Web - XML - E-Learning

Objective
To explain the basics of Web technologies and their evolution through a high-level overview of the key terms and concepts, languages, architectures and tools.

Target audience
Corporate managers, communications managers and project managers.

Prerequisites
Basic knowledge of the Internet.

Topics covered

• Internet standards and protocols
• The Web development cycle: from initial requirements to a Website in production
• Ideal architectures for web applications
• Languages and technologies for the browser: HTML and XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, Document Object Model (DOM), Flash
• Rich Internet applications (RIA) and rich clients
• XML for data exchange in heterogeneous environments
• Web 2.0 and Ajax
• Server-side technologies: ASP, ASP.NET, Web Services, Java servlets, JSP, EJB, PHP, Ruby on Rails, etc.
• Application servers: J2EE and .NET
• Web site development tools
• Open-source solutions
• E-commerce

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to understand the concepts and principles at the heart of Web 2.0.

Target audience
Corporate business managers, communication directors, project managers and Web developers.

Prerequisites
Experience with Web browsing; familiarity with Web technologies (Course WE129) is recommended.

Topics covered

• Examples of Web 2.0
• Overview of Web 2.0 concepts and general characteristics
• Providing a user interface experience that is richer, more ergonomic and flows more naturally
• Development of a collaborative approach
• Basic technologies used in Web 2.0 (XML, Web Services, syndication with threads, RSS/Atom, AJAX, microformats, etc.)
• The proliferation of APIs
• Economic, sociological, ergonomic and technical issues
• Blogs and wikis
• Labelling and tag clouds
• The architecture of social information
• Issues related to author's rights, and the Creative Commons license
• The future of Web 2.0

Accredited course.
6 PDU

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to describe the principles of Web content management, and to establish requirements for selecting an open source content management system (CMS).

Target audience
Anyone mandated with managing the implementation of a Web content management system (CMS).

Prerequisites
Basic knowledge of the Internet and of Website development.

Topics covered

• Definitions and problems
• Web content management from a global perspective: document management, knowledge management, digital asset management, business content management, etc.
• Hard and soft benefits of content management systems (CMS)
• Web content lifecycle
• Functional domains: role management, content acquisition, tagging, workflow, template creation and management, versioning, localization, publication, indexing and searching, caching and replication, syndication and personalization
• High level analysis: weighing the requirements
• Best practices and pitfalls
• Live demonstration of open source solutions : TYPO3, SPIP, Joomla! and Zope
• Presenting an open source solution
• Criteria for the choice of a solution
• Do-it-yourself solutions vs. acquisition: the big dilemma

Accredited course.
6 PDU

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to describe the essential features of XML by means of a high-level overview of the key terms and concepts, the syntax of the language, relevant architectures and available tools.

Target audience
Information specialists, project managers, content architects, technical editors and content creation programmers.

Prerequisites
Basic knowledge of information technologies.

Topics covered

• Basic concepts and the importance of meta-data
• Relationship with HTML, SGML, Java et .NET
• Reasons for upgrading from HTML to XHTML
• Well-formed documents: XML syntax and parsers
• Structuring and validating data with document type definitions (DTDs) and W3C schemas
• Web XML publishing platforms
• Publishing XML content in different media using XSLT and XSL-FO
• XPath addressing
• Overview of XForms
• Web services using XML: SOAP, WSDL and UDDI
• Integration of XML with database and with existing applications
• The main XML tools available on the market

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to define the essential elements of E-Learning, to recognize the basic concepts, methods and techniques used, and to understand its strengths and weaknesses, with the goal of evaluating its potential use within

Target audience
Business managers, human resources directors, training personnel and project managers.

Prerequisites
None.

Topics covered

• The origins and evolution of E-Learning
• Overview of the principle terms and concepts
• Technologies used in E-Learning
• Traditional vs. on-line learning
• Characteristics of pedagogical design for E-Learning
• Implicit and explicit techniques for knowledge transfer
• Self-directed learning and motivation
• On-line communities devoted to E-Learning
• Approaches which combine traditional and on-line training
• Aligning an E-Learning strategy with the corporate vision
• Implementing an E-Learning program
• Strengths and weaknesses of E-Learning
• The future of E-Learning

Accredited course.
6 PDU

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to create Web pages containing text, hyperlinks, images and tables.

