Web Development

Submitted by Alan on Sat, 04/25/2009 - 17:36

How To Make Your First Web Page

Start here if you've never made a web page before, and need to know the basics about web sites and pages. What is a server? What is a host? How do I create my first page? How can I get it onto the web? This page will teach you the basics of building your own web site.

HTML: Hypertext Markup Language

HTML is the lingua franca for publishing hypertext on the WWW. It is a non-proprietary format, based upon SGML, for describing the structure of hypermedia documents - plain text (ASCII) files with embedded codes for logical markup, using tags to structure text into tables, hypertext links interactive forms, headings, paragraphs, lists, and more. It can be created and processed in a wide range of tools from simple plain text editors to sophisticated WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) authoring tools.

CSS: Cascading Style Sheets

CSS is a simple style sheet mechanism that allows authors and readers to attach style to HTML documents. It uses common desktop publishing terminology which should make it easy for professional as well as untrained designers to make use of its features. Visual design issues, such as page layout, can thus be addressed separately from the web page logical structure.

Graphics for Web Design

For many people, web design = graphics. But, this is no more than one half or one third of the story - for the rest, see Web Design - More than Meets the Eye. Nevertheless, good graphics and page design can grab the viewer's attention, and may well make the difference between being bookmarked, and being forgotten - even if your content is brilliant.

Color for Web Design

Examines the sRGB Color model and it's application in Web Design. Handy table of the browser-safe palette.

More Than Meets the Eye

Many elements go into successful web site design; we can cluster those elements into sensory, conceptual, and reactive aspects. That is, design isn't only what you see, it's also what you think and feel as you navigate a web site. This article explores some of the basic principles of web site design, and provides many links to other resources for further detailed study.

Information Architecture

Information architecture is the process of organizing, labeling, designing navigation and searching systems that helps people find and manage information more successfully. Good information architecture makes a website easy to use.

Usability and Accessibility

Usability refers to the ease with which anyone (disabled or not, or with unusual viewing situations or not) can navigate a site and achieve the objectives which you have set for it, such as learning about your product or about an academic topic, or enjoying the games and puzzles in it, etc. And, beyond that, users should be able to succesfully achieve subsidiary tasks such as filling in forms to order from your catalog, or finding contact information.

Free Content for Websites

A brief overview of free web content basics and reviews of some of the best sources for free web content, especially articles.

CGI: Common Gateway Interface

CGI is a standard for external gateway programs to interface with information servers, such as HTTP or Web servers. A plain HTML document that the Web server delivers is static, which means it doesn't change. A CGI program, on the other hand, is executed in real-time, so that it can output dynamic information - perhaps a weather reading, or the latest results from a database query. CGI allows someone visiting your Web site to run a program on your machine that performs a specified task.

Java

Java (tm) is a simple, robust, dynamic, multi-threaded, general-purpose, object-oriented, platform-independent programming environment, created and developed by Sun Microsystems. Developers can write custom mini-applications called applets, which allow expert graphics rendering, real-time interaction with users, live information updating, and instant interaction with servers over the network.

JavaScript

JavaScript is a cross-platform, object-based scripting language for client and server applications. JavaScript lets you create applications that run over the Internet. Using JavaScript, you can create dynamic HTML pages that process user input and maintain persistent data using special objects, files, and relational databases.

DHTML: Dynamic HTML

Dynamic HTML is typically used to describe the combination of HTML, style sheets and scripts that allows documents to be animated. Dynamic HTML allows a web page to change after it's loaded into the browser --there doesn't have to be any communication with the web server for an update. You can think of it as 'animated' xHTML. For example, a piece of text can change from one size or color to another, or a graphic can move from one location to another, in response to some kind of user action, such as clicking a button.

Web Site Promotion

Once a site is built, it needs to be made visible to the WWW. This means that links are established to your site from a number of other sites on the web; sites to which yours is relevent, directories, andsearch engines. Getting these links is part of the process of web site promotion, which can also include other means of bringing your site to people's attention, such as advertising in other media, such as print publications. If you're planning to also use the other, non-Internet media, then of course it'll be a big help if your domain name is easily memorable (it'll help on the net too).

XML: eXtensible Markup Language

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a human-readable, machine-understandable, general syntax for describing hierarchical data, applicable to a wide range of applications (databases, e-commerce, Java, web development, searching, etc.). XML provides a flexible way to create common information formats and share both the format and the data on the WWW, intranets, and elsewhere. Custom tags enable the definition, transmission, validation, and interpretation of data between applications and between organizations.