16 Dec, 2007, Avaeryn wrote in the 1st comment:
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I have an interest in learning another language for creating webpages. The only language that I know fairly well is html, but you know how that goes. Thought I'd ask for some advice on a fairly easy language that I could use to create a webpage with. It's for my own personal enrichment. Is asp the way to go? Cold fusion? Let me know what you, the experts, think!
16 Dec, 2007, kiasyn wrote in the 2nd comment:
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coldfusion hurts.

go with php or ruby
16 Dec, 2007, Guest wrote in the 3rd comment:
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I'm personally quite happy with PHP and would have no real desire to torture myself with Ruby, Python, Asp, or Coldfusion :P
16 Dec, 2007, Darwin wrote in the 4th comment:
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PHP is actually very easy to use. To further help with things you could visit the online manual or use one of the downloadable versions.
16 Dec, 2007, Avaeryn wrote in the 5th comment:
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PHP it is then! Are there any books that you all have found helpful, and would recommend, or does the online manual suffice? I'm off to Google to do some research!
16 Dec, 2007, David Haley wrote in the 6th comment:
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In the end of the day, though, you probably still need to know some HTML… most of these languages are designed to write programs that generate HTML. HTML is still what the browsers need to display the page. Some languages allow you to not deal with HTML too much but usually those give you rather little control over what exactly is being output.

(EDIT: what I meant above is that usually you can't really escape HTML; wasn't trying to suggest you didn't know it or anything like that. :smile: )

I used Perl a whole lot back in the day, before PHP was really a serious option. When PHP came out and was mature enough to be considered a serious option, I wasn't really writing web applications anymore and had little incentive to change from Perl. I've since needed to write a webapp or two but I've used Lua combined with the CGILua tools (that let you treat a Lua script as any CGI script, pretty cool). Of course, all of these were just programs that happened to output HTML…
17 Dec, 2007, Darwin wrote in the 7th comment:
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Avaeryn said:
PHP it is then! Are there any books that you all have found helpful, and would recommend, or does the online manual suffice? I'm off to Google to do some research!

I haven't really found any PHP books that were that great, but then again I haven't had to look for one either since all I've really ever used, or needed to use, was the online manual.
I'm pretty sure there are plenty of useful PHP books out there that you may find helpful.
17 Dec, 2007, Guest wrote in the 8th comment:
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The PHP online manual and the function reference should be more than adequate to get you started.
17 Dec, 2007, kiasyn wrote in the 9th comment:
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Samson said:
The PHP online manual and the function reference should be more than adequate to get you started.


Agreed. Most useful language documentation I've ever found online.
17 Dec, 2007, Kelvin wrote in the 10th comment:
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Absolutely love Python + Django (http://djangoproject.com). Much more intuitive, faster to develop, and easier to read than PHP. This coming from a long-time PHP user, definitely was an eye-opening experience. Actual namespaces, sane function naming, and ultra-readable code with such a killer framework like Django are awesome.
17 Dec, 2007, Noplex wrote in the 11th comment:
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Personally, lately with school I have been utilizing more and more of PHP+XML-RPC (to our custom XML-RPC Java backend server). Lately I have been building small applications in JavaScript (with Prototype, Scriptaculous and Jquery toolkits). If you plan to do anything cross-browser you better get used to seeing and using JavaScript and AJAX. As I said, the Prototype and Jquery combo allows me to quickly (and easily) parse incoming XML queries and responses. Take a pick at the demo code if you want. The server may or may not be running (application was built for fingers on the iPhone).

http://web.njit.edu/~jvb4/demo/
18 Dec, 2007, Davion wrote in the 12th comment:
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I think if you're going to stay in the realm of web programming you cannot limit yourself to just one language. Having a full arsenal of web languages is a good way to go. After picking up PHP, you should also look into Javascript and CSS. This will give you a complete set of tools to develop your website. For CSS and Javascript, w3schools.com is all you'll need to pick up the basics of the two. As for PHP, hard to say. I went on to learn PHP after writing C/C++ for years, so picking it up was fairly easy. php.net is probably the best and only resource you'll ever need for learning and referencing.
18 Dec, 2007, Noplex wrote in the 13th comment:
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Davion said:
I think if you're going to stay in the realm of web programming you cannot limit yourself to just one language. Having a full arsenal of web languages is a good way to go. After picking up PHP, you should also look into Javascript and CSS. This will give you a complete set of tools to develop your website. For CSS and Javascript, w3schools.com is all you'll need to pick up the basics of the two. As for PHP, hard to say. I went on to learn PHP after writing C/C++ for years, so picking it up was fairly easy. php.net is probably the best and only resource you'll ever need for learning and referencing.

I would agree wholeheartedly with your statement except for the fact that JavaScript should, in my opinion, never be coded again without the use of Prototype (and JQuery). Once you start using those libraries (and anything else that relies upon them) you will never go back again.
18 Dec, 2007, Davion wrote in the 14th comment:
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Noplex said:
Davion said:
I think if you're going to stay in the realm of web programming you cannot limit yourself to just one language. Having a full arsenal of web languages is a good way to go. After picking up PHP, you should also look into Javascript and CSS. This will give you a complete set of tools to develop your website. For CSS and Javascript, w3schools.com is all you'll need to pick up the basics of the two. As for PHP, hard to say. I went on to learn PHP after writing C/C++ for years, so picking it up was fairly easy. php.net is probably the best and only resource you'll ever need for learning and referencing.

I would agree wholeheartedly with your statement except for the fact that JavaScript should, in my opinion, never be coded again without the use of Prototype (and JQuery). Once you start using those libraries (and anything else that relies upon them) you will never go back again.


But for the purpose of learning the language, I think it'd be better to pick up the basics of Javscript and -then- begin using 3rd party libs. Over the past few weeks though I've been slowing incorperating AJAX into MudBytes (in development only) but I'm definitely going to check out Prototype. So far though, I've been leaning towards using Scriptaculous for my AJAX integrations, but we'll see. I might just stick with good ol' Javascript!
18 Dec, 2007, Darwin wrote in the 15th comment:
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jQuery is recommended as well.
18 Dec, 2007, Asylumius wrote in the 16th comment:
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The JS libraries everyone has mentioned are great, as is JS in general. That said, nothing bugs me more than going to a website and having a basic drop down menu (or sometimes even a damned plain old button) not work because I have NoScript on.

Although I'm a big fan of Javascript, I wish more web developers would make their JS more unobtrusive and, if at all possible, make their sites function without JS turned on. I love me some Javascript, but I love me some noscript tags too!
18 Dec, 2007, David Haley wrote in the 17th comment:
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Davion said:
But for the purpose of learning the language, I think it'd be better to pick up the basics of Javscript and -then- begin using 3rd party libs.

In the case of these third-party libraries, though, I would think that they can provide insight into the language itself and how you are supposed to construct large (or largish) systems with it.

Asylumius said:
Although I'm a big fan of Javascript, I wish more web developers would make their JS more unobtrusive and, if at all possible, make their sites function without JS turned on. I love me some Javascript, but I love me some noscript tags too!

Agreed. It also makes it hell on the blind to have the site not function without Javascript.
18 Dec, 2007, Avaeryn wrote in the 18th comment:
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I've actually started working with CSS for now. I learned HTML too many years ago and I know some things have changed. It's something that will be just for personal interest and use. After I become familiar with CSS I think I will move on to other languages. So far CSS is going pretty well. It actually makes sense for the most part!

Thanks for all the info. Much appreciated. :biggrin:
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