Approaches To Web Site Development For The 21st Century

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Approaches To Web Site Development For The 21st
Century

• Brian Kelly
• UK Web FocusUKOLN
• University of Bath
• Bath, BA2 7AY

Email B.Kelly_at_ukoln.ac.uk URL http//www.ukoln.ac.
uk/
UKOLN is supported by
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Why Am I Here?

• Why have you invited me to Leeds?
• What do you want to get out of todays seminar?

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Contents

• Where Are We Now?
• Standards and the Web
• The Original Web Architecture
• Architectural Developments
• Deployment Issues
• Discussion

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About Me

• Brian Kelly
• UK Web Focus a JISC-funded post to advise HE
  and FE communities on Web developments
• Based in UKOLN - a national focus of expertise in
  digital information management based at the
  University of Bath
• Involved in Web since 1993, while working in
  Computing Service at University of Leeds
• Close links with Computing Service and Library
  communities

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The Web At Leeds
History

• By the end of 1994
• Web services provided by Arts depts
• Web used by research community (preprints by
  Chemistry dept)
• Web used in teaching learning (initially in
  Chemistry, then Web wins TLTP shootout)
• Web used for admin and marketing
• Involvement in Web research (Andrew Cole et al)
• Central support from UCS
• Political support from PVC-IT

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What Happened?

• By the mid 1990s Leeds University was in a
  position to exploit the potential of the Web
• Did it?
• If not, why not?

Exploitation
Who Was To Blame?
The UCS
The SLAs the funding model
Personalities involved
Failure of communications
Other reasons
The users
The PVCs
Lack of strategic thinking
Are you likely to make the same mistakes again?
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The Web At Leeds Today
Benchmarking Results For Leeds
Exercise Result Nos. of Web servers 115 Nos. of
pages indexed by AV 34,932 Size of entry
point 30.93 Kb (Bobby) 70,309 b
(NetMechanic) Nos. of links to main Web
site 21,561 Nos. of links to all
sites 431,172 Site accessibility Accessibility
issues
Numbers may be interesting, but are more useful
when (a) measured over time and (b) compared with
peers (e.g. other Yorkshire Univs). See
lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/webwatch/article
s/latestgt for comparisons See
lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/seminars
/leeds-jul-2001/gt for above results
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Look Back at Web Conferences

• W3C Advisory Committee Meeting June 1998
• Held at CERN, Switzerland
• W3C staff and AC Reps (from computing companies)
  using mobile phone and laptop for Internet access
  during talks
• WWW9 Conference May 2000
• Laptop and mobile, digital cameras are mainstream
  (e.g. Weblogs for realtime trip reports)
• WWW10 Conference May 2001
• Wireless LANs and laptops
• Web access pervasive (free 5 mins at Heathrow,
  unlimited access throughout Hong Kong shopping
  malls, cafes, etc)

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About Our Community
Authoring Tools
Whats happening to HTML?
Database Integration
File formats
XML
Content Management Systems
Strategies
Shared Concerns
Resources
Maintenance
When is it going to stabilise?
Performance
Web browsers
Web Standards
Web Applications
Netscape or Microsoft?
Open source vs licensed apps
Leeds University is not alone as can be seen
from the themes addressed at annual Web
Management workshop
Intranets
Web Services
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Where Are We Now?

• Current position
• Awareness that resource management is critical?
• Integration with legacy systems?
• E-learning and e-business seen as important?
• But
• Have we yet grasped importance of pervasive
  networking?
• Is our institutional decision-making processes
  hindering developments? Will we lose out to
• Microsoft .net (or Suns ONE) and Web services
• Harvard-online, MIT-online, etc.
• Student Web sites, or Web services aimed at
  students
• Are we still too institution-centric, and missing
  out on distributed Web services?

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Standards, Architectures, Applications, Resources

• This talk touches on several areas

Architectures models for implementing systems
Standards concerned with protocols and file
formats
Which standards are applicable NT / UnixFile
system / database application HTML tools /
content management
Open standards vs. Proprietary HTML / XML vs.
PDF CSS / XSL vs. HTML
Applications software products used to implement
systems
Resources and Strategies financial staff
costs, prioritisation
Apache / IIS FrontPage / Dreamweaver Oracle /
SQLServer ColdFusion vs ASP
Development vs. Migration costs Use of in-house
expertise In-house vs. out-sourced Licensed vs.
open source
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How Does The Web Work?