Target audience
Anyone wishing to publish information on the Internet or intranets.

Prerequisites
Basic knowledge of the Internet and familiarity with a text editor.

Topics covered

• HTML fundamentals: elements and attributes
• Migration toward XHTML
• Structure of HTML documents: head and body elements
• Text formatting using headings, paragraphs, line breaks, highlights ,list tags and pre-formatted elements
• Hyperlinks: URLs, relative and absolute anchors, external vs. internal links and named anchors
• Inserting images: supported formats and parameters
• Image transparency, animated and interlaced GIFs
• Change default colours, locally modify colours and manipulate the Web palette
• Control layout and design elements
• Control page layout using tables
• Introduction to forms

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to identify the principles used to build effective Web pages that grab the attention of the reader, and to apply and validate these principles by means of practical exercises..

Target audience
Communications managers, Webmasters and anyone involved in writing for a Website.

Prerequisites
Basic knowledge of the Internet and word processing.

Topics covered

• Basic principles of Website design
• Clarity and legibility issues
• Text conciseness and segmentation
• Simplification and accessibility issues
• Perspectives on content: global vs. detailed
• Classification of pages, navigation and action words
• Managing the space on screen
• Benefits and constraints of using hyperlinks
• Creating text and layout based on a service plan
• Adapting a paper document for Web-based presentation
• Integrating items to improve the visual impact of information
• Links between ergonomy, layout and editing
• The behaviour, needs and expectations of Web surfers
• Choosing a writing style
• Critical reviews of selected Websites
• Practical exercises

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to effectively manage all steps of Website design, from establishing needs to managing the site.

Target audience
Anyone in charge of managing a Website or intranet development project.

Prerequisites
Basic knowledge of the Internet.

Topics covered

• Characteristics of the medium
• Logistics and design
• Development phases: planning, functional specifications, architecture, modeling, interface design and scenario creation, dummy layout, programming of interactive components and output
• Content inventory
• Deployment, quality control, launch, training, documentation, promotion, evaluation and maintenance
• Basic rules of design for easy-to-manage Websites and intranets
• Various types of contracts
• Personnel involved in the process
• Costs to consider
• Characteristics of Web content management
• Case study

Accredited course.
12 PDU

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to describe the concepts involved in the management of an E-Learning project, and to define the policies and procedures needed to analyze, design, develop, manage and evaluate such projects.

Target audience
Anyone responsible for evaluating the feasibility and requirements for an E-Learning project, or for managing its development.

Prerequisites
None.

Topics covered

• The policies and procedures used in managing an E-Learning project
• Systematic analysis of requirements
• Project management applications
• Transferring training elements (classroom, work teams, coaching) to the E-Learning environment
• Aligning E-Learning strategies with the corporate vision
• Portal technologies: LMS, LCMS, etc.
• Training objectives and evaluation
• Scenario guides and templates
• Media resources: images, graphics, text, videos, animations
• International norms and standards: Scorm and Normetic
• Development phases, testing prototypes
• Planning and coordinating the delivery of training
• Procedures and schedules for updating E-Learning material

Accredited course.
12 PDU

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to build sophisticated Web pages using standards that lead to predictable behaviour in modern browsers.

Target audience
Web content programmers.

Prerequisites
Practical experience with HTML (Course WE106) and CSS style sheets (Course WE107).

