browsers at the time were not strong enough to handle their requests. During this stage of web applications, they were not able to show off their full benefit of being “light weight applications” and because of the fact that for developers to make updates to their application, the user would have to download the update and install it on their machines. This could be a tedious task to update the smallest of changes and decrease productivity and sometimes in terms of a business, be quiet costly. In 1995, Netscape pushed the envelope when it came to web applications with the creation of JavaScript. Netscape’s new technology allowed programmers more flexibility by allowing people to add more interactivity on the client side. In 1996, Macromedia created another technology called Flash, which was a huge advancement for the world of web applications. Flash is an animation player that uses vector graphics to display animations on a web page. It is a plug-in that not only displays those graphics but also allows interaction on the client side. Servlets is a technology developed by Sun Microsystems in 1997 to combat CGI scripts. In a more efficient way, it uses Java to generate the HTML code for web pages by sending lightweight java objects to the server in response to each request. These technologies paved the way for web applications to pick up steam and really move forward on the Internet.

The technologies used to develop these web-based applications all share a common ground of having HTML be their main markup language. These are many different languages that make up web applications but we’re only going to cover the most popular and influential languages. Other tools used in the development cycle have changed over time and if the trend continues in the way it has, the current set of popular tools to develop web applications will see their demise as well. One problem with HTML is that it is unable to generate dynamic webpages. To make any changes to the HTML code, the entire page would have to be regenerated. The early solution to this problem was common gateway interface scripts popularly known as CGI scripts to get dynamic content in your webpage. CGI scripts can be written in any programming language but are mainly written in languages like Perl or PHP (scripting languages). These scripts would send requests to the server on a constant basis, which would make things very difficult on the server over time. This got developers to start developing new ways to handle server requests. Technologies like Servlet communicate directly with the web server to rid of the middleman, which really simplifies the specific operation. When a request is made with a CGI script, a new process is requested to the server no matter how minuscule or the request is or if it is the same request over and over again. This process can cause a lot strain on the system. The Servlet embeds the process with a Java thread within the server’s process so it doesn’t keep copying over the same script. Servlets stores requests in the server’s memory to handle this problem of repeated CGI scripts. Plus, just one post back from the server takes care of all the multiple requests. This new process of Servlets really helps bring down the usage of memory and the management of data between the server and client. Although the technologies have changed over time in the development of web applications, some of the core building blocks remain to be the same and don’t seem to have a near end in sight. HTML, CSS, dynamic programming languages, and different API’s seem to be the modern day building blocks in creating web applications. HTML is the primary markup language of the web and will most likely continue to be so for many years to come. The nuts and bolts of almost anything on the web are wrapped in HTML code to be handled by web browsers and servers. Although the capabilities of HTML solely by itself are not as powerful and pleasing to the eye as its counter parts, it hold a nice environment for them all to play nicely with one another. Cascading Style Sheets, popularly known as CSS, is what makes the web its shine and feel. Although there is other ways make web pages and applications look good, the main way to ensure cross browser contingency is through CSS (not without a bit of tinkering around). CSS is implemented in two different ways, inline styles and external style sheets. With the inline styles, the web designer/developer declares and defines their design specifications within a single file, while external styles use a separate file to generate the style of the website. External style sheets are generally the most preferred method of implementing CSS due to the ability to edit a single file and change the way an entire web page looks. Using an external style sheet also allows other users to more easily change code so that they don’t have to dig around within the body of the website to make changes to its appearance. Like we mentioned before, a huge influence on web applications was JavaScript, which we’ll talk about in more detail. JavaScript’s real name is ECMAScript and gives HTML designers a tool for programming. It has many uses and can put dynamic elements into a standard HTML page, it can react to events, and can read and write HTML events. Not only is JavaScript used for interaction from a interface point of view but can also be used to detect the visitor’s browser in order to make sure the page displays properly and be used to create cookies. The creation of cookies is vital so that a web page using larger elements are able to load faster when the visitor views the page next. A lot of the time people get Java and JavaScript mixed up when they are, in fact, different languages. JavaScript is commonly used in conjunction with HTML and CSS in order to allow styled items animate. Web browsers are the most common environments for JavaScript to exist by use of the public API in order to create a host object, which reflects DOM (a cross platform / language independent convention used to interact with HTML, XHTML, and XML document objects) into JavaScript. Ajax, as mentioned earlier, is another one of those commonly used web technologies used with web applications. Ajax allows web applications to get data from a server in the background (asynchronously). The beauty of Ajax is that the data is retrieved in the background and does not interfere with the display of the webpage by any means or even the behavior of the website. Generally, Ajax uses XMLHttpRequest to retrieve the necessary data needed. Unlike other web technologies, Ajax is actually a grouping of other technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which we had talked about before. Technologies such as DHTML and LAMP work in the same way.


 * Hello,


 * This is a good beginning. You may continue forward by breaking your writing into many little pieces, say a few words or at most one short sentence in each piece.  Then locate and read some existing articles on wiki that are somehow relevant to a given piece.  Very Carefully and patiently, decide where in a particular related wiki article your first short piece fits.  Add that short piece right in there at its most appropriate point and place in that article, of course.  Continue the same way for your other pieces.


 * Did you notice articles have a "discussion" page where previous contributors have communicated things. It's always a good idea to have at least an overal observation of what are said, before you apply a new modification to the article.


 * Thank you, Awp-wsu-ja (talk) 11:19, 12 May 2011 (UTC)