Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering
CSE 3901: Web Applications (Spring 2025)

Project 1: Lift-Off

Note: The last part of this project (setting up your virtual machine) can take a long time to complete! Don't leave that part to last minute. If you encounter difficulties, check the class discussion forum.

pre-Test

Submission: on Carmen.

Take the Carmen Quiz called "pre-Test". Although it is graded for correctness, only the completion of the quiz counts towards your grade. It is short (less than 30 minutes), but please give it your best effort.

GitHub Account

Submission: part of CATME survey (see "Group Formation").

Sign up for an account at GitHub. Request an educational student discount, which gives you Pro features for free.

Group Formation Survey

Submission: a CATME survey.

Group and team assignment will be done using the CATME tool. You will receive an email invitation to complete a CATME survey.

Based on survey responses, you will be placed in a home group of 4 (or 5) for working on projects. Later, you will also be placed in a technology team for working on tasks.

Each technology team will be exploring in greater depth a library or framework in one of the following areas:

Mug Shot

Submission: by email to the instructor.

Send the instructor an email with a jpg attachment containing a picture of yourself. Please make sure the attachment satisfies all of the following requirements:

  1. The picture should be head or head-and-shoulders so that you are easily recognizable.

  2. The subject of the email should include the course number and section (ie lecture time slot) in which you are enrolled. For example, "CSE 3901 10:20 mugshot"

  3. The filename of the jpg attachment should be your last name (all caps) with extension jpg (all lower case). For example, a student named Jane Doe would attach a file called DOE.jpg.

  4. The image should be 150 pixels wide by 180 pixels high. Use a photo editing tool (e.g., gimp or gqview) to first crop to a rectangle with the correct aspect ratio (i.e., 5 x 6), and then resize to the correct dimensions (i.e., 150 x 180 pixels).

These pictures will not be posted anywhere; they will be used only for my reference to help me learn your name.

Name Pronunciation

Submission: on Carmen.

Find the "NameCoach" link on our class Carmen page and record your name.

Join Discord Server

Submission: none needed.

Join the class Discord server using the invitation link posted in Carmen. Change your nickname in the server to be your actual name.

Environment Configuration

Submission: by Carmen.

Follow the instructions from the class web site, under Dev Environment, to set up your development environment. Once you have completed the setup, take a screenshot showing the a terminal window open and running the last "rails" command in the instructions:

$ rails server

The output should begin with "Booting Puma". Submit this screenshot via Carmen.