Web Design Technology
This is a short primer that covers modern web design and development technology and how that technology fits into within the framework of a modern web application.
ServerA computer on the internet that holds and makes accessible web site files. For example the computer that you access when you visit www.tjeremyt.com is a server. This is generally what people are referring to when they talk about web hosting or colocation.
ClientA computer that requests information from a server; the site visitor's computer. In terms of web design and development, the web browser is the client. Client-side code or architecture means code that is interpreted locally by the web browser.
HTMLHypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the most common language of web designers and the most widely acquired technology listed on this page. HTML is used to define the semantic structure of web page content, and to a lesser extent the visual placement of text and images within a web site design. HTML uses a hierarchal system of tags to designate textual and media elements nested within a web page.
A browser interprets HTML tags in order to recognize and render all web page elements such as paragraphs, headlines, images, and bolded text.
An html tag is always delimited in the following manner: <b>,<body>,<p>. Which represent a bold tag, body tag, and paragraph tag respectively. HTML tags may have customized style attributes that are defined by a structure called cascading style sheets.
CSSCSS or Cascading Style Sheets is a protocol for defining the visual properties of HTML elements. CSS may be used to set sizing of elements, colors, background images, and font properties in addition to numerous other visual attributes. The advantage of CSS is that it is intended to separate the design style and format from the semantic markup of a web site.
PHPThere are two parts to a web site request, the client and the server. The client is your web browser, and server is the computer that serves the web site files, i.e. www.tjeremyt.com. Thus far we have discussed technology pertaining to the client, or web browser.
PHP, on the other hand, is a scripting language that is translated and run on the web server. It is widely used, open source, community supported, secure and stable.
MySQLA database is a repository for structured data. For example, lists of product orders, login information such as email addresses and passwords, and user submitted data are stored in a database. Specific data sets can be retrieved from a database using a query language called Structured Query Language or SQL. A database query might be structured to request all paid product orders for February 2009, ordered by total dollars spent. MySQL is an industry standard, open source database technology that is high performing and reliable. It can handle high volumes of records and requests very efficiently.
AJAXAJAX is not really a distinct technology, but a technique that allows a web page to communicate to a server without issuing a page refresh to the browser. New data can be loaded to respond to a user's input without delay. This allows web developers a great deal of flexibility in application design by permitting simultaneous tasks to execute efficiently.
The ability to transmit data between server and client computer reduces server loads and visitor wait times. Much of the data processing that once took place on servers can be distributed to client computers and executed directly the browser application.
A well known example of AJAX is the interface found in Gmail by Google. While AJAX has become more widespread in application use across the internet, Google's webmail product remains an excellent example of how to design an AJAX application well.
