The role of the new media in young people’s lives has led to a debate about the potential of the internet as a means of influencing identity formation and youth participation. A growing body of academic research has shown an interest in understanding this influence. This thesis sets out to study political participation as a form of online engagement through the use of the various new media platforms and how it may affect the process of identity development of Arab youth in Britain. Prior to the recent political developments in the Middle East and the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, British Arab youth were suffering identity uncertainty and had expressed little interest in political participation. During the early stages of the Arab Spring, British Arab youth became involved, in one way or another, in political activities, mainly online. This research combines quantitative and qualitative methodologies in order to achieve accurate results. The targeted group for this study is those between 18 and 25 years old, who were born in Britain or have been living continuously in Britain for at least 10 years. Data collected includes a total of 178 questionnaire samples, and forty individual semi-structured interviews. The core argument of this study is that British Arab youth are willing to participate in politics as long as it is meaningful to them and to the people of their countries of origin. This engagement helps them to balance their cultural identity (Arab) with the host culture (British). That may not contradict with the fact that British Arab youth describe Britain as ‘home’ with confidence. In fact, the balance between Arab and British cultures serves as a stabiliser in the process of identity formation and reformation. The thesis also explores how this active political engagement is reflected, in general, on their own identity construction and development. The evidences of this study suggest that, while online media has a role in providing British Arab youth with accessible and effective online tools, the mechanism of participating and debating all issues without reservation, may contradict the cultural heritage of stepping back from political participation. Therefore, this research affirms the importance of online media tools for British Arab youth reaching new horizons. Participating in political activities is one form of negotiating identity formation or reformation, that in one way or another can contribute to a more effective role of the British Arab community in the public, political and cultural spheres of multicultural Britain.

I dagens samhälle flyttar allt fler tjänster online, något som människor idag kommit att förvänta sig. E-handel är inget undantag till detta. Intäkter från e-handel har ökat stadigt på senare år och blivit en allt större del av handelns intäkter överlag. Av denna anledning kan man anta att återförsäljare av alla storlekar skulle tjäna på att investera i närvaro på internet. Att skapa en ny e-handelssida kan dock vara svårt, speciellt om man inte har tiden, kunnigheten eller pengarna som krävs för att utveckla, eller anlita någon att utveckla, en ehandelssida från grunden. Att använda sig av en så kallad e-handelsplattform vars syfte är att man lätt och billigt kan starta en e-handelssida utan vidare teknisk kompetens ser därför ut som en enkel lösning på problemen. Syftet med denna uppsats var att undersöka om dessa plattformar lämpar sig för att skapa en högkvalitativ e-handelssida utan att användaren behöver sätta sig in i koden, samt hur lätt detta var att göra. Specifikt har två plattformar undersökts, Shopify och Textalk, huvudsakligen genom observationer och intervjuer. Slutsatsen som dras från detta arbete är att det är de mest grundläggande beståndsdelarna i en e-handelssida som är lättast att skapa med plattformarna. Specifika krav på exakt hur ehandelssidan som skapas ska se ut blir svårare att uppfylla med Textalk och Shopify då användarens kontroll över utseendet är begränsad om användaren inte skriver eller redigerar källkod. Dessa begränsade möjligheter är eventuellt resultatet av en kompromiss mellan användarvänlighet och valmöjligheter för anpassning av e-handelssidan. / In today's society an ever growing number of services are moving online, something which people have come to expect. E-commerce is no exception of this. Revenue from e-commerce has been in a steady increase in recent years and is becoming a larger and larger share of overall commerce revenue. For this reason one assumes it to be pertinent for retailers of all sizes to invest in online presence. However, creating a new online store can be difficult, especially if you do not have the time, expertise or money needed to develop, or hire someone to develop an e-commerce website from scratch. Using a so-called e-commerce platform seems like a good solution to this problem as their purpose is to provide an easy and inexpensive way for people without prior technical expertise to start an e-commerce website. The purpose of this paper was to examine if it is possible to create a high quality e-commerce website without having the store owner get into the code, and how easy this was to do. We have examined two of these platforms in particular, Shopify and Textalk, mainly by conducting observations and interviews. The conclusion drawn from this work is that the more basic parts of an e-commerce website are the easiest to create with the platforms. Specific requirements for how the e-commerce website should look are more difficult to fulfil with Textalk and Shopify as the user only has limited control over the design if they’re not editing or writing new code in the platforms. This limited control is possibly the result of a trade-off between ease of use and available options for customizability.

