Webdesigning

[ssmuthu]

Hi,

 

I want to develop a website and I want to develop mobile apps (not mobile website) which gets the feed from the website. I don't know any programming. This is my plan and I want to start studying the required knowledge. Pls share your thoughts regarding what and where should I start first.

 

I thought of starting with HTML as it is basic to develop a website. What is the differences between HTML vs HTML5. Should i be knowing HTML to study HTML5.

 

Thoughts and suggestions are welcome to discuss.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Regards.

[prodigydoo]

html 5 is just a newer version of html with more features. Most browsers haven't completely integrated full support for html 5 yet. So i would stick with non 5 html.. and html should do everything you want anyway. Although you will likely have to pair it with css and possibly java to accomplish all of your aims for the website.

[ssmuthu]

Thanks for the reply. Will do css and java as well.

[alpenwasser]

HTML is a good start. It's a very simple language, so it shouldn't take too much time.

HTML5 can be made compatible with older browsers by using something called an HTML5

shiv, but that requires Javascript. Basically you need to decide how many people you

want to exclude from your website (after all, not everybody has Javascript enabled).

If you're targeting people with more or less modern-ish browsers then using HTML5

is not a problem. Personally, I simply don't develop for older browsers anymore.

Too many restrictions. However, I am aware that this is not necessarily an option

available to you.

CSS3 is a bit trickier than HTML5 in and of itself. This is for various reasons, the

most important one being that CSS3 is not really a thing as a hole, but rather an

overarching term used for various novelties being introduced. Parts of those have

been implemented well in most modern browsers and are quite safe to use, others not

so much.

There are many websites for this sort of thing, but one of the handier ones I've

come across is caniuse. It tells you what features are available in which browser

versions.

Aside from CSS3 there are also problems that can arise from good old conventional

CSS since there are differences in the browsers' implementation of how they interpret

CSS. So, a CSS instruction might mean something slightly different for Internet

Explorer, Chrome and Firefox. With modern browser versions this isn't as big of a

problem anymore as it used to be, but if you want to maintain compatibility with

older browser versions (especially IE8 and older), then this can become a major

source of headaches.

As for the back bone of the website, you probably want to look at a server side

scripting language such as PHP, Ruby, Python or Perl. Personally I've used PHP for

a commercial project, and I'm currently teaching myself Perl. I wouldn't really

recommend Perl to a newcomer, but PHP is quite easy to learn and there are a ton

of tutorials out there. I recommend having a look at the programming resources

thread on this forum for more info on that.

Then there's Javascript. It's very nice to add polish to your website, however I

would pay attention that the website is still usable without it since many people

have Javascript disabled for security reasons, as mentioned above. This may or may

not be important to you, just fyi.

I've never programmed an App, but afaik you'll need to look at Java for Android

and Objective-C for iPhone, not totally sure on that one.

[ssmuthu]

Thank you so much for your reply. It is very useful to me. First I finish HTML in few days and start learning about other programs you mentioned above. Thanks again. So it is like this way HTML, HTML5, css3, javascript then PHP as of now.

[Zonked]

Not too sure of your specific aims, but is seems to be you'll need to be somewhat familiar with the following: 

 

HTML/HTML5
CSS/CSS3
JavaScript
SQL

PHP (Possibly)
Objective-C
Java
XML

As well as that you will need to understand lots of concepts involved in web design, as well as Android/Windows Phone/iOS development. I wish you luck sir, come back to the forums if you need advice.

[alpenwasser]

Oh yes of course, SQL or something similar. How could I have forgotten, I've actually

used that in my project *facepalm* :lol:

XML can be useful, but I've not needed it so far. However, you definitely might

get to a point where you'll have to familiarize yourself with it, so it's good to have

that on your list.

[MG2R]

For learning about web development, go to http://www.w3schools.com

Basically, what you need to know is this:

• HTML: a language that defines the structure of your website
• CSS: a language that defines the look of your website
• PHP: a server-side scripting language. PHP pages have more functionality and can adapt to various factors and create different results depending on input (for example: you can create a page that says "hello user", where user is adapted to the name given to the page from a form a user filled in on another page)
• Javascript: a client-side scripting language. This can be used to make websites look more dynamic and do more eyecandy stuff (e.g. color a text-input box of a form when the user still needs to enter it before they may submit the form) or even perform heavy functions on the client, without putting load on the server (look at http://www.wolframalpha.com for example)

If you can work with those four, you can get a long way! Actually, javascript is rather optional for most websites.

Now, depending on the purpose of the website, you might need to have a system which holds your data (a list of users, for example). There are two systems you can use to store your data:

• DBMS: DataBase Management System. Often referred to as a database. This is a system where you store your list of users (again, for example, the possibilities are endless) in a database (basically a whole bunch of tables) and you use a DBMS (MySQL, for example) to interface with that database. The language you'll need to learn is SQL, which can be confusing at times, but is very powerfull.
• XML: eXtensible Markup Language. Here, you store your data in text files, which actually have a lot in common with HTML. Creating XML files is easy (and I mean *really* easy). The main advantages of this over DBMS is that you do not need any special software (which is sometimes an issue with web hosts) and that the files are easily readable (notepad does a wonderful job) and transportable. With DBMS, however, you can perform very complex and usefull operations on the dataset you have. The languages you'll need to make XML files and interface with them are XML (5 minutes to learn), xPath (a way of pointing to exactly what you need out of the text file) and (optionally) XSLT (if you want to be able to directly transform XML to HTML).

If you know all of that, you're a professional web developer ;)

Since you're going for a cell phone app as well, I'd suggest you to use XML as a way of storing your data. Your cell phone app will be able to get the XML file from the server and do what it needs to do.
I would also suggest you to do one thing at a time: first learn how to build basic web site, keep it simple. Once you're comfortable with that, start working on your final website in your spare time and start learning how to make basic apps for cell phones. Again, keep it simple! There's no point rushing into trying to build a gigantic app with millions of features when you can't even print "hello world" to your screen.

If you KISS (Keep It Stupid and Simple), you'll get there eventually ;)

And one last thing: keep in mind that what you're trying to do will probably be a project of multiple months (or even more then a year), seeing that you don't have any coding experience at all. Try not to get overwhelmed and keep pushing towards your goal! :)

Happy coding!

[ssmuthu]

Thank you so much to all. Got the idea. Wiil surely come back if I need anything. I know it takes months to get to a pro. But I am convinced to do it, so starting it. Thanks again.

[TechTheWorld]

Yes you can use html5 but you will have to use Css3 and java with it. Html5 is noting without css....

[xWacko]

I am right now studying web development my self and the best place to start would be HTML5 and CSS3. After you have those done i would then move on to javascript such as jquery as you can do a lot with it.

Also i would recommend you get a program called Sublime Text its very very good for web development and it also has predictive text which is nice.

[MG2R]

I am right now studying web development my self and the best place to start would be HTML5 and CSS3. After you have those done i would then move on to javascript such as jquery as you can do a lot with it.

Also i would recommend you get a program called Sublime Text its very very good for web development and it also has predictive text which is nice.

I would argue that PHP is more important than JS...

Also, I'd suggest starting with non-5 HTML and non-3 CSS. Browser support is better

[ssmuthu]

Thank you all friends. Such a useful input, really helpful. Thanks