so in web development, there are basically two classifications.
client-side and
server side.
So the part that you actually see in a webpage (
front-end)- the buttons, the checkbox's the images ,and style, the tabs,and dialog box's ,etc are part of client-side part of web development. apart from the image work, most of the client side is rendered in a browser with knowledge of html, css, and javascript. and being able to create them statically , as well as dynamically . Off late
rich interactive applications (RIA) are being build not only with just
html and
javascript , but with flash,its newer version called flex . So predominantly the two competing platforms for user interface (
UI ,there are courses on UI), are html+javascript versus proprietary platforms of delivery like
flash (from adobe) or
silverlight (from microsoft). openlasslo basically came up with their own intermediary langauge which lets you design in their markup (or syntax) and then it automatically can chosen to be rendered in flash OR html+js . silverlight and flash both are suited towards multimedia applcations like video, charting and graphics, onine image editing ,etc while html+js work better for manipulating the document ( or DOM manipulation)
The part that you mostly dont get to see physically, such as the database (
backend) that deal with the source of data storage and search. The data retreival and infact what talks to the database is the server-side scripting language like PHP,asp.net,jsp,ruby,perl(
business logic) which is basically a single machine called the server that listens on a particular port for "requests" ( like your browser hitting TE server asking for showing this page) , and a "reply" (take all messages from this thread and show in them with proper html ) . so depending on the server (machine that listens) the language that you write the
server-side language changes. infact you can even write business logic in C, perl , ruby , erlang or even Arc even if you want to, etc ! this
client-server architecture is how most web applications work. Offlate again, newer technologies like "
ajax" allow multiple requests in the same page running in the background, where as "
comet" allows the server to give replies to the client without the "request" or client even asking . ( such as notifying when a chat message comes, or when stock market quotes )
The best place to start is by creating a site or webpage for yourself. you'll learn through things like domain registration, hosting, dns , etc. if on the other hand, you want a
freely hosted webpage , those are fine as well . Then learn how to do things like create a "page counter" ( even if it means seeing how existing page counters work by opening up its code and
reverse engineering ), or a "guestbook", and then moving up to things like a "feed/rss reader", "image gallery", and so on.
So clearly , there really is opportunity in both client-side (the presentation to the user ) part as well as the server-side (the actual representation of what you see ) , and it will definitely help to learn both sides for understanding , regardless of whether you end up a flash developer, an icons designer , a database administrator, a linux administrator, a web applications developer, a css specialist, a javascript coder, a technical writer for explaning how these work, or a number of other existing, and upcoming opportunities for those taking the plunge into the world wide web.
