CMPSCI 120
Introduction to Problem Solving with the Internet
Fall 2007
Announcements
Administrivia
- Instructor: Phillip Kirlin (web,
email)
- Teaching assistant: Yariv Levy (email)
- Syllabus: (pdf)
- Class discussion list (main page,
OIT's page on mailing lists)
- Office hours
- Phil: Tuesdays, 12:45-1:45, LGRT 215 (Lederle Tower)
- Yariv: Wednesdays, 3:30-4:30, Computer Science Building common room (enter through main double doors,
immediately turn left, go down hallway to the end; common room is the open space with tables)
Homework
Please show your work when you complete the homework assignments. Partial credit cannot be given unless
your thought processes are illustrated.
- Homework 1, due September 20 (CNET Bandwidth Meter)
- Homework 2, due September 27
- Homework 3, due October 4 (eBay phishing email)
- Homework 4, due October 11
- Homework 5, due November 1
- Homework 6, due November 8
- Homework 7, due November 15 (multiplication
table, lettered table)
- Homework 8, due December 6
- Homework 9, due December 13 (template)
Exams
- Exam 1: October 11 (in class) (sample exam)
- Exam 2: November 15 (in class) (sample exam, skip questions
9 and 11; see also more sample questions)
- Exam 3: Tuesday, December 18, 10:30am, ECSC 119 (Engineering & Computer Science Center)
Project
Grades
Grades are posted online by the alias you gave on the survey
taken on the first day of class.
Classes
Warning about the class notes: The notes linked below are my own shorthand notes I use for teaching each class. By
popular demand, I've posted them here. Use them at your own risk. I make no guarantees that the class notes will tell
you everything we discussed that day. The textbook, on the other hand, has a better chance of this, though we do discuss
some topics that aren't in the textbook. You may also find the PowerPoint slides for the textbook useful; they are available
at the book's webpage (make sure to click on the "third
edition" graphic!).
Textbook section numbers prefaced by "WEB" refer to Web 101. Section numbers prefaced by "JS" refer to
JavaScript by Example.
- September 4 (notes from all of chapter 1):
Introduction, administrivia, computer architecture, CPU, memory and storage, bits and
bytes. Covers WEB1.1-1.3.
- September 6: history of the internet and the world wide web, hierarchical vs heterarchical
networks, robustness, IP addresses, DNS. Covers WEB1.4-1.6. History of internet not
in the book.
- September 11: Bandwidth, clients and servers, the world wide web (WWW), URLs, parts of a URL.
- September 13: OIT's web page server (webadmin.oit.umass.edu), basic UNIX commands, the nano text editor,
first webpage, basic HTML tags (4 required tags, bold, italics).
- September 18: (notes from all of chapter 2):
Started safety and privacy online, acceptable use policies, good and bad passwords, phishing/social
engineering. Covers WEB2.1-2.4.
- September 20: HTML validator, viewing the source of any webpage, HTML tags: p, br, pre, h1-h6, hr,
difference between formatting tags and semantic tags.
- September 25: identity theft, email viruses, hackers, firewalls, privacy policies, libel, threats
and harassment. Covers up through WEB2.11.
- September 27: HTML attributes, RGB colors, lists, font tag
- October 2: (notes from all of chapter 3): Finished up safety and privacy, started email
(WEB3).
- October 4: hyperlinks, absolute/relative URLs, more email from WEB3: TO/CC/BCC fields, POP and IMAP.
- October 9: No class (virtual Monday).
- October 11: Exam 1.
- October 16: (notes from all of chapter 4): Web 2.0 topics: blogs,
social networking websites.
- October 18: Adding images to your webpages.
- October 23: More Web 2.0 topics: wikis, folksonomies, mailing lists, message boards.
- October 25: Finished up images, started HTML tables.
- October 30: (notes from all of chapter 5): Searching the web
(WEB5).
- November 1: More HTML tables: padding, spacing, alignment, rowspan, colspan, background colors.
- November 6: (notes from "the internet and the law"): The internet and the law:
intellectual property, first amendment issues (not in book).
- November 8:
(notes from all of chapter 6)
(notes from all of chapter 7)
(notes from all of chapter 8): various types of software,
e-commerce, and encryption.
- November 13: Review.
- November 15: Exam 2.
- November 20: Cascading style sheets.
- November 22: No class (Thanksgiving)
- November 27: Introduction to JavaScript: covers parts of JS1-JS3 (read all).
- November 29: data types, literals, variables, comments, string concatenation, math operators
- December 4: calling functions, dialog boxes, the
if statement,
logical operators.
- December 6: parseFloat,
if/else,
if/else if/else,
switch,
while,
do/while. Covers into JS6.
Webpage Construction Resources
CMPSCI 120
