Xhtml, html & PHP

[NekoRacing]

I want to learn web design.

1) Which programming language would be suitable for me to learn?
Xhtml, html or PHP?

2) If I want to start creating my own blog from scratch, what do i need? and what programming language do i need?

3) I want to incorporate flash into my site, flash for images such as banners and logos. Am i suppose to use Illustrator or Photoshop?

4) How did the professionals start off?

Would appreciate if someone could share some really cool and user friendly sites for tutorials. Some of the tutorials i have are too difficult, I just want to start simple, get my basics and framework for future work.

Thanks!

 

[Geffy]

XHTML and HTML are markup languages and are pretty much required in order to produce anything for the web. Also CSS is a staple of a good design. PHP is a popular programming language, about 90% of web hosts support it.

Other popular web frameworks are ASPX (VB.net, C#), Ruby on Rails (Ruby) and Django (Python)

If you are wanting to create a blog you will need XHTML, CSS, and SQL teamed with the programming language of your choice.

Flash, well you do most of that in applications like FlashMX and so on.

I personally started off with PHP, XHTML, CSS and MySQL. Since then I have also worked with Java both JSP and Servlets, PostgreSQL, SQLite and now predominately use Ruby on Rails for web development.

 

[Khayman]

um... what he said

 

[NekoRacing]

Let me get this straight.

XHTML and HTML are in the same category. But obviously, XHTML has more features.

1) What about PHP? Isn't it equivalent to HTML & XHTML?

2) Let's say i want to start a simple blog. I already have basic knowledge of HTML & CSS. How much do i need to learn SQL to get the blog running?

Thx again!

 

[fitz]

Let me get this straight.

XHTML and HTML are in the same category. But obviously, XHTML has more features.

1) What about PHP? Isn't it equivalent to HTML & XHTML?

2) Let's say i want to start a simple blog. I already have basic knowledge of HTML & CSS. How much do i need to learn SQL to get the blog running?

Thx again!

XHTML/HTML are related.. define more features? it's markup.. XHTML is more strict in it's syntax..

PHP is not the same as HTML/XHTML/XML.. it's a programming/scripting preprocessor that can be used to generate dynamic HTML for creating dynamic pages.

If you get a site that will host your blog using something like blogger/wordpress/etc, then you really don't need to know much of anything since they have templates and such to take care of it all. If you want to host/create your own blog from scratch, you'll need to know how to setup/design/normalize a SQL table as well as how to pull data in and out of the database using a language like PHP/ASP/etc..

 

[NekoRacing]

I did some readings in W3schools.com

I mistaken XHTML for a new language. Instead, it is just a newer format for HTML, a standardized one since HTML had few flaws in it.

I'm still confused, Since i'm interested in learning web design.

1) Am I suppose to learn PHP to make a blog? Isn't XHTML + SQL + CSS sufficient.

 

[Geffy]

You need to use a programming/scripting language to make it dynamic. There is of course nothing stopping you from using static files which you update manually.

 

[albybum]

If you just want a webpage that you can update manually by editing the html documents, XHTML+CSS is just fine.

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HTML and CSS have no functionality that would let you use a database (the reason you would need SQL).

HTML is just a markup langauge that gives structure to information.
CSS is a design language used to format HTML pages.

If you wanted to create a dynamic content management system, like Wordpress for example, then you would also need to learn PHP, ASP, JSP, or something similar (scripting languages). Scripting languages allow you to use programming-like control structures (conditional statements: if then else, loops: for while) to dynamically generate content and html.

SQL only really plays a part if you use a database and a scripting language. You need a scripting language to send queries to the database and manipulate the data once you have it.

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You will need HTML(or XHTML) and CSS to create a decent-looking webpage.

You will need a scripting language to dynamically generate html and information or to do file processing.

You will need SQL and a scripting language if you are using a database (because you need to query and manipulate the data)

 

[mfarley]

Start out getting your roots learning xhtml and css up and down. After that, pick up a dynamic code like php or aspx to complement. But make sure you have your foundation in xhtml and css...the staples of quality sites.