Den ökande användningen av mobila enheter ställer nya krav på utformning av ett företags webbtjänster. Utseende, storlek och gränssnitt på webbsidor behöver anpassas för alla typer och storlekar av mobila plattformar. Syftet med det här arbetet är att utreda de olika lösningsalternativ som finns för anpassning till mobila enheter samt föreslå och utvärdera en lösning utifrån olika kriterier. En prototyp utvecklas som kommer att testas i en fallstudie. De lösningsalternativ som utreds är native applikation, hybridapplikation, mobilsida, responsivt gränssnitt/responsiva ramverk och Web Content Management Systems. Lösningsalternativen utvärderas utifrån kriterierna funktionalitet och användbarhet, inlärningstid/utvecklingstid, plattformsstöd och tillgänglighet, prestanda, underhåll och vidareutveckling, popularitet, kostnad/licens samt konverteringsmöjlighet. Det lösningsalternativ som visar sig mest fördelaktigt enligt kriterierna är responsivt gränssnitt. I fallstudien har en prototyp utvecklats baserat på ett responsivt ramverk. Implementationen har utvärderats och bekräftar fördelarna med responsivt gränssnitt. Arbetets slutsatser lyfter fram för- och nackdelar med de olika lösningsalternativen, identifierar problem och möjligheter utifrån fallstudien – t.ex. visade det sig inte några större prestandaskillnader mot en statisk webbsida men däremot visade sig vissa konflikter mellan programbibliotek – samt slutligen ges generella rekommendationer och erfarenheter för den som står inför en mobilanpassning av en webbplats. / The increasing usage of mobile devices places new requirements on the design of company websites. Appearance, size and interface of webpages need to be adapted for all types and sizes of mobile platforms. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the various solution options available for adaptation to mobile devices and also tosuggest and evaluate a solution based on different criteria. A prototype will be developed and tested in a case study. The investigated solution options are native application, hybrid application, mobile website, responsive web design frameworks and Web Content Management Systems. The solution options are evaluated based on the criteria functionality and usability, learning

The Internet has become a valuable channel for both business-to- consumer and business-to-business e-commerce. It has changed the way for many companies to manage the business. Every day, more and more companies are making their presence on Internet. Web sites are launched for online shopping as web shops or on-line stores are a popular means of goods distribution. The number of items sold through the internet has sprung up significantly in the past few years. Moreover, it has become a choice for customers to do shopping at their ease. Thus, the aim of this thesis is to design and implement a consumer to consumer application for Facebook, which is one of the largest social networking website. The application allows Facebook users to use their regular profile (on Facebook) to buy and sell goods or services through Facebook. As we already mentioned, there are many web shops such as eBay, Amazon, and applications like blocket on Facebook. However, none of them is directly interacting with the Facebook users, and all of them are using their own platform. Users may use the web shop link from their Facebook profile and will be redirected to web shop. On the other hand, most of the applications in Facebook use notification method to introduce themselves or they push their application on the Facebook pages. This application provides an opportunity to Facebook users to interact directly with other users and use the Facebook platform as a selling/buying point. The application is developed by using a modular approach. Initially a Python web framework, i.e., Django is used and association rule learning is applied for the classification of users’ advertisments. Apriori algorithm generates the rules, which are stored as separate text file. The rule file is further used to classify advertisements and is updated regularly.

