Modern Web Technologies and Sustainability

This course explores how different technological trends can be used to create low-carbon footprint web solutions.

In addition to technical topics, students will learn how to communicate their ideas effectively by writing a short paper that simulates a research article, supported by an introductory lecture on academic writing.

The course focuses on sustainable development practices across areas such as performance, accessibility and inclusivity, green hosting, carbon emissions, maintainability, and user experience.

Topics

• Sustainable web design
• Auditing, performance, and optimisation
• Technologies (e.g., static site generators, headless CMS, progressive web apps)
• Additional development tools

Knowledge

The student knows

• The relation between development decisions and their environmental impact.
• The spectrum of technological choices available for the development of Web resources.
• The trade-offs between server-side and client-side generation of Web applications.
• The impact of various deployment and hosting techniques on the consumption of resources.
• Various facets of sustainability along which a Web application can be evaluated.

Skill

The student can:

• Develop Web applications using different paradigms and technologies.
• Measure, recognise and fix performance and sustainability issues

General Competence

The student, upon completion of this course, will know how to:

• Know the different trade-offs in terms of sustainability of various paradigms for the development of Web applications.
• Evaluate the sustainability of a Web application.
• Propose and discuss measures to improve the sustainability of Web applications.
• Discuss the impact that Web development choices have on individuals and the society at large.

• Lectures
• Laboratory work
• Exercises
• Supervision

This course is offered to exchange students. Language of instruction is English.

Compulsory assignments

Students must complete 4 compulsory assignments during the semester.