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Web Site programming

yairhol said:
Hello gang,
I'd really like to learn how to build/design web sites.
What are the programming languages that I'll need to learn and what are some excellent books to read on the subject?
Eventually I'd like to design websites with nice graphics, have comment sections written by guests, maybe some animation, hyperlinks and of course written text that I'll update on the site.

Regards,
Yair
Click to expand...

I'd recommend downloading visual studio express

It contains everything you need to build a fully interactive website and it's totally free!! I was gobsmacked.

I downloaded the visual basic version a month ago and have nearly completed a classified ads website already. Admittedly, i do have previous experience in programming but that's with the ancient RPG language on an as/400 and my last html programming was nearly 10 years ago.
There's some great online tutorials and starter kits to get you going.

I've found the hardest part to get right is html and css. I get it right in firefox and it doesn't look right in ie6. I get it right in 1280 x 960 resolution and it doesn't look right in 800 x 600. This is very important as a large % of users still uses 800 x 600 resolution.

I haven't even tested on ie7 yet so i'll have to keep my fingers crossed. As for mac, there's a website out there that runs your web page and takes a screen capture of it so you can see if it looks ok. I think it's pretty limited though unless you pay a license fee.

Good luck!
 
Is Visual Studio Express a WYSIWYG editor?
If so then I'll steer right out of the way. I'm taking that route. I want to learn the code itself.

Regards,
Yair
 
VSE is not a WSIWYG editor. You'll can learn the code itself in all flavors of Visual Studio. There are a couple of features of the IDE that attempt to help "write code for you" but you do not have to use them. I'm referring primarily to it supplying GUI event handlers. You don't have to use that feature if you don't want to, but it's not a big obstacle to learning the code in any case.
 
BTW I wouldn't recommend VSE if your first interest is HTML/CSS. Use notepad or some other simple editor of your choice. VSE if better for procedural programing languages like C, C#, etc.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
BTW I wouldn't recommend VSE if your first interest is HTML/CSS. Use notepad or some other simple editor of your choice. VSE if better for procedural programing languages like C, C#, etc.
Click to expand...
What's a good (free) editor that I can download that colors different parts of the code (opening and closing tags etc.) and in general uses colors automatically to help the code look more readable?

Thanks,
Yair
 
yairhol said:
What's a good (free) editor that I can download that colors different parts of the code (opening and closing tags etc.) and in general uses colors automatically to help the code look more readable?

Thanks,
Yair
Click to expand...

SciTE: See post13 above
 
I downloaded Scite.
Looks good. I'll give it a try.

Thanks,
Yair
 
"Don't make me think" is an AWESOME book.

I especially find it helpful in explaining to clients why I just threw out half the words on their web page :D
 
I've been working with SciTe lately and it's very nice.
It's my main html editor now.
I recommend it.

Regards,
Yair
 
yairhol said:
I've been working with SciTe lately and it's very nice
Click to expand...

Told ya! :)

One minor tweak I make on my installs is to alter the fonts of various elements (I find doing so makes it much easier to distinguish between tags, attributes, content, etc)

Options \ Open Global Options File \ approx Line 315

Code: 
[COLOR="SeaGreen"]# Give symbolic names to the set of fonts used in the standard styles
[/COLOR]if PLAT_WIN
	font.base=font:Verdana,size:10
	font.small=font:Verdana,size:8
	font.comment=font:Comic Sans MS,size:9
	font.code.comment.box=$(font.comment)
	font.code.comment.line=$(font.comment)
	font.code.comment.doc=$(font.comment)
	font.text=font:Arial,size:10
	font.text.comment=font:Trebuchet MS,size:10, bold
	font.embedded.base=font:Verdana,size:9
	font.embedded.comment=font:Comic Sans MS,size:8
	font.monospace=font:Courier New,size:10
	font.vbs=font:Lucida Sans Unicode,size:10
 
For starting out from scratch, I found http://www.htmldog.com to be quite good. It teaches you both html and css, alongside each other.

