Web Development Basics: help me, lazyweb

[tongodeon]

I haven't done anything significant in HTML since 1998. I know a whole bunch of compiled and interpreted programming languages, but I haven't needed to know much about cutting-edge web development beyond how to write static documentation. I'm still hand-coding HTML using Emacs, with a little PHP where necessary. I know *nothing* about CSS,

Comments

[catbear]

It's all ECMA/Javascript talking to the generally wide-open object model the browsers provide, and there are occasionally tricks with iframes to do server interaction without the user's initiation. The nice thing is that you can generally peek at anyone's source by snooping at the script fetching tags. Many neat techniques can be discovered, of which the most important ones are "how do I make this work in all the browsers."

I tend towards using Dreamweaver for all my web development; it has context highlighting for php, ecma/javascript, html, and has built-in references for just about everything. also, macromedia keeps several of our friends well employed.

and, yes, i hit "reload" on my browser(s) a lot. it's par for the course.

[tongodeon]

Things I did not understand in your post:

- ECMA
- the generally wide-open object model the browsers provide

[catbear]

ECMA is the formal designation of the language which "Javascript" is a dialect.

The object model provided by the browsers is the non ECMA portion of Javascript that exposes many (thus, wide-open) methods and properties related to forms, documents, and system objects.

[caitlinburke]

The in thing is "AJAX" - basically a new term for XMLHttpRequest. (DHTML per se is still thriving everywhere people demand drop-down menus.)

Here is the Wikipedia intro to AJAX.

AJAX

[sseaman]

AJAX is how Google Maps works.

It's XML based posts to server side services via JavaScript without reloading the page in the browser.

Do a search on AJAX and you will find a ton of examples.

As to an IDE... I do all my work in Eclipse and use Firebird and Venkman.

Venkman is one of the best JavaScript debuggers I've ever seen (esp. since it is free ;))

Eclipse is great since most of my work is Java based. I'm sure there are better IDE's (Dreamweaver?) for just JavaScript and HTML...

Re: AJAX

[sseaman]

Oh.. and as to Dashboard... for windows, take a look at RainMeter

[waider]

Since ajax has been mentioned, all I need to add is that you should go to del.icio.us and look there at all the Simple Easy In One Day Learn Ajax 24 Hours Wizard For Dummies pages, and get busy. There's some good stuff there, including toolkits to write all the code for you.

[wisn]

Much of the above is useful information, excepting maybe that AJAX is better left as executive summary terminology than a developer's tool when looking for developer's tools - the tools predate the term.

That said, check http://www.alistapart.com/ . It doesn't touch on a lot of the AJAX whizzery but it provides basic start-to-finish instructions on discrete UI effects: drop-down menus of various varieties, or javascript image replacements that degrade gracefully under various browsers, structural tables-free page layouts, or resources for altering CSS to various browser clients. It also provides copious pointers to further resources, so it's a good place to start.

[wisn]

Oh yeah - I'm happy using BBEdit for everything. I think if I was starting in or restarting in HTML after a long pause I'd go straight to Dreamweaver. The Mac version of Dreamweaver includes BBEdit.