Website Design Languages

 

HTML [HTML Codes]

 

HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) was created to define the content of a web page, and it was never intended to format or style a web page. When tags like <font> were added to the HTML 3.2 specification, it started a nightmare for web developers. Development of large web sites, where fonts and color information were added to every single page, became a long and expensive process. To solve this problem, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) created CSS. In HTML 4.0, all formatting could be removed from the HTML document, and stored in a separate CSS file. All browsers support CSS today.

 

 

CSS [CSS Codes]

 

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a language used to describe the presentation of HTML documents by formatting font, color, margins, borders, height/width dimensions, background images, advanced positioning and many other styles. With CSS you have flexibility and control over the exact appearance of a page.

 

 

XML

 

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a markup language that was developed to retain the flexibility and power of HTML while reducing most of the complexity. HTML was designed to display data, with focus on how data looks. XML was designed to store and transport data, with focus on what data is. XML is a self-descriptive language with no predefined tags. So basically you must define your own tags in your pages.

 

 

XHTML

 

As of October 4, 2001, the Web Standards Committee decided to discontinue HTML by replacing it with XHTML (Extensible Hyper Text Markup Language), a language almost identical to HTML with the exception that it is written with different rules. XHTML combines the flexibility of HTML with the extensibility of XML. In HTML there is no guarantee that your pages will look the same in all browsers as some browsers read all the tags and some don’t. With XHTML, if you find a need for a new markup tag, you simply define it in a module and use it in your page as you would any other HTML tag and it will be read by all browsers.

 

 

DHTML

 

DHTML (Dynamic HTML), is a collection of technologies used together to create interactive and animated web sites by using a combination of a static markup language such as HTML, a client-side scripting language such as JavaScript, a presentation definition language such as CSS, and the Document Object Model.

 

 

ASP and PHP

 

PHP is a scripting language designed for server-side web development to produce dynamic and interactive web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document. PHP can be deployed on most web servers and also as a standalone interpreter, on almost every operating system and platform free of charge. A competitor of PHP is Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP) server-side script engine. Web content management systems (CMS) including Joomla, WordPress, Drupal and websites like Wikipedia and Facebook are written in PHP.

 

 

Flash

 

Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements and games.

Flash manipulates vector and raster graphics to provide animation of text, drawings, and still images. It supports bidirectional streaming of audio and video, and it can capture user input via mouse, keyboard, microphone, and camera. Flash contains an object-oriented language called ActionScript.

 

Issues with Flash Websites:

 

  1. Flash content can only be displayed on browsers that are equipped with Adobe Flash Player.
  2. Some browsers including Safari for iPhone and iPad don’t support Flash.
  3. Flash is an image based program and is not SEO friendly.
  4. Flash websites are usually slow.
  5. Flash has some usability issues, for instance, text and other page elements are not resizable.

 

 

Java Script

 

JavaScript is an easy-to-use programming language that can be embedded in the HTML coding of web pages. It can enhance the dynamics and interactive features of your page by allowing you to perform calculations, check forms, write interactive games, and add special effects, rollover graphic buttons, create image galleries, security passwords and more. JavaScript is THE scripting language of the Web as it is the most popular scripting language on the internet, and works in all major browsers. JavaScript is the best substitute for Flash, as it has most of Flash capabilities and none of its issues.

 

Using Pre existing JavaScript Codes

You can find pre existing JavaScript codes and paste them in your HTML page to enhance your web pages’ functionality. Dreamweaver comes with multiple pre written JavaScript and you can also find more on websites like: http://www.dynamicdrive.com/

 

 

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