Syfte – Syftet med studien var att ge arbetssökande inom branschen för grafisk formgivning och webbutveckling en uppfattning om hur en webbaserad portfolio bör utformas för att uppfylla branschens förväntningar. Metod – Studien har använt sig av två huvudsakliga metoder. En kvantitativ undersökning i form av en enkätundersökning med arbetssökande och en kvalitativ undersökning med potentiella arbetsgivare i branschen. Resultat – Den insamlade empirin och litteraturen visar på att en portfolio är otroligt viktig vid jobbsökning inom branschen för grafiska formgivare och webbutvecklare. I resultatet framkom det även viktiga faktorer som arbetssökande bör tänka på när de utformar sin webbaserade portfolio. Dessa faktorer finns sammanställda i riktlinjer som en bilaga i rapportens slut. Implikationer – Studien baseras på empiri insamlad från författarnas närområde, Jönköping. Detta har på så sätt skapat ett specifikt urval baserat på en geografisk position. I studien skulle sex besöksintervjuer genomföras. Dock var det en intervju som genomfördes via mail, vilket kan ha påverkat svaren. Begränsningar – Den största begränsningen i studien var tidsramen som arbetet genomfördes under. Med tanke på de sex intervjuer och den omfattande enkätundersökningen som genomfördes så tog det lång tid att analysera och sammanställa insamlad data. Studien begränsades till endast webbaserade portföljer. Under intervjuerna kom det fram detaljer som hade gjort det intressant att kika på helheten kring att söka jobb med portfolio. I studien låg dock fokus främst på utformningen av portfolion. / Purpose – The purpose of the study was to provide job seekers in the trade of graphic design and web development an idea of how a web-based portfolio should be designed to meet the expectations of potential employers of the industry. Method – The study used two main methods. The first method was a quantitative survey with job seekers currently studying. The second method was a qualitative survey with potential employers of the industry. Findings – Results of the collected empirical data and literature shows that a portfolio is incredibly important in the process of applying for a job in the industry for graphic designers and web developers. The result showed lots of important factors that jobseekers should consider when designing a web-based portfolio. These factors are summarized as an annex of guidelines in the report's final. Implications – The study is based on empirical data gathered from the authors surrounding district, Jonkoping, which created a specific selection based on a geographic location. All of the interviews were planned to take place at the selected company’s facilities. However, one of the interviews was conducted through e-mail, which may have influenced the responses from that specific company. Limitations – The main limitation of the study was the time frame. Considering the six interviews and the extensive survey, we spent a lot of time analysing and compiling the collected data. The study was also limited to web-based portfolios. However, the interviews showed details that would have made it interesting to look at a bigger picture regarding the process of job seeking. The study was, nevertheless, focused primarily on the design of the portfolio.

This thesis will look into what kind of solutions a company or a private person can use if they want to create a dynamic website using only free software. To do this we divided our work in two parts. In the first part, we developed a dynamic website for a Swedish company. On the server side we used exclusively free software with open source code. There are different meanings in how the term “free” should be used when referring to software, which we will explain in the thesis. We have also chosen to work with the XMLtechnology to see if it lives up to its expectations and to see if we could benefit from the technology. Alongside with the development of our site, another company developed a site for the same company as us, by using non-free software. We have described both implementations and compared them to see if it is possible to do the same thing with both free and non-free software. The investigating part of our work consisted of getting information about what other people think about the free software phenomenon. To do so we created an online questionnaire where we randomly picked 100 Swedish web agencies and asked them to answer 8 questions about what kind of software they used in their company, and what they thought about free software. To get some more opinions we also interviewed two persons involved in these kinds of topics. Jan Sandred, who is a well known expert advisor in topics concerning the Information Technology area and Richard Stallman, the founder of GNU and the Free Software Movement. The reason for dividing the thesis in two parts was to get an overall picture on the subject. We did not only want to base our results on other people’s thoughts. We wanted to make our own conclusions based on the implementation we did. This approach showed out to be very good. We got to try working with free software ourselves to see its pros and cons and build our own opinions about it. We could then proceed to compare our impressions to other people’s impressions about free software.

Context: Information technology is playing an important role in creating innovation in business. Due to increase in demand of information technology, web development has become an important field. PHP is an open source language, which is widely used in web development. PHP is used to develop dynamic web pages and it has the ability to connect with database. PHP has some good features i.e. cross platform compatibility, scalability, efficient execution and is an open source technology. These features make it a good choice for developers to choose PHP for web development. The maintenance of an application becomes difficult and performance being considerably reduced, if PHP is to be used without using its frameworks. To resolve these issues, different frameworks have been introduced by web development communities on the internet. These frameworks are based on Model, View, Controller design pattern. These frameworks provide, different common functionalities and classes in the form of helpers, components, and plug-in to reduce the development time. Due to these features like robustness, scalability, maintainability and performance, these frameworks are mostly used for web development in PHP, with performance being considered the most important factor. Objectives:The objective of this thesis is to compare and analyze the affect of data abstraction layer (ORM) on the performance of two PHP frameworks. These two frameworks are CakePHP and CodeIgniter. CAKEPHP has built-in support of object-relational mapping (ORM) but CodeIgniter has no built-in support of object-relational mapping (ORM). We considered load testing and stress testing to measure the performance of these two frameworks. Methods: We performed the experiment to show the performance of CakePHP (with ORM) and CodeIgniter (no ORM) frameworks. We developed two applications in both the PHP frameworks, with the same scope and design and measured the performance of these applications, with respect to load testing, with automated testing tool. The results have been obtained by testing the performance of both the applications on local and live servers. Conclusions:After analyzing the results we concluded that CodeIgniter is useful for small and medium sized applications. But CAKEPHP is good for large and enterprise level applications, as in stress conditions the CAKEPHP performed better than CodeIgniter on both local and live environment.

