• Extremely useful for figuring out what's going on "under the hood" of some website. You can use it to learn how to do something or find where an image or film is located, etc.

• Be careful when copying code; while markup itself cannot really be copyrighted, the design of a website and visual elements are considered to be intellectual property and a webpage author's exclusive use of it should be respected. You can use View Source to learn how to do certain things, but do NOT take that as a sign that you can just hijack everything you see.

• Defined as when the browser makes a request to the server and downloads a page and/or object that is already sitting there

• Javascript: a fully functional programming language that is interpreted entirely by the browser (aka, client-side). Can do just about anything.

  • Simple things, like toggling menus (http://satinroses.com/products/) or image rollovers (http://www.giantitp.com/index.html) ... or both! (http://www.reallifecomics.com/)

  • Random (likely irritating) animation effects (http://www.effectmaker.com/gallery/jsmatriximage/index.html)

  • Lightbox for image galleries: http://immigrationrelief.ucsdgames.com/?screenshots

• Flash (.swf) and Shockwave (.dcr): Steadily becoming outdated as a website medium. Better for content that is not time-dependent (games, movies, etc.)

  • Those dumb, addicting Flash games: http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/flowing/black.html

  • YouTube / Google Video / Flash movies

  • http://2advanced.com/ -- I lied, it IS still working!: DYING ART... for good reason.

• Java applets (.class): compiled Java programs that run within the browser

  • http://www.hostedstuff.com/games/slimeball/

• Defined as any site that uses a database to store their content and a scripting/programming language to produce the pages that users see

• http://tol1mac5.soe.berkeley.edu/~kass/day2/client-server-database.gif

• The vast majority of today's web is made up of dynamically generated webpages for sites like these: Amazon.com, Wikipedia, YouTube, MySpace, etc.

• Common scripting languages: PHP, Perl, ASP, JSP, ColdFusion, etc.

• You could actually use Javascript, but it's not a good idea security-wise. Also better to let the server handle the load, rather than forcing the client's computer to do work.

Flash, Shockwave and Java applets are all also capable of pulling information from a database and using it as their content. For example, a high scores list in a Flash game is probably storing and recalling that information in an external database. Tangible example: http://kuler.adobe.com/, http://wefeelfine.org/

• XML + Javascript ... not really a typical web app, but becoming an increasingly popular technology combination these days.

• Normally your web browser sends out just one request to a server, asking for a page and then loading it. You have to hit "refresh" in order for your browser to send out another request.

• The Javascript in an AJAX application, on the other hand, is constantly sending out requests to the server, only instead of asking for the whole page, it just asks for things that have changed. This results in a seemingly constant connection/communication between browser and server and a more fluid experience.

• MapBlast vs Google Maps