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General Tech /

An idiots guide to web technologies

By Joseph C Lawrence: Columnist on 5 November, 2010

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You work in an online industry, or at least deal with online marketers

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and web developers every day, but you dont always get the tech, and you
have to fake it when the techies start speaking. No need to be shy, you
dont need to understand everything, just how it all fits together in the
bigger scheme of things.
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Lets take a whirlwind tour through some of the most popular technologies being used online today.

HTML (Hypertext

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Markup Language)
HTML is not functional
it does not do
anything, like
manipulate data or do
maths. The purpose of
HTML is to describe
the content of a web page, so that it can be interpreted
properly. The two most important things that need to
interpret web pages are web browsers and search engines.
HTML helps to communicate important and varied

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information, from what the title of the web page is, to what

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CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)

CSS, like HTML, is not functional (except in a superficial

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but visually awesome way CSS3 does cater for some

animations). It is used to define the styling of a website in
an easy and efficient way. A CSS file allows a web designer to specify such rules as the colour of a link, the

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width of a content area or the border around images in just one place, and then reference those rules on any
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XML (eXtensible Markup Language)

XML, like HTML, describes data. Unlike HTML it does not have a finite number of predefined tags with

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which to describe things you can create your own. What is important to know is that this means that
different applications, different services, and different programming languages can share data. As long as
each application or service knows what the XML tags mean, data can be shared between two completely

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different systems, written by different people in different programming languages.

JavaScript

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JavaScript is a programming language of sorts, usually used for fairly light functionality, although recently
used heavily as the backbone for a lot of the more modern, slick, animated interfaces on contemporary
websites. One major point to be aware of is that JavaScript runs in your browser, not on the websites server.
This has a few implications firstly users can turn it off, secondly different browsers might support (or not
support) different aspects of a piece of JavaScript code. Thirdly it means that processing can occur live on a
website, rather than requiring a page reload to send data to the server and back. JavaScript is used

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extensively for other things on the web, such as web analytics, tracking code and the setting of cookies.

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JavaScript libraries

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JavaScript libraries are collections of pre-written JavaScript code that one can reference, style and tweak to
achieve certain functionality on a website, without writing everything from scratch. Whilst JavaScript is a
fairly versatile language, most of the more popular libraries deal with creating fluid and dynamic interface
elements, such as tabs, drag-and-drop functionality and live system messages (imagine the password
strength indicators present on many websites). Popular JavaScript libraries include JQuery, MooTools and

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Prototype.

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Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)

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This is a term that is bandied about quite a lot these days, and refers to any kind of dynamic interface
element. Technically Ajax refers to the use of a group of technologies (including HTML, CSS, JavaScript
and XML) to dynamically retrieve data from a server, and present it on a web page without the web page
having to reload. A good example is the new Google Instant interface, where search results are retrieved
automatically as the search query is entered, and the user does not have to click submit and wait for a page
reload as with previous Google interfaces.

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SQL (Structured Query Language)

A language used to access and edit databases. Commonly used database systems online include MySQL and
PostgreSQL which are both open source, and Microsoft SQL server. Almost all dynamic websites and web
applications utilise databases to store information. SQL is a common language used to store, edit and
retrieve the information from these databases.
Programming languages
Java is a big boy, often used for enterprise level development. .NET, C# and ASP.NET are all Microsoft

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technologies (which means you have to pay to use them), and are also often used for enterprise level
development. PHP, Ruby and Python are all modern open source favourites for creating web applications
and dynamic websites of all sizes. Perl is these days often used for more nitty gritty tasks such as CGI
programming. ActionScript is the programming language of Flash, and used heavily in sites that require full
and extensive animation.

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Web Frameworks
Web Frameworks is a fairly generic phrase, that could refer to a number of different things, but most
commonly it refers to a bunch of pre-written code that is paired with an existing programming language.
This pre-written code includes lots of commonly found structures and functionalities in web applications,

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distinctions between the logic of the applications and the rendering of the actual web pages. Some popular

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web frameworks include Rails for Ruby, Cake for PHP, Django for Python and Apache Struts for Java.

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Well, thats all for now. Understanding a broad overview of how different technologies are used to create
websites and applications is becoming more and more essential in a growing number of businesses and
professions. Hopefully, this was a good starting point.

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