List of Example Web Applications
Ways to use this list
- If you are given a question such as "find three examples of web applications that do x", or "use x technology", or "provide a user the capability of doing x", etc.
- If you are looking for ideas about developing your own web applications (e.g. find an existing web app that does x, and brainstorm about how it could be done better, then build a prototype of the improved app.)
- If you are looking for example web sites for a particular field, e.g. shopping, sports, performing arts, news, photos, maps, etc.
Topics
Sites not requiring registration
Sites in this section offer substantial useful functionality to users without requiring registration. (However, note that some sites in this list may offer registration, and/or provide some additional functionality to registered users only. )
Airlines
- www.delta.com. Delta Airlines. URLs indicate site is probably developed with Java Servlets and JSPs (Clues: .jsp and .do extension in the URLs.)
- Brief story: User enters an origin, destination, day of departure, day of return. User is given a list of available flights and fares. (User can then make reservation and purchase a ticket, but describing that would required another much longer story.)
Books (retailers)
- www.bn.com, Barnes and Noble
- Brief Story: User is interested in a book on some topic, by some author, or with some title. User can enter information about the book in a search box and click "search". A list of matching books is shown. The user can select a book from the list, and learn more about the book. If the user wants to purchase the book, the user can create do so [details would require another, longer story.]
- www.amazon.com, "Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more"
- Brief Story: Similar to story above for Barnes and Noble, but with a wider selection of possible items.
Books (publishers)
- www.oreilly.com, "O'Reilly Media, Inc. -- computer books, software conferences, online publishing".
Maps
- maps.google.com, Google Local. Provide maps, satellite photos, and hybrid maps for addresses. Provides direction finding. Example of AJAX technology.
- Brief Story: User enters an address and clicks enter. User is shown a map of the requested location. User than can then click and drag to move the map. User can click to zoom in, or zoom out. User can select three different views of the map: a conventional map, a satellite image, or a hybrid map.
- www.mapquest.com, "Mapquest.com, Maps Directions and More".
- maps.yahoo.com, "Yahoo Maps, Driving Directions and Traffic"
- mappoint.msn.com, "MSN Maps and Directions". Uses ASP technology (of course). One unique feature is the "LineDrive" style of directions (based on a Maneesh Agrawala's Ph.D. Dissertation in Computer Science from Stanford University).
- maps.a9.com, A9's mapping service. A specific feature called "Blockview" that allows you to see street-level photos of the block for limited number of US cities (the closest ones to UD being Philadelphia, PA, New York, NY, and Washington DC)
Performing Arts
- www.imdb.com, The Internet Movie Database. Allows searching for information on movies, actors, and other topics related to the film industry. According to the site's own description, it is based on Apache and mod_perl.
- Brief Story: User can enter an actor, movie title, or director and find a list of matches. User can then either select an actor, and get a list of the movies that actor was in, or select a movie and get a list of the cast from that movie.
- www.ibdb.com, The Internet Broadway Database. Allows searching for information on broadway plays, actors, and other topics related to broadway plays. URL patterns suggest it is based on ASP.
Search Engines
Also see:
- searchenginewatch.com, a site about search engines. Has a list that includes lots of other search engines that may be of interest, and information comparing and constrasting search engines.
Teacher Ratings
Tutorials
- http://www.zend.com/zend/tut/tutorial-yank.php: Build your own Database Driven Website using PHP & MySQL by Kevin Yank. Site itself uses PHP (not surprisingly) as evidenced by the .php extension.
- Story: User can read a tutorial on PHP and MySQL, and see a list of links to reader comments about that tutorial (at the bottom) listed by topic and userid. User can click on any of those links and read the comments. User can also click on a link to add a comment; user is prompted for email address, name, subject and message text.
Weather
- www.nws.noaa.gov, National Weather Services
- www.wunderground.com, The Weather Underground. Technologies uses (this is a guess from looking at their hiring announcement!) include C (probably used with cgi-bin programs), PHP, MySQL, Apache on Linux
- Brief Story: User enters a zip code and gets a weather forecast for that zipcode. (There are lots more stories that could be written from this site: there are blogs, saving of favorites, automatic email of severe weather forecasts, etc.)
- www.weather.com, The Weather Channel
- www.accuweather.com, Accuweather
Sites requiring free registration
Sites requiring registration that requires credit card or payment
Very few sites will be listed here; exceptions will be made only when the site might offer particular value for CISC474 students.
Technical Libraries
- safari.oreilly.com, O'Reilly Network Safari Bookshelf. Subscription service. Full text access to a personal bookshelf of technical books related to computing technologies. Personal bookshelf can be of various sizes (e.g. 10, 20, 30 books) depending on your level of subscription. Books can be swapped in and out (books have to stay on your shelf for at least 30 days once swapped in). Titles come not just from O'Reilly, but also selected titles from Prentice-Hall, Addison-Wesley and others. All subscriptions allow online browsing; some subscription levels offer chapter download (via PDF) of a limited number of chapters per month.
Please suggest additions/corrections to this page
Send corrections to pconrad@udel.edu with the EXACT subject line "webapp examples correction"
Please suggest additional links. Links suggestions should meet the following criteria
- Sites that feature dynamic content or other interesting web technologies
- use of server-side technologies for dynamic content (ASP, JSP, PHP, mod_perl, Cold Fusion, CGI)
- innovative use of technologies such as JavaScript, Flash, Java Applets, XML, SVG, etc.
- Useful features are freely available to the public
- Material offered should be appropriate for use in undergraduate education
- sites with topics of interest to students are preferred
- avoid sites with content that might be controversial or cause a distraction (e.g. so-called "adult" sites)
- Sites where no registration is required are preferred.
- If registration is required, it should be possible to register for a set of useful feature without payment, providing a credit card number. Exceptions to this rule will be made, but will be rare (e.g. safari.oreilly.com is a rare exception).
Send email to pconrad@udel.edu with the EXACT subject line "webapp examples suggestion". Include at least the following items in the body of your email.
- the URL
- the title of the site (what shows up in the title bar, or the top-level title in the text of the main page.
- a brief description of the capabilities provided to the user
- the category it fits under (or suggestion for a new category)
- whether registration is optional or required (optional sites are preferred).
- description of technologies used, if known (describe whether you are inferring from URLs and web page source, or whether the site contains information specifically describing the technology that powers the site. In the latter case, provide the link to that description.)
Note about the "brief stories" listed here
These "brief stories" are not intended to be complete descriptions of the functional capabilities of each of these sites. In fact, for most of these sites, a complete description of all the capabilitities of the site in "story" form would go on for pages and pages. I've just given a "starting point" to give a general idea about the site, and give you an idea of "how to start" when developing stories for your own site.
The idea is also this: if you were to sit down and develop a "competing" site from scratch, where would you start? What basic functionality would you develop "first" to get a prototype up and running?
For example, with IMDB, my story lists only that you can search by actor, movie title. In fact, you can do dozens of other types of searches as well. For my brief story, though, I've limited the search types to actors and titles to keep the story short.