Topics covered

• Illustration of best practices through CSS Zen Garden designs
• Main standards: XHTML for structure, CSS for presentation and ECMAScript for behaviour
• Transitional vs. strict approaches
• Using the div and span tags and the id attribute
• The various selectors in CSS style sheets and the specificity rules
• Redesigning a page using the transitional method
• Creating a style sheet for printing
• Modes (quirks, near-standard, standard) and DOCTYPE switching techniques
• Tricks for backward compatibility: two-stylesheet approaches and Tantek methods
• Creating hierarchical menus using embedded lists
• Absolute positioning without tables
• Liquid layout design
• The challenge of controlling font size
• Positioning mechanisms: relative, absolute, fixed and static

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to write a style sheet for a site and bind it to one or a set of documents

Target audience
Web designers and programmers.

Prerequisites
Practical experience with HTML (Course WE106) and JavaScript programming (Course WE105).

Topics covered

• Usefulness of Style Sheets
• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) model
• Measurement units
• The box model
• Methods for inserting style rules
• Typographic rules: margins, padding, indentation, font, text decoration and style
• Classes and pseudo-classes
• Hierarchical rules
• Installing simple style sheets for typographic control and installing complex sheets
• Rules for different media types
• Creating a style sheet for printing
• .

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to create well-designed Web pages, presentations and printed documents, based on the rules and principles of design.

Target audience
Anyone responsible for designing Web sites (HTML or Flash), printed documents, or PowerPoint presentations.

Prerequisites
Experience with desktop publishing software.

Topics covered

• Introduction to design
• The elements of design
• The principles of design
• The role of the designer
• Differences between design for the Web and design for printed material
• Exploring patterns and textures
• Classical rules for composition
• Using colour to create and improve designs
• Overview of typography
• Perfecting and polishing a design concept
• How to come up with ideas
• Tips and tricks for Web and print design

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to design and evaluate an ergonomic Web site.

Target audience
Anyone involved in designing, evaluating or defining requirements for ergonomic Web sites or user interfaces.

Prerequisites
Basic knowledge of the Internet.

Topics covered

• Introduction to ergonomic principles
• Success and quality criteria for Websites
• Factors which make a Web site attractive for users
• Assess the success of a Website via usability testing
• Ergonomic design: rules and practices
• Developing a user profile
• Information architecture
• The welcome page
• Surfing on a Website: portals, sub-sections and searching
• Concepts and features of e-commerce sites
• Factors which affect the conversion rate
• Establishing user confidence
• Effectively introducing products
• Making online ordering easy and intuitive for the customer
• Web 2.0 concepts
• Design methodologies and project management for an ergonomic Web site

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to register a Website with appropriate search engines and directories to improve the exposure of a business and its products and services on the Internet.

Target audience
Anyone responsible for creating or managing a Website.

Prerequisites
Knowing how to find information on the Internet.

Topics covered

• Implement a Website marketing strategy: targeting the audience, choosing keywords, modifying the HTML markup, and checking your ranking
• Search engines and directories: principles of operation, automatic vs. manual indexing and Web robots
• How the search engines determine rankings: criteria internal and external to the page
• Improving rankings by link expiry
• Identifying the factors that impede reference linking
• Presentation of Google tools that are useful for indexing Web sites and managing links
• Creation of XML site plans (originally Google sitemaps) that promote page discovery
• Sponsored links: auctions for words and expressions
• Other means of promoting a Website

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to apply and interpret web site performance measurement indicators, in order to improve the performance of your Web site.

Target audience
Marketing managers, Web managers and any other personnel involved in developing strategies for the Web.

Prerequisites
None.

Topics covered

• Definition of Web performance measurement
• Overview of the various methods for gathering raw performance data
• The most frequently used tools depending on the selected methods
• Differences between analysis of log files and analysis via JavaScript tags
• Introduction to the basic Web metrics
• Definition of the principal performance indicators based on business models
• Introduction to Google Analytics
• Introduction to tools for surveying and testing
• Encouraging a culture of measurement in the organization

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to implement a marketing campaign on the Internet using the most effective channels and approaches.

Target audience
Marketing and communications managers, Web managers and any other personnel involved in Web marketing.

Prerequisites
None.

