HTML is a text language that the web browser interprets to create the page you see on the computer screen. Anyone interested in building or maintaining a website, should invest some time learning HTLM. Hyper-Text Markup Language is not very complex and requires no special editors or software to work with it. Simple HTML commands allow the web designer to control the information seen on a webpage. There are several excellent Tutorials available on the web. Some of them are in the links on the right of this page. To see an example of HTML, right click anywhere on this page and select “View Source”.
DHTML Dynamic HyperText Markup Language
DHTML is an extension of HTML that allows the web designer to do special effects on a webpage. An example of DHTML is the drop down menu in the header of this website. Other effects available include: Popup menus, Moving text, Animated text blocks, Mouse trail effects, Document entry and exit effects and System preferences. Very few programmers actually write DHTML code because it is a combination of JavaScript and HTML. To create a DHTML effect, simply copy the proper JavaScript code into your HTML program and follow the instructions of the code developer. DYNAMIC DRIVE is an excellent source of DHTML scripts. The menus at the top of this site and the fade in text boxes over the links are examples of DHTML.
JavaScript and PERL
JavaScript is a “scripting” language used to manipulate HTML code. PERL is another popular scripting language used to create advanced code segments for HTML. JavaScript appears as text segments within the HTML description language and are executed as functions by the web browser. JavaScript was developed by Netscape (Microsoft’s browser competitor) to be a cross-platform scripting language for web client and server applications. If you are using Internet Explorer, do not fear. Because it is cross-platform, JavaScript will load and run well in IE and Netscape.
JAVA programming
JavaScript is preferable when you want to manipulate the contents or behavior of an HTML page in simple ways. More dynamic or sophisticated behavior is better done within Java applets. JAVA and JavaScript have little in common other than the word “Java” in their name. JAVA is a programming language like C and C+. While JavaScript and HTML are description languages, JAVA is a true programming language. Description languages specify content and placement; programming languages describe a process for generating a result. Few website programmers ever use or program in JAVA because it is primarily a server language. Web pages are loaded into the client (local computer) and run from there. JAVA is called by HTML by calling an “applet” from within page. The applet declaration establishes the region of the page that the JAVA program will operate in.
Cascading Style Sheets
HTML has its limitations when it comes to layout. With CSS, you have much better control over the layout of your web pages. You can specify exactly how big a font will be, exactly where an element will be on a page, what the page will look like when printed, and much more. With Cascading Style Sheets, you can define all your common styles in an external Style Sheet. This way, if you want to change every occurrence of a style throughout your site, you only need to update one file. You do not have to use CSS to control the entire look and feel of your web page. If you hover over a link on this site, the text will not underline and the text size is controlled with CSS.
Active Server Pages
ASP developed by Microsoft is a Web-based relational database language that allows the content of your web pages to reside on a server and be accessed by a Visual Basic Script embedded in your html code. Most major websites and virtually all ecommerce pages use ASP to access and construct their pages dynamically. If you are building a complex website or just want to have the flexibility that a server-side database affords you, than ASP may be the programming method of choice. For additional information on ASP, Webmonkey and LearnASP have excellent resources for the beginning ASP programmer.
Wizards and Code Generators
Website building requires some mechanism for actually creating the program. Most web authors program in HTML using simple editors to create their code. You can learn HTML and other programming languages from tutorials provided on the web. Some hosting services offer wizards to allow novices to create a fairly good-looking webpage or site by filling out a web form and selecting a set of graphics. Other programs like Microsoft FrontPage can be used to create the code and assist in publishing your website. At some point in time most web designers will edit their pages with text editors. Directly modifying the HTML code is one of the fun parts of building a website. Although few web designers will admit to it, a common practice is to initialize a web page using Microsoft Word or FrontPage then tweak the code in a text editor to achieve the final result. Syntax is important when editing html code, so you may want to use an HTML editor with a syntax checker built in. Our favorite Freeware HTML editor is AceHTML 5 from Visicom Media.
