What website languages do I need to learn to achieve the following:

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ryon

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#71347 9-Nov-2010 04:56

Hey

What website languages do I need to learn to achieve the following:

I want to be able to create a site that appears more like a program than a website.
To be interactive, produce graphs and present lots of data based on user input without having to reload the page all the time. I kind of plan for the user to load the page once at the beginning (maybe a longer load if necessary), but then not have to load the page again. So for certain parts of the page to load (retrieve and present data) but not the whole page.

I have heard that PHP is server side and Javascript is client side.

I currently know an OK amount of PHP and can construct sites with it.

I also remember someone once said that you can mesh PHP and Javascript together well with a language called ASP... I think, not too sure.

ALSO, do online learning centers such as w3schools teach sufficient information to achieve what I am trying to do, or is higher study required?

Sorry if any of this doesn't make sense, It's almost 5am and my mind isn't completely on to it.

Thanks
Ryan

BuffyNZ

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#401906 9-Nov-2010 05:23

Google Web Toolkit for the win.

http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/

Mostly Java based, google will optionally host and run your app.

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freitasm

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#401923 9-Nov-2010 07:50

ASP has nothing to do with PHP - very different technologies there.

You probably are thinking of AJAX, which allows for scripts running on your browser to access data on the server through assynchronous calls. It can be used with PHP- and ASP-based websites, or even other technologies.

ScottStevensNZ

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#401934 9-Nov-2010 08:33

AJAX is what you are looking for. Mario is right, ASP and PHP are two different platforms

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reven

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#401949 9-Nov-2010 08:58

depending on the complexity of the site, its not all that easy (well it is if you know what you are doing).

but basically what you want is
- jQuery and jQueryUI for the front end programming stuff (jquery is a framework for javascript which makes it about 100000000x easier to use and more useful), this would be for the Ajax so the pages dont reload, and make it interactive
- html and css for the design and structure of the site, you can achieve a lot in CSS, people often use javascript for things you should leave in CSS, if its the look/design of the site, do it in CSS if you can
- server side, php or asp.net. php is free, cheaper hosts, there lots of tutorials out for it, quite easy to learn. asp.net is free as well (there's an express version of visual studio, and there is monodevelop), but hosts are usually a couple of bucks more expensive, and its a little slower to load initially (since it basically loads the whole website into memory, php loads only the pages it needs).

learning jQuery will be a great benefit, its highly sort after in the commercial world, and its quite fun to use. it will also help your CSS skills, since the syntax is quite similar.

you should also check out lesscss.org which is basically a more advanced version of CSS, which you can compile into CSS.

Ragnor

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#402053 9-Nov-2010 12:35

Silverlight ;)

ryon

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#403015 10-Nov-2010 18:35

reven: depending on the complexity of the site, its not all that easy (well it is if you know what you are doing).

but basically what you want is
- jQuery and jQueryUI for the front end programming stuff (jquery is a framework for javascript which makes it about 100000000x easier to use and more useful), this would be for the Ajax so the pages dont reload, and make it interactive
- html and css for the design and structure of the site, you can achieve a lot in CSS, people often use javascript for things you should leave in CSS, if its the look/design of the site, do it in CSS if you can
- server side, php or asp.net. php is free, cheaper hosts, there lots of tutorials out for it, quite easy to learn. asp.net is free as well (there's an express version of visual studio, and there is monodevelop), but hosts are usually a couple of bucks more expensive, and its a little slower to load initially (since it basically loads the whole website into memory, php loads only the pages it needs).

learning jQuery will be a great benefit, its highly sort after in the commercial world, and its quite fun to use. it will also help your CSS skills, since the syntax is quite similar.

you should also check out lesscss.org which is basically a more advanced version of CSS, which you can compile into CSS.

Cool, I had never heard of jquery before =P.
I've been watching a few tutorials and it's looking pretty nice so far.
I have access to DW CS5, is there anyway to get code hinting in it?

I am still not sure how jquery, php, and Ajax integrate together, but i'm sure i'l find out by the end of my tutorials.

Hmm, I don't really understand what the lesscss thing does.

nate

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#403075 10-Nov-2010 20:17

ScottStevensNZ: AJAX is what you are looking for. Mario is right, ASP and PHP are two different platforms

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reven

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#403219 11-Nov-2010 07:35

ryon:
reven: depending on the complexity of the site, its not all that easy (well it is if you know what you are doing).

but basically what you want is
- jQuery and jQueryUI for the front end programming stuff (jquery is a framework for javascript which makes it about 100000000x easier to use and more useful), this would be for the Ajax so the pages dont reload, and make it interactive
- html and css for the design and structure of the site, you can achieve a lot in CSS, people often use javascript for things you should leave in CSS, if its the look/design of the site, do it in CSS if you can
- server side, php or asp.net. php is free, cheaper hosts, there lots of tutorials out for it, quite easy to learn. asp.net is free as well (there's an express version of visual studio, and there is monodevelop), but hosts are usually a couple of bucks more expensive, and its a little slower to load initially (since it basically loads the whole website into memory, php loads only the pages it needs).

learning jQuery will be a great benefit, its highly sort after in the commercial world, and its quite fun to use. it will also help your CSS skills, since the syntax is quite similar.

you should also check out lesscss.org which is basically a more advanced version of CSS, which you can compile into CSS.

Cool, I had never heard of jquery before =P.
I've been watching a few tutorials and it's looking pretty nice so far.
I have access to DW CS5, is there anyway to get code hinting in it?

I am still not sure how jquery, php, and Ajax integrate together, but i'm sure i'l find out by the end of my tutorials.

Hmm, I don't really understand what the lesscss thing does.

im not sure if you can get code hinting in DW for jQuery, i don't use it personally.

but this how jquery, php and ajax work together
- PHP is the server side language, it runs on the server and generates the pages that are sent to the client, eg if they are logged in it may show a "profile" link, if they aren't it may show a "login" button. or if you are showing search results, PHP will take in some values that are posted to it, do a search in the database, and generate HTML for the results and send it to the browser.
- jQuery is client side and its an advanced javascript framework, it is all javascript. This helps make the page interactive, eg showing modal popups, expanding/collapsing divs when a user clicks somewhere, showing a calendar input on a page etc. It also has AJAX functions to call the server.
- AJAX is a javascript call to the server that doesn't reload the page. eg if you use gmail when you delete a email it doesn't reload the whole page it just sends a small message to the server to delete it. there's no need to reload the entire page. Another example is a "Voting Poll", when a user votes, you only need a value (eg "Yes") so you only send that to the server, which is small and very quick, and the server may respond with the HTML with the poll results which would be less than 5KB (not the entire page, which could be 200KB or more), this makes your page faster and interactive. AJAX is a javascript function, so if Javascript is disabled in the client it won't work (99%+ of people have javascript enabled, its fine to assume they have it on these days, if they have it switched off they are expecting a few things to not work).

hope that clears it up a bit