Topics covered

• Building a Web marketing plan
• Calculating the ROI for a Web approach
• The effectiveness of the various display formats (banners, popups, etc.)
• Using video in advertising
• The blog as a marketing tool
• Aspects of social networks and their use in Web marketing (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)
• Creating microsites
• Using search engines
• Discount coupons, contests and other incentives
• The importance of home pages
• Getting your clients involved in your promotions

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to use Adobe Dreamweaver for developing Web sites.

Target audience
Those involved in the development of Web sites and Web content.

Prerequisites
Basic knowledge of the Internet. Knowledge of the HTML tag set and syntax is desirable.

Topics covered

• Getting started with Macromedia Dreamweaver: program features and options
• Adding content to a site: adding content, formatting document structure, formatting text, setting document properties and cleaning Microsoft Word HTML
• Linking documents: understanding links, linking to files, linking to named anchors and adding e-mail links
• Working with graphics: graphics on Web pages, placing graphics on the page, modifying image properties, creating image maps and adding Flash objects
• Designing pages using tables: structuring data with tables, importing tabular data, designing in layout view and using tracing Images
• Using templates and libraries: create site templates and use site library items
• Creating forms: understanding HTML forms, processing forms and setting navigation of the form
• Basic techniques for text layout using CSS
• Testing, deployment and maintenance: testing your site, file maintenance, connecting to a remote site and using find and replace
• Converting HTML to XHTML
• Search and replace: searching text, searching code, advanced searches in code

Note: The course is presented with Adobe Dreamweaver CS4

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to create Web animations with Adobe Flash.

Target audience
Illustrators, graphic artists and Web content developers.

Prerequisites
Basic knowledge of the Internet and knowledge of Web development concepts.

Topics covered

• Introduction to the technology and features of Adobe Flash
• Flexible Workspace: customizable for designers and developers
• Adjust colors and create effects like drop shadow, blur, glow, bevel, and gradient bevel
• Symbols: graphics, movie clips, and buttons
• Drawing tools: creating and modifying vector-based drawings
• Importing images and converting from raster to vector graphics
• Creating layers: creating, editing and properties
• Animation: frame by frame and tweening
• Distribute to layers: placing content in different layers automatically
• Sound and video: inserting, synchronizing and making effects
• Publishing Flash files and optimizing them for size and quality

Note: The course is presented with Adobe Flash CS4

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to create highly interactive animations using the programming capabilities of Adobe Flash.

Target audience
Graphic artists, illustrators and programmers involved in the development of Websites and Web content.

Prerequisites
Practical experience with Flash (Course MM202).

Topics covered

• Introduction to object-oriented programming
• Event handlers and buttons
• Managing keyboard events
• The dot syntax used in the ActionScript language
• The actions panel and its modes
• Creating pulldown menus
• Downloading external files and display lists
• Animation
• Creating an advanced download function
• Handling dynamic text
• Using components

Note: The course is presented with Adobe Flash CS4.

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to develop rich Internet applications using AJAX and jQuery

Target audience
Web application programmers (Internet and intranets).

Prerequisites
Practical experience with HTML (Course WE106), CSS style sheets (Course WE107) and JavaScript (Course WE105)

Topics covered

• Differences between the traditional Web model and the AJAX model
• How and when to provide rich Web interfaces
• How the XmlHttpRequest object works
• Analysis of AJAX applications on the Web: Flickr, Google Suggest, Google Maps, GMail, etc.
• Integrating the AJAX model with server environments such as J2EE, .NET and PHP
• Overview of the jQuery library, and a quick survey of some other popular libraries: Prototype, Yahoo UI, etc.
• Programming techniques for making RIA applications usable even in browsers that don't support AJAX
• Techniques for improving existing Web applications while reusing the existing code as much as possible
• Optimizing Web interfaces
• Practical exercise: development of an e-commerce site (e.g. Aamazon)

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to build a site accessible to all, but particularly those with physical disabilities.

Target audience
Web designers and programmers.

Prerequisites
Practical experience with HTML (Course WE106).