Abstrakt Under vårt kandidatarbete arbetade vi under 20 veckor med att utveckla ett webbaserat spel riktat mot Facebook. Vi använde Agile/Scrum som projektmetod för vårt arbete och förändrade metoden och utvecklade verkyg för att effektivisera den för vårt syfte. Vi kom fram till att det är svårt att göra ett socialt spel och att det viktigaste i produktionen är att se till att det finns en tydlig koppling mellan spelarnas interaktion med varandra och den grundläggande spelmekaniken. Vi tappade fokus under utvecklingen och lärde oss den hårda vägen vikten av att planera realistiskt och börja ifrån grunden när man utvecklar ett spel. Spelet vi skapade använder sig av slumpässigt genererad terräng, är skrivet i JavaScript och utspelar sig i en viktoriansk miljö. Nyckelord: Facebook, spelutveckling, webbutveckling, internet, sociala spel Abstract During our bachelor thesis we worked for 20 weeks with the development of a web-based game for Facebook. We used Agile/Scrum as our project planning method, changed the method to make it more effective for our purpose and developed tools for the method. We came to the conclusion that it's hard to make a social game and that the most important thing in the production is to make sure that there's a clear connection between the players' interaction with each other and the foundations of the game mechanics. We lost focus during the development and learned the hard way the value of planning realistically and to start from the core when developing a game. The game we created uses a random generated terrain, is written in JavaScript and takes place in a Victorian environment. Keywords: Facebook, game development, web development, internet, social games

Vårt arbete har gått ut på att skapa två separata webbplatser. Vi har varit delaktiga i hela processerna från idéstadie till färdiga produkter. Webbplatserna vi tagit fram är Jag är fri - en kampanjhemsida åt RFSL, samt Laszlo & Tear - en presentationshemsida åt en musikduo. De två webbplatserna skiljer sig åt då vi klassar Jag är fri som samhällsnytta medan vi klassar Laszlo & Tear som underhållning. Vi såg dock en gemensam nämnare - att de skulle verka marknadsförande och att webbplatsbesökaren enkelt och tydligt skulle uppfatta syftet. Vi ville därför med vår studie undersöka hur man genom informationsarkitektur och grafisk form på ett tydligt och enkelt sätt når ut med rätt budskap och känsla. Studien resulterade i en guide som bidrar med kunskap för att utveckla enklare och mer användarvänliga webbplatser. / Our mission was to create two different web sites. We have been involved in the entire process from idéa to finished product. We have developed web sites for RFSL’s campaign called Jag är fri (eng. I am free) and the music duo Laszlo & Tear. The web sites differ from each other – Jag är fri has a social benefit and Laszlo & Tear is classified as entertainment. We saw, however, a common denominator – both sites should operate in promotional porposes and the recipient should clearly understand the purpose. We wanted to examine the best way to reach out with the right message through information architecture and graphical interface. This paper resulted in a guide that contributes knowledge of how to develop simpler more user friendly web sites.

Rapporten behandlar utvecklingen av en portal som är tänkt att användas av alla olika delar av en företagskoncern, både som intranät, extranät och extern webbplats. Denna rapport undersöker vad som är viktigt att uppfylla för att skapa en portal av detta slag där kraven på flexibilitet är stora, samtidigt som de olika företagen i koncernen ska ha utrymme att agera både som enskilda företag och som medlemmar i en koncern. Rapporten undersöker även om tekniken SharePoint kan vara lämplig att använda i ett sådant fall samt tar upp alternativ till SharePoint. Slutsatserna är att två aspekter är särskilt viktiga i en portal av slaget som efterfrågas. Dels att portalen utformas med en tydlig struktur och väl definierade nivåer med klara uppgifter, dels att tekniken bakom portalen är anpassningsbar, öppen för vidareutvecklingar och att tekniken är modulbaserad. SharePoint uppfyller dessa aspekter och bedöms därför som lämplig att använda i en sådan portal. I den portal som rapporten avser bedöms även SharePoint vara lämpligare än de alternativa tekniker som rapporten behandlar.