• The Web has 3 fundamental concepts
• URLs addresses of resources
• HTTP dialogue between client and server
• HTML format of resources

1 User clicks on link to the address
(URL)http//www.netsoft.com/hello.html
The Netsoft home page
2 Browser converts link to HTTP command
(METHOD) Connect to computer at
www.netsoft.com GET /hello.html
Welcome to Netsoft
3 Remote computer sends file
ltHTMLgt ltTITLEgtWelcomelt/TITLEgt.. ltPgtWelcome to
ltBgtNetsoftlt/Bgt
Web server
Web Browser (client)
4 Local computer displays HTML file
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Acronym Soup

• The W3C acronym factory is very productive!

XLink
WML
RDF Schemas
CC/PP
XPointer
MathML
RSS
XML Schemas
RDF
XML
XSLT
UDDI
URL
SOAP
SVG
URI
HTML
WSDL
SMIL
DOI
CSS
Web Services
PNG
DOM
ECMAScript
WebCGM

• Oversimplified
• Not all are W3C
• Will not cover all!

XHTML
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Approaches To HTML

• Emphasis on managing HTML resources
  inappropriate
• HTML is an output format, which cannot easily be
  reused (e.g. WAP, e-Books, etc.)
• Need to manage HTML fragments (only partly
  achievable with SSIs)
• Need to manage collections of resources
• Need to have single master source of data
• Need to support new developments such as
  personalisation
• Difficult to integrate with new formats

• Issues
• Should we stop giving HTML courses?
• Should we stop buying HTML authoring tools?

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The CMS To The Rescue

• A CMS (Content Management System)
• Allows fragments to be managed
• Allows collections to be managed
• Allows resources to be stored in a neutral format
  (backend database)
• Allows resources to be reused
• Often provides access control
• Often provides workflow processes and project
  management

• Issues
• CMS can be expensive
• CMS can be free but have support implications
• Which one to choose?

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Standards

• Need for standards to provide
• Platform independence
• Application independence
• Avoidance of patented technologies
• Flexibility ("evolvability" - Tim Berners-Lee)
• Architectural integrity
• Long-term access to data
• Ideally look at standards first, then find
  applications which support the standards
• Difficult to achieve this ideal!

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XML

• XML
• Extensible Markup Language
• A lightweight SGML designed for network use
• Addresses HTML's lack of evolvability
• Arbitrary elements can be defined
  (ltSTUDENT-NUMBERgt, ltPART-NOgt, etc)
• Agreement achieved quickly - XML 1.0 became W3C
  Recommendation in Feb 1998
• Support from industry (SGML vendors, Microsoft,
  etc.)
• Support in latest versions of Web browsers

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XML Concepts

• Well-formed XML resources
• Make end-tags explicit ltligt...lt/ligt
• Make empty elements explicit ltimg ... /gt
• Quote attributes ltimg src"logo.gif" height"20"
• Use consistent upper/lower case
• XML Namespaces
• Mechanism for ensuring unique XML elements
• lt?xmlnamespace ns"http//foo.org/1998-001"
  prefix"i"gt
• ltpgtInsert ltiPARTgtM-471lt/iPARTgtlt/pgt

There are several other XML goodies, such as
XLink, XPointer, XSLT, etc which arent covered
in this talk
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XHTML

• XHTML
• Extensible Hypertext Markup Language
• HTML represented in XML
• Some small changes to HTML
• Elements in lowercase (ltpgt not ltPgt)
• Attributes must be quoted (ltimg src"logo"
  height"50"gt
• Elements must be closed (lt p gt..lt/ p gt)
• Empty elements must be closed (ltimg src"logo" .
  /gt)
• Gain benefits from XML
• Tools available (e.g. HTML-Kit from
  http//www.chami.com/html-kit/)
• See lthttp//www.webreference.com/xml/column6/gt,
  lthttp//groups.yahoo.com/group/XHTML-L/gt and
  lthttp//www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue27/web-focus/gt

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Position Today

• What should we be doing today?
• Move away from creating new content in HTML
• Move to XHTML as part of the migration
• Deploying XML applications
• Storing structured information in a neutral
  database
• Using a CMS to manage our content
• Deploying B2B applications to avoid human
  bottleneck (such as RSS, )

Note that these are aspirations. We will, of
course, be constrained by existing systems,
resource implications, vested interests, inertia,
etc.
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RSS Automated News Feeds

