zyBook Online Text for CSCI 3355

This course(CSCI 3355: Advanced Internet Technologies and Web Programming) has an associated zyBook (Web Programming with zyLabs), which is a required online text available from learn.zybooks.com. Among its features is the fact that it is very interactive and gives excellent immediate feedback as you are working through the activities and labs, and automatically records the points you accumulate by doing the assigned exercises.

See below for the details on how to sign up with zyBooks, and then register for access to the course text, but before you sign up ...

Here is some important signup information:

Students who have used this same zyBook in the previous CSCI 2355 course may be eligible for a discount for this second use of the same zyBook in a second course. But that depends on a number of factors, and here is what zyBooks itself has to say:

- Discounts are calculated and applied automatically by the platform, that is, by zyBooks.

- These conditions must be met for a discount to be applied:

1. The second zyBook must cover the same content as the first zyBook. [Not a problem in our case, since the same zyBook that was used for CSCI 2355 is also being used for CSCI 3829.]

2. This second zyBook must be purchased within one year of the end date of the first zyBook. [So, students who took CSCI 2355 in the fall of 2023 or the fall of 2022 should be OK.]

3. The first and second zyBooks must both be directly paid for at zybooks.com. We can not offer discounts to students who purchase access keys at bookstores.

Another thing: I believe zyBooks will use your email address to tell if you did register for a particular zyBook previously, but that also should be no problem since it has always been the case that you had to use your SMU email to register for a zyBook. If you have any problem and are not getting a discount you think you should have when you sign up, your instructor cannot help, so you will need to contact support@zybooks.com directly with your explanation, argument and request for a discount.

Here are the signup steps for the zyBook:

Note that you must use your Saint Mary's University e-mail address, which ends with smu.ca, to register for the course text. That is, you may be able to use any email to sign up for a zyBooks account, but you will need your SMU email address to register for the text for this course.

  1. Sign in or create an account at learn.zybooks.com
  2. Enter this zyBook code: SMUCSCI3355ScobeyWinter2024
  3. Subscribe

Cost and relevant dates:

The zyBook's earlier sections can be used as an excellent review of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The later sections of the zyBook contain sections on material to be covered in CSCI 3355 (more JavaScript, Regular Expressions, AJAX, JSON, the NoSQL database management system MongoDB, PHP, the relational database management system MySQL). Note that a significant portion of your grade for the course will be based on your completion of the assigned activities and labs from the zyBook.

We will also be covering material in class that is not included in the zyBook, and the order in which we will cover material that does appear in the zyBook will not be the same as the order of that material in the zyBook.

Here is a complete list of the zyBook chapters: