Datasheet

15
Chapter 1: Taking the Web to the Next Level
✓ HTML: HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the basic markup lan-
guage that describes Web pages. It’s a relatively simple technique for
building Web sites that requires nothing but a plain text editor.
✓ XHTML: XHTML is often considered the successor to HTML. Because it
doesn’t allow certain kinds of tags, XHTML is actually a smaller language
that’s a bit easier to use. Typically XHTML pages are more dependent on
CSS than HTML, as many of the HTML tags are replaced with CSS tools.
✓ CSS: CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a way to add specific style informa-
tion to an HTML or XHTML page. HTML and XHTML provide the general
framework, and CSS describes the color and layout.
✓ JavaScript: JavaScript is a programming language embedded in all
modern Web browsers. It’s specially designed to interact with Web
pages; you can use it to extract information from parts of a page, and to
manipulate the page in real time.
✓ AJAX: (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) is a technique that allows
JavaScript to communicate more directly with the Web server. It creates
an interesting new relationship between the Web browser and the Web
server. About half of this book is dedicated to AJAX.
✓ PHP: (PHP Hypertext Preprocessor) is one of several important lan-
guages for working on a Web server. Although it’s not a primary focus
of this book, the PHP language can do things that JavaScript cannot do.
AJAX is frequently used to connect JavaScript applications to PHP pro-
grams. You get a brief introduction to PHP in Chapter 14.
✓ Java: Java is a language that’s entirely different from JavaScript (despite
the similar names). Although Java is useful on both the client and server
sides of the client-server relationship, it’s not a primary focus of this book.
When you’re looking for online help about JavaScript, be sure that you talk to
JavaScript experts and not Java programmers. Although the languages have
similar names, they’re entirely different languages. Java programmers love
to act superior, and they’ll give you grief if you ask a JavaScript question in a
Java forum. If in doubt, ask on my Web site (www.aharrisbooks.net). I can
help you with either language, and I won’t mind (or bug you about it) if you’re
a little confused.
Choosing your computer
Of course, you’ll need a computer. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be anything
special. Any computer you can use to view Web pages can also be used to
create them. Any of the major operating systems (Windows, Mac, and Linux)
is perfectly fine. I do most of my work on a combination of Linux (Fedora
Core) and Windows XP, but all the programs in the book will work exactly the
same on any reasonably modern computer.
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