Once you've got a decent grasp of html and css, learn javascript(optional, as the useful stuff you can do with javascript, can be done with server side scripting)

With the above 'languages', theres only so much you can do though. If you want any user generated content, you'll need to learn server side scripting. As mentioned earlier, thats languages like ASP/ASP.NET/JSP/PHP. Though, I wouldn't recommend them for a while yet. Get a good grasp of the basics(obviously).

One other tip I remember reading about once. If you see something on a webpage, and you're not quite sure how it was done, view the page source and try and work out how its done for yourself. That can be a great way of advancing your learning(obviously, only once you have started to get to grips with html and css).

To add one extra forum to the list that six7s mentioned, I highly recommend the sitepoint forums. They have really good books available as well, and quite a lot of articles which help a lot.

Good luck.

{edit}One last thing. On the topic of text editors, with syntax highlighting. I'd recommend notepad++{/edit}
 
Last edited:
dbalsdon said:
...view the page source and try and work out how its done for yourself. That can be a great way of advancing your learning(obviously, only once you have started to get to grips with html and css)
Click to expand...

Indeed... why reinvent the wheel?

For Firefox, there is an 'add-on' called ViewSourceWith that lets you specify your 'text-editor-of-choice' as your default viewer

In Opera, go to Tools \ Preferences \ Advanced - Programs - Choose Application for viewing source - Edit

In IE, unless you're really, obsessively keen, forget about it :(
 
Actually, if you really want to learn this, learn, in order;

XHTML
Javascript - AND learn the object extensions to XHTML
PHP
Java
(optionally) Perl

You can do some really wonderful things when you combine Javascript and PHP or Perl; Like validating a form item against a database BEFORE you click the submit button.

And you should also learn how header items work, especially the Location: header item which can allow you to move from a processing page to a destination page based on the data processed.

For editing, I strongly recommend that you have a Macintosh and learn to use BBEdit as it is a MUCH better editor than DreamWeaver.

Also, you need to collect as many different browsers as you can because they all fair differently when you try clever things.
 
BenBurch said:
Actually, if you really want to learn this, learn, in order;

XHTML
Click to expand...

I see sites with the XHTML doctype declaration all over the place, but most render as HTML (see post #8) and, as far as I can tell, even xhtml.org and xhtml.com fail to demonstrate any of the often touted benefits of eXtensibility

Anyone got any links to sites that do eXtend HTML?
 
Yeah. I've never really seen the benefit of using proper xhtml. I've always just seen it as being very strict html. I reckon though, that it's good to apply some xmhtl 'rules' to your html coding, to help keep it tidy and easier to read ie. closing all tags, nesting elements properly ect.
 
dbalsdon said:
closing all tags, nesting elements properly ect.
Click to expand...

I hold that such practices should be adhered to regardless of the DOCTYPE... and, to that end, I make a point of validating my work before uploading any files

HTML: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
Javascript: scryptik free trial: 20 usages, single user license: US$29.00

In a similar vein, I recommend validating for accessibility, e.g via the Cynthia Says portal
...Cynthia Says portal is a web content accessibility validation solution.

It is designed to identify errors in your content related to Section 508 standards and/or the WCAG guidelines.

This free tool meant for educational purposes, is an online test which only validates one page at a time.
Click to expand...

WCAG: w3.org/WAI/WCAG1A-Conformance
 
BenBurch said:
For editing, I strongly recommend that you have a Macintosh and learn to use BBEdit as it is a MUCH better editor than DreamWeaver.
Click to expand...

I've never found the need to upgrade to BBEdit from its free little brother Textwrangler. It has all I need: Syntax highlighting, multi-file search / replace, regex, and FTP built right in. Highly recommended.

Also, you need to collect as many different browsers as you can because they all fair differently when you try clever things.
Click to expand...

A service like Browsercam offers comparative screenshots on the browsers / OSs of your choice, plus remote VNC access to their machines of all kinds. That's $100 a month, might be worth a look as a time and hardware saver. Haven't used it myself, though, as I have a Mac and an old XP / Ubuntu machine. When Vista-only browsers really start getting ahead, I might look into it.
 
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