If you are a visual designer who spends time in Photoshop and Illustrator, you may be put off by needing to learn how to create your designs with text, but Iassure you, it’s pretty simple to get started. There are also authoring tools that speed up the production process, as we’ll discuss later in this chapter.
The following is a list of technologies associated with web development.
Which languages and technologies you learn will depend on the role you see yourself in within the web design process. However, I advise everyone
involved in building websites to know their way around HTML and Cascading Style Sheets, and if you want to do front-end web development
for a living, JavaScript know-how is pretty much a job requirement.
More technically inclined web professionals may take on server configurations, databases, and site performance, but these are generally not front-end developer tasks (although a basic familiarity with the back-end issues never hurts).
Web-related technologies:
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
JavaScript and DOM scripting
Server-side programming and database managemen
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the language used to create web page documents. There are a few versions of HTML in use today: HTML
4.01 is the most firmly established and the newer, more robust HTML5 is gaining steam and browser support. Both versions have a stricter implementation
called XHTML (eXtensible HTML), which is essentially the same language with much stricter syntax rules. We’ll get to the particulars of what
makes the various versions different in Chapter 10, What’s Up, HTML5?.
HTML is not a programming language; it is a markup language, which means it is a system for identifying and describing the various components
of a document such as headings, paragraphs, and lists. The markup indicates the document’s underlying structure (you can think of it as a detailed,
machine-readable outline). You don’t need programming skills—only patience and common sense—to write HTML.
The best way to learn HTML is to write out some pages by hand, as we will be doing in the exercises in this book. If you end up working in web production,
you’ll live and breathe HTML. But even hobbyists will benefit from knowing what is going on under the hood. The good news is that it’s simple
to learn the basics.
While HTML is used to describe the content in a web page, it is Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) that describe how that content should look. In the web
design biz, the way the page looks is known as its presentation. That means fonts, colors, background images, line spacing, page layout, and so on…
all controlled with CSS. With the newest version (CSS3), you can even add special effects and basic animation to your page.
CSS also provides methods for controlling how documents will be presented in contexts other than the traditional desktop browser, such as in print and or
on devices with small screen widths. It also has rules for specifying the nonvisual presentation of documents, such as how they will sound when read by
a screen reader (although those are not well supported).
Style sheets are also a great tool for automating production because you can change the way an element looks across all the pages in your site by editing
a single style sheet document. Style sheets are supported to some degree by all modern browsers.
Although it is possible to publish web pages using HTML alone, you’ll probably want to take on style sheets so you’re not stuck with the browser’s
default styles. If you’re looking into designing websites professionally, proficiency at style sheets is mandatory.
JavaScript/DOM scripting
JavaScript is a scripting language that is used to add interactivity and behaviorsto web pages, including these (just to name a few):
Checking form entries for valid entries
Swapping out styles for an element or an entire site
Making the browser remember information about the user for the next time she visits
• Building interface widgets, such as expanding menus JavaScript is used to manipulate the elements on the web page, the stylesapplied to them, or even the browser itself. There are other web scripting languages, but JavaScript (also called ECMAScript) is the standard and most ubiquitous.
You may also hear the term DOM scripting used in relation to JavaScript.
DOM stands for Document Object Model, and it refers to the standardized list of web page elements that can be accessed and manipulated using
JavaScript (or another scripting language). DOM scripting is an updated term for what used to be referred to as DHTML (Dynamic HTML), now
considered an obsolete approach.
Writing JavaScript is a type of programming, so it may be time-consuming to learn if you have no prior programming experience. Many people teach
themselves JavaScript by reading books and following and modifying existing examples. Most web-authoring tools come with standard scripts that you
can use right out of the box for common functions.
Professional web developers are required to know JavaScript, however, plenty of visual designers rely on developers to add behaviors to their designs. So
while JavaScript is useful, learning to write it may not be mandatory for all web designers. Teaching JavaScript is outside the scope of this book; I recommend
Learning JavaScript by Shelley Powers (O’Reilly, 2006) as a good starting place if you want to learn more.
Checking form entries for valid entries
Swapping out styles for an element or an entire site
Making the browser remember information about the user for the next time she visits
• Building interface widgets, such as expanding menus JavaScript is used to manipulate the elements on the web page, the stylesapplied to them, or even the browser itself. There are other web scripting languages, but JavaScript (also called ECMAScript) is the standard and most ubiquitous.
You may also hear the term DOM scripting used in relation to JavaScript.
DOM stands for Document Object Model, and it refers to the standardized list of web page elements that can be accessed and manipulated using
JavaScript (or another scripting language). DOM scripting is an updated term for what used to be referred to as DHTML (Dynamic HTML), now
considered an obsolete approach.
Writing JavaScript is a type of programming, so it may be time-consuming to learn if you have no prior programming experience. Many people teach
themselves JavaScript by reading books and following and modifying existing examples. Most web-authoring tools come with standard scripts that you
can use right out of the box for common functions.
Professional web developers are required to know JavaScript, however, plenty of visual designers rely on developers to add behaviors to their designs. So
while JavaScript is useful, learning to write it may not be mandatory for all web designers. Teaching JavaScript is outside the scope of this book; I recommend
Learning JavaScript by Shelley Powers (O’Reilly, 2006) as a good starting place if you want to learn more.
0 comments:
Post a Comment