The Internet is buzzing these days about the emergence of what people call ‘Web 2.0′. It’s important for web designers to understand what this is, because it affects all web design.

IN A NUTSHELL: Web 2.0 is a combination of factors/elements that leads to a much more social, interactive Web. Here is a short list of some of the key elements that make Web 2.0 possible:

• AJAX allows for the rise of the truly ‘rich’ Web user experience: web pages that act like desktop programs … no need to refresh entire pages to see new content on the page.
• Auto-syndication (sharing of content) via RSS/XML feeds – and software that allows you to easily create and access these XML feeds.
• New ways to mass-communicate over the Web – podcast (mp3) and video.

BLOGS GOT THE WHOLE THING GOING

Blogging tools like WordPress and TextPattern got the whole thing going: most blogs automatically create RSS feeds.

Blogs also make it easier than ever before, for people to write content for the Web. No need for Web design software like FrontPage or Dreamweaver and no need to know HTML.

As such, there has been an explosion of content creation of the Web: people are writing like crazy! The three points to take away from this is:

1. Blogs make it simple to (essentially) create web pages.
2. Blogs automatically syndicate/share content via RSS.
3. Blogs make it easy for readers to interact with blogger’s (the authors,) via a built-in system that allows people to make comments … the social aspect enabled.

WEB 2.0 IS MORE THAN JUST BLOGGING

Another major characteristic of Web 2.0 is the remixing and combining of information from many different sources.

For example:

A Web 2.0 web site may grab many RSS feeds and massage them into a new filtered presentation. The advantage is that users can now access this information from one spot, instead of having to visit many different sites.

CONCLUSION

This (automated) sharing and mixing of content/information (between people and websites,) along with ‘rich’ Web user experience is Web 2.0.

… and you thought it was something more!

More and more web designers are interested in taking the jump into learning how to build database driven websites.

These days, the language of choice is PHP (with some adventurous nerds jumping into Ruby,) because it is easy to use, easy to learn and is very popular.

Regardless of what technology/programming language (PHP, ASP, JSP, Cold Fusion) you use to build database driven websites, there are some (common) basic concepts that have to be understood before you can move forward.

…

In the following video tutorial, I explain to the difference between server-side programming (PHP, ASP etc ..