Languages of the Wild Wild Web
In 1999 I took a series of workshops in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), the language web pages are written in. If you use an editor such as Dreamweaver or Go Live or FrontPage, it writes the HTML code for you. I have always been glad I learned to create web pages in HTML because from my first experiences in web design I understood everything that was happening as I built my web pages. A few years later I took three online courses in XHTML, the standard currently supported by the World Wide Web Consortium. I am not going to explain the differences between HTML and XHTML in this posting, but you can learn more about them by following this link I took two online courses in XML (eXtensible Markup Language) at the same college. (X)HTML describes to the browser how the information on a web page will be presented (formatting, fonts, colors, etc.); XML describes the content that will be presented on a web page, and allows your to create your own sets of tags for your online store, to describe musical notation, etc. If you would like to learn more about XML, follow this link.
I spent almost every day during the summer of 1999 working my way through a 1000-page book on JavaScript. Okay- It was a slow summer, but I'm a dorky-geeky-nerd! JavaScript is a fairly easy to learn web scripting language that makes your web pages more interactive for the user. If, for example, a message box appears on your computer screen when you click a button on the web page, there is a good chance the programmer used JavaScript to create it. I know you're dying to learn more about JavaScript, so follow this link.
A few years ago I took an online course in CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) at the college where I work. CSS gives the web designer much greater control over the way information is displayed on a web page. Macromedia has some excellent free tutorials on CSS at this site.
The web programming languages I have described above (HTML, XHTML, XML, JavaScript, and CSS) all have one thing in common: they are all client-side scripting languages, or they make things happen on your computer or in a web browser when someone opens your page on the Web. What if you want to enable the user's computer to communicate with your web server when he/she is viewing your page on the Web? For instance, the user opens an order form on your site, fills, it out and sends it to the server. Then, you need to use a server-side scripting language such as PHP /,ASP , Ruby, Perl, VBScript,or CFML. I have started studying server-side scripting languages in the past year or so. Last year I took a course in PHP; this Fall I intend to take a course in Perl.
There are web programming tools that let a web programmer use any combination of these tools when designing and maintaining a web site. One of them is Ajax , which I have lately been studying; another is Ruby on Rails . I hope this brief overview helps you understand the basics of programming languages for the Web and encourages you to check out the links on this blog.
I spent almost every day during the summer of 1999 working my way through a 1000-page book on JavaScript. Okay- It was a slow summer, but I'm a dorky-geeky-nerd! JavaScript is a fairly easy to learn web scripting language that makes your web pages more interactive for the user. If, for example, a message box appears on your computer screen when you click a button on the web page, there is a good chance the programmer used JavaScript to create it. I know you're dying to learn more about JavaScript, so follow this link.
A few years ago I took an online course in CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) at the college where I work. CSS gives the web designer much greater control over the way information is displayed on a web page. Macromedia has some excellent free tutorials on CSS at this site.
The web programming languages I have described above (HTML, XHTML, XML, JavaScript, and CSS) all have one thing in common: they are all client-side scripting languages, or they make things happen on your computer or in a web browser when someone opens your page on the Web. What if you want to enable the user's computer to communicate with your web server when he/she is viewing your page on the Web? For instance, the user opens an order form on your site, fills, it out and sends it to the server. Then, you need to use a server-side scripting language such as PHP /,ASP , Ruby, Perl, VBScript,or CFML. I have started studying server-side scripting languages in the past year or so. Last year I took a course in PHP; this Fall I intend to take a course in Perl.
There are web programming tools that let a web programmer use any combination of these tools when designing and maintaining a web site. One of them is Ajax , which I have lately been studying; another is Ruby on Rails . I hope this brief overview helps you understand the basics of programming languages for the Web and encourages you to check out the links on this blog.
posted by Jimmy in the Hills | Friday, August 18, 2006
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