• RSS (Rich / RDF Site Summary)
• Now an RDF application
• Used for news feeds
• Lightweight approach we should be investigating

UKOLN RSS tool at lthttp//rssxpress.ukoln.ac.uk/gt.
Note this service uses CGI a JavaScript
solution is also being developed. See
lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops
/webmaster-2001/sessions.htmlb5gt for exercises.
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Model For News Feeds
RSS
RSS
Community(e.g. MIDAS)
Institution (e.g. Bath)
Zope CMS outputs to RSS XHTML
XHTML converted to RSS

• Good For User
• The end user can choose her news feeds, including
  local news, news from JISC services and news from
  third parties
• Good For Service
• The service can chose its own information
• flow model. Its news is disseminated
  automatically.

RSS
External(e.g. BBC)
Structured database converted to RSS
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What About Tomorrow?

• Two interesting areas
• The Semantic Web
• Will allow intelligent agents to know about
  resources
• AI and ontologists meet the Web
• Uses RDF (Resource Description Framework) W3Cs
  framework for metadata
• Some concerns over scale of problem
• See lthttp//www.w3.org/2001/sw/gt
• Web Services
• One of the highlights of the recent WWW10
  conference

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Web Services

• The Web
• Initially used for viewing static resources
• Then interactive services built (e.g. e-learning)
• We now want
• Programmable Web services which can be used by
  other Web services using standards Web protocols

We have experience of the first generation of
externally-hosted Web services (stats services,
voting systems, etc.) - see lthttp//www.ariadne.a
c.uk/issue23/web-focus/gt. The next generation
will be programmable and machine-understandable No
te that concerns over outsourcing may be an issue
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Example

• Some examples at gotdotnet.com
• Mailsender
• Thumbnail Generator
• Concepts been around for some time (see Auditing
  Evaluating Web Sites workshop)
• Now being standardised (UDDI, WSDL, )

http//www.gotdotnet.com/playground/services/thum
bnailgen.aspx
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Weve Been Here Before

• Reusable components available on the network
• Sounds like COM/DCOM, CORBA, etc. for reusable
  program components
• Reusable network services
• Sounds like JISCmail, RDN, EDINA, MIMAS, BIDS,
  Mirror Service and other JISC Services

• Web Services And UK HE / FE Communities
• Sounds like a great idea
• Weve the organisational framework to develop
  national services (JISC, etc.)
• Weve got the network
• Weve a community which is willing to exploit
  centrally-provided services and wants to avoid
  reinventing the wheel (havent we?)

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Currently...
Local content
National content
International content
How many local Web servers?
We should be moving away from providing separate
Web services with their own interfaces
End user
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Currently...
Local content
National content
International content
Collection Description(e.g. Agora)
User Profile(e.g. Headline)
Agora and headline are eLib Hybrid libraries
Authentication (Athens)
and separate metadata repositories and access
services (which are sometimes centralised)

• End user

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Future...
Content
Metadata Services / Access Services
Application Services
Collection description
Bookmarks
Brokered access provide byinstitutional
portal (MLE, )
User profile
Spell-checker
Authentication
.. and move to Web-accessible,
machine-understandable Web services as well as
seamless access to content
End user
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Thoughts on Applications
http//manila.userland.com/

• Today
• Dreamveaver vs FrontPage vs
• Another Approach
• Web-based authoring / CMS tools (e.g. Manilla,
  etc.)

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Thoughts on Architectures
Formats for devices used by end users

• XHTML
• WML
• Open-Ebooks
• PDF

XML
XSLT
RDBMS

• RSS
• RDF
• HERO DTD
• SVG
• IMS
• SMIL

Formats for reuse by other applications
Scripts Export functions
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Thoughts On Collaboration

• Some thoughts on collaboration
• You cant do it all on your own
• Attendance at Institutional Web Management
  Workshop may be useful
• Are there regional meetings for Web Managers?
• Benchmarking exercise and followup discussions
  might be useful in a regional context
• Some thoughts on national initiatives
• Make sure you exploit deliverables from JISC and
  other national initiatives
• Look to participate in national initiatives

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Conclusions

• To conclude
• HTML wont do the job
• XHTML is a useful transition
• Well need a CMS to manage richly functional
  institutional Web services
• Web services should be important and we
  shouldnt be too concerned about using remote
  services
• Standards are important
• You cant do it all yourself!

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Discussion

• Time for questions and general discussion