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Web/Coding languages
I have a question regarding web coding (for web design specifically). To be honest, I am greatly confused. For somebody trying to learn the basics as a fast pace, it is a lot to take in. It is the sheer number of coding languages that puzzle me.
HTML, XHTML, XML, JAVASCRIPT, JAVA, C+, CSS, etc...
I guess I have a hard time differentiating between them. I have attempted to gain some insight via wikipedia, but to no real avail. If any of you could provide a brief description for each language, that would be great. Or alternatively, provide any helpful links.
Also, in terms of modern day web design, which of the languages are the most popular? I.e, which languages should I be researching and using?
HTML, XHTML, XML, JAVASCRIPT, JAVA, C+, CSS, etc...
I guess I have a hard time differentiating between them. I have attempted to gain some insight via wikipedia, but to no real avail. If any of you could provide a brief description for each language, that would be great. Or alternatively, provide any helpful links.
Also, in terms of modern day web design, which of the languages are the most popular? I.e, which languages should I be researching and using?
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The building blocks of the web. Web pages are rendered HTML (XHTML is a newer brand of HTML) and CSS that combine to show the content of a page and how it is styled. Do some basic web building courses or read some web design books to get more of an understanding of these. Easy to learn, harder to master as you fight browser inconsistencies and learn the "ways of the web"...GraphicGeez, post: 8769 a écrit : HTML, XHTML, CSS
A relatively simple programming language. Code is embedded in web pages and causes extra functionality on pages. Unlike the programming languages below it executes on the client machine, it is downloaded as part of the page and all computation and interaction takes place on the viewer's computer.GraphicGeez, post: 8769 a écrit : JAVASCRIPT
Here I guess we could add C++, C#, PHP, Perl, Ruby, Python. These are all programming languages. The execution of these files happens server-side, ie the site viewer (or an automated script etc) runs on the server to generate a response. This can be from setting a cookie to remember preferences, perform logins or site registrations by querying or writing to a database, performing calculations or massaging data, or performing file manipulation (creating, moving, emailing all sorts of files, text files, PDF files, images etc) and far more on top of this.GraphicGeez, post: 8769 a écrit : JAVA, C+
Programming languages like this can be platform specific (to a certain extent) such as C# or .Net which are Windows based and run on Windows machines (yes I have heard of Mono, just trying to help a n00b out here) whereas most of the others can be run on Linux/Unix or Windows machines.
As mentioned above, databases are a very important part of the whole framework you mention above so I would also add:
MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL
These are vital in the interactive web we have today.
What are you looking to do? As you can see, there is a lot to understand and there is no way you can tackle it all in one go! - Thanks Mickeyfinn, I appreciate the quick response.
As far as what I plan to do, I plan on (eventually) trying my hand at freelance web design. It is something that I have always wanted to try, but have never had the time to do. So essentially I want to be creating corporate (mainly) websites for clients. - Cool. If those are your aims and you can already do the design stuff then learn CSS and XHTML. When you can build sites then would recommend PHP for advanced interaction and MySQL. Both are now very robust cost effective. If you get sites that require silly things like member areas or file upload etc then use the freelancers directory to find someone who would take that kind of work on. Get them to spec and quote for any work like this so you can then markup and add to your costs. Don't turn work away just because you don't know how to do part of it 😃
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Good Advice Mickey.MickeyFinn, post: 8776 a écrit : Cool. If those are your aims and you can already do the design stuff then learn CSS and XHTML. When you can build sites then would recommend PHP for advanced interaction and MySQL. Both are now very robust cost effective. If you get sites that require silly things like member areas or file upload etc then use the freelancers directory to find someone who would take that kind of work on. Get them to spec and quote for any work like this so you can then markup and add to your costs. Don't turn work away just because you don't know how to do part of it :D