Topics covered

• Web accessibility: difficulties and benefits
• Link between Web standards and accessibility
• The various Web accessibility standards: section 508, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) from the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and the three conformance levels
• Making the site accessible: text, images, colors, stylesheets, navigation, tables and forms
• Using the tabindex and accesskey attributes
• Using features from Adobe Dreamweaver to create accessible pages
• Fixing a Web page to make it compliant to section 508 and WCAG level double-A
• Manually verifying the accessibility of a site
• Online tools to assess the accessibility of a Web site

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to create dynamic documents using PHP.

Target audience
Web content programmers.

Prerequisites
Knowledge of HTML (Course WE106) and a programming language. Some basic knowledge of SQL is an asset.

Topics covered

• Presentation and installation of EasyPHP
• Inserting a PHP script in an HTML page
• Variables, constants and data types
• Operators, conditional expressions, loops and functions
• Reading input from the user
• Useful functions for Web development
• Indexed and associative arrays, sorting functions
• Strings and regular expressions
• Date and time functions
• Sending e-mail with PHP
• Managing a MySQL database using phpMyAdmin
• Using a MySQL database: connecting and disconnecting, SQL queries, fetching results and handling errors
• Case study: a dynamic application with an embedded database

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to develop modular applications for the Web using advanced features of PHP 5 and associated tools.

Target audience
Web content programmers.

Prerequisites
Knowledge of PHP (Course WE121) or of an object-oriented programming language. Familiarity with XML is recommended (Course WE119 or course WE120).

Topics covered

• Sessions and user tracking
• Object-oriented concepts in PHP5 (polymorphism, inheritance, encapsulation, reflection, serialization)
• Handling errors with the try-catch construction
• Introduction to Web patterns (controllers, business objects, data mapping)
• Processing XML (the SimpleXML extension, XPath queries, server-side XSL transformations, the DOM XML extension)
• Using Web services with SOAP
• Unit tests with PHPUnit
• Documentation with phpDocumentor
• Extensions (PEAR and PECL)

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to create, validate and manipulate information in XML (eXtensible Markup Language) format, and to create and use XPath queries on XML documents.

Target audience
Content architects, programmers and content creators.

Prerequisites
Familiarity with the Internet and web site creation.

Topics covered

• Overview: XML vs. SGML vs. HTML
• The advantages of XHTML over HTML
• Well-formed XML: syntax and syntactical analyzers
• XML applications
• Information sources and tools for creating XML content
• Unicode and XML text
• Vocabularies and namespaces
• Valid XML: associating a document type definition (DTD) or a W3C schema with an XML document
• XPath: defining a path, the principal axes, predicates, selecting information and XPath functions

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to use XSLT to transform XML documents into XHTML for publishing as web pages.

Target audience
Web programmers, designers and content providers

Prerequisites
Familiarity with HTML (Course WE106) and XML (Course WE113)

Topics covered

• The components of an XSLT stylesheet
• The XSLT processing model, and XSLT templates
• Extracting content
• Conditions, branching, iterators, variables and parameter passing
• XSLT functions for generating unique ids, formatting numbers and accessing external XML documents
• Defining display formats for numbers
• Sorting
• Copying a subtree of nodes
• Including and importing an external XSLT stylesheet
• Transforming on the server side, or on the client side with a library

Objective
To provide the knowledge and skills required to create and use XML Schemas in the context of data exchange.

Target audience
Content architects and programmers.

Prerequisites
Knowledge of XML (Course WE133) and object-oriented programming principles is desirable.

Topics covered

• Lexical space and value space
• Predefined types in W3C Schemas and their facets
• Simple types: derivation by restriction
• Complex types: simple content (addition of attributes only) and complex content
• Complex content: particles, connectors (sequence, choice, all) and defining cardinality
• Derivation from complex types by extension and restriction
• Substitution groups
• Integrity constraints and key mechanisms
• Validating documents with a mixture of vocabularies
• Including schemas and redefinition
• Explicitly documenting a schema
• Modeling techniques: the Russian doll approach, flat catalogs, named complex types