When I started learning web development I also, like you, tried to search some information on internet. I found that almost every writer starts directly from writing code in HTML to build webpages which, I think, is not a good approach. The beginners, first, must be informed about the procedure that how s/he can launch his/her website online and what different terms, related to web development, means. I believe that in underdeveloped countries, like Pakistan, India, some African Countries, the beginners are even not familiar of the basic terms of the internet world.
That’s why I posted this blog to help such beginners and those who are bit advance. The purpose of this blog is that some basic but technical terms should be introduced first and then should be look to the coding and building web pages which I include my next blogs.
Web Development
Web development is the process of designing or creating a web site. It is the method to share/show your data- i.e. text documents, audio, videos, pictures and graphics- over the internet or intranet.
Let me clear that Programming is different thing as compare to web development. I’ll explain it later.
Now on this stage as I suppose you are not much familiar to web development, so I would recommend you that before starting your journey from beginner to a good web developer you must be familiar to the following terms:
1. Internet
2. World Wide Web
3. Web Site
4. Domain Name
5. Server Computer
6. Client Computer
7. Web Development Languages
7.1. HTML
7.2. CSS
7.3. Java Script
7.4. PHP
I’m not going to write a tutorial on these topics because it will get too lengthy but I’ll explain it in such a way that a new or an average user could learn what they want to.
If you are familiar of any of the following topic you may skip it and proceed to the next topic.
Internet
Internet is a network in which, from all over the world, many Local Area Networks, intranets and billions of individual computers interconnected to each other using different types of communication medium such as cables, radio waves, satellite and etc.
World Wide Web
World Wide Web is a network of million or even billion of computers or/and computer networks interconnected to each other. These computers are connected to each other through different transmission medium like cables, radio waves, satellites and etc.
Website
A website is collection of inter-linked webpages which are linked using a markup language like HTML. A web site may contain fewer or even hundreds of webpages. These web pages may contain different types of data i.e. text, pictures, audio and video.
Domain Name
A domain name is the name of a website. By typing domain name in the browser’s address bars peoples get access to a specific website’s home page. www.google.com and www.yahoo.com are some examples of domain names. Whenever you want to access the home page, either of Google or Yahoo, you only need to type the domain name of the particular website in your browser’s address bar.
Now, you would have understood that you should have a domain name for your website which will be the address of the home page of your website. You can buy a domain name for your website from the domain providers for which you’ll have to pay some money ranges from as low as a few dollars to as high as hundreds or even thousands of dollars depends upon the services being providing.
One thing which you must remember for buying a domain is that your domain name should be as short as possible, relevant and suitable to the idea and a suitable domain name for your web site Relevant domain names helps people to remember the address of your website and if users will remember the address of your website then they’ll feel ease to revisit your website which is not possible for an unsuitable and irrelevant website address.
The benefit of short, relevant and easy to remember domain name is that you’ll get a sufficient traffic on your website
Server Computer
Now, suppose that you’ve buy a domain name for your website. But the question is that where your website will be stored or when a user will try to get access your website, to which computer s/he will be connected?
The answer is “The Server Computer”, normally called server.
You will have to store your website on a server compute. The users, when they’ll type the domain name of your website, will be directed to the server computer. You’ll be thinking that the server computer would be a special type of computer, could be expensive etc etc.
You are right. Not too much but to some extent server computers are very special. They handle many users at the same time, operated 24 hours, store heavy amount of data.
When you are accessing Google, what do you think that you are the only user who is accessing Google? No, millions of users would be accessing it at the same time and the server of Google would be responding to all of them.
You’ll have to buy some space (memory) on the server computer to store your website. For this purpose you’ll have to spend some dollars annually or for some other period you’ve chosen.
Some of the webpage code is rendered on the server that is known as Server Side Scripting. Such as when you post comments on a webpage the rendering is done on the server computer.
Client Computer
The computer you are using to connect to, using a dial up or a broad band connection, internet to read this blog is considered as a client computer. Client sends request/s to the server and, in response, server sends the appropriate webpage/s to client. Client, then, renders the sent webpage and displays via a web browser i.e. Chrome, Firefox or any other.
Some of the webpage code is rendered on the client that is known as Client Side Scripting. Such as you are filling an online form where you are warned and asked to reenter your data in case of any error.
Web Development Languages
There are different Languages to design a webpage but the following not only provide a good base but also sufficient to become a good web developer:
HTML
HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. Do remember that It’s a markup language, as its name shows, not a programming language. It means it uses some marks (symbolized letters i.e. <a>some text</a>) to make sure the correct display and formatting of web contents.
These marks are called Tags. Tags, in HTML, are normally of two types. Starting tags and ending tags. Starting Tag is started with a left angle bracket contains some letters and ends with a right angle bracket.
Ending Tag is started with a left angle bracket, contains a back slash and some letters and ends with a right angle bracket. The pair of the both starting and ending tag is known is an HTML Element. Here is an example of an HTML Element:
<b>Hello World</b>
In the above example <b> is the starting tag and </b> is the ending tag of the Bold Text Element. “Hello World” is the phrase which, when the webpage will be rendered by the browser, will be displayed in the browsers windows as output.
HTML has many versions. Its versions start from HTML 2.0 and goes to HTML 4.01. It’s new and upcoming version is HTML 5 which will be released in 2014.
In the early age of web development HTML was used to develop webpages. These webpages were called Static Webpages. Their job was to provide information to the users over the internet. It was and is good for this purpose but there was a lake of an interaction between the user and the webpage. Also formatting a webpage with HTML was very difficult specially when working on a website having dozens of webpages.
To establish an interaction between the user and webpages, JavaScript was introduced and to overcome the difficulties with formatting layouts and different contents of webpages, CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) was introduced.
CSS
Suppose you’ve a webpage in which you want to add colorful button with rounded corner and dropped shadow or you want to add a smooth and good looking navigation bar to navigate through your website, the only thing you need is CSS.
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet. One may say that it’s a makeup box for a webpage because it well formats the layout and the contents of the webpages. It saves time and has made development specially formatting of webpages very quick and easy.
CSS is used in HTML pages and can also be used as a separate file. If used in HTML file with HTML code line, it’s known as In Line Style Sheet. If included in HTML page but not in between body tags but in between Header tags, it’s known as Internal Cascading Style Sheet. If CSS code is written in a separate file with .cs extension, it’s known as External Cascading Style Sheet.
It also has different versions a CSS, CSS2 and CSS3. Obviously the newer the version it would be the more advancement and ease it would be.
JavaScript
Suppose you are developing your website and want to perform the following tasks in an online form:
- You want to make sure that the user must not leave the required fields empty.
- You want to check that the given age is between the mentioned date or not?
- The given email address is valid or not.
- When you hover (dragging mouse arrow over a link or button) the link, the color of link should get changed.
- You want to calculate the values of the fields and etc.
What do you thing that which tool will help you to perform the above mentioned functions? For all this purposes you need only one tool. Off course, JavaScript is our tool.
JavaScript is a light Scripting language used for client side scripting. First of all it was implemented by Netscape Communications in 1995. Netscape Navigator 2.0 beta version was the first supported browser for JavaScript. All the functionalities mentioned above can be done.
Like CSS JavaScript can also be used Inline, Internally (JavaScript code put between body tags of an HTML page) and externally (JavaScript code is put in a separate file with a .js extension).
Let me clear that JavaScript completely different as compare to Java. Java is an advanced programming language like C++ which is quite complicated but on the other hand JavaScript is a Scripting Language.
Now you would be thinking that what the difference is between the Programming Languages and the Scripting Languages. The answer is simple that if you’ve ever used C, C++, Visual Basic or any language like these, you will have to need a compiler to compile ( you may say to execute) the code for your program but for Scripting Languages like JavaScript you need not to have a compiler. Even a simple word processer, like Note Pad, can perform this job quite easily.
So for coding in HTML, CSS and JavaScript you need not to buy any extra software from anywhere. If you are using Windows then you have Note Pad to perform the job.
PHP
Now suppose we’ve done a lot of work for our website, but still we want to do the following tasks:
- You want to know that how many people are visiting your website.
- You want to get some comments from the users of your website.
- Suppose on client side some users are not allowing JavaScript to work, how would you perform all those action described earlier in JavaScript section?
- You want that your user can save any of the given theme for his/her account on you website like you do on your Gmail account.
- You want to handle a database on your web site to keep the records of your users like user name, password, address and etc.
- You want to display different ads on your website, it will be difficult to handle them on every page manually.
How would you perform all of these tasks? What tool are you thinking should be used?
The answer is PHP is the tool which can be used to perform all of the above mentioned tasks quite easily. You’ll be surprised to know that PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor. It seems odd but it’s reality.
PHP is not used alone, instead it is used with HTML. It also can be used in line with HTML or in a separate file with the extension of .php. PHP can also support many databases like MySQL, Oracle, Sybase, Generic and etc. It’s free of cost and is a good competent of Microsoft’s ASP.
So that’s all what you should first know before starting your journey to the world of web development. What I would suggest you is practice to become a good web developer. Work hard and do experiments. Don’t use any software which provide graphical interface to make website. It will make you used too of depending on another person and you could not gain your experience to handle the problems occurred in your code.
How much helpful this blog is for you and what you think to add to make it better. Please comments about this blog to improve it. Thanks and bye!
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