Lesson 3: How to add programming to your pages without being a programmer
Amazingly, there are thousands of people in the world who are willing to freely share their expertise and their work with the rest of us. The nicest thing about the Internet is that it gives them an opportunity to do just that.
For you, the web page designer, this means that there are several libraries of free scripts out there for you to incorporate into your pages for the small price of including a comment acknowledging the author. These libraries have categorized scripts available for the downloading, or hosted on someone else's site, along with detailed instructions on how to use them.
In this lesson, you'll learn how to take advantage of this online cornucopia.
Some explanations
HTML is just a markup language. Sort of like word processing. It's intended to allow you to create formatted web pages. Period. For the most part, if you want those pages to DO something -- store a guest book entry, read something from a database file, trigger an email -- you have to add some kind of programming.
There are three flavors of programming that are used with web pages. (Ok. They sort of overlap, but bear with me.)
- scripting languages Scripting languages are programming languages designed specifically for web pages. They allow you to mix programming code into the midst of your HTML. The main contenders are:
- PHP
- ASP from Microsoft
- Cold Fusion
- JSP, which is a subset of Java
- ADP, which AOL uses a lot.
- separate programs which are invoked by web pages or, in the case of Java, which invoke web pages via a Controller program. The biggies are
- CGI/PERL
- Java
- .Net from Microsoft
- Javascript which is in a class by itself. It's executed at the browser, on the user's machine, rather than, like the two above, at the web server -- you know, the computer at your hosting company that serves your web pages to your visitors. (Java applets are also executed at the browser, but they've declined in general use.)
and
Javascript has been around for a while and is supported by most browsers (though people can choose to turn it off). Compared to full blown programming languages, Javascript is limited in functionality. But for what it does, it's great. You know all those dropdown menus you see on web pages? They're all done with Javascript. So are rollovers, those menu items that change color when you mouse over them.
And best of all, unlike with more complicated programming languages, any competent HTML writer can make use of Javascript. To use a script, you just have to cut and paste code directly into your web page. And boy, is there code! Free! For nothing!
Here's how to get in on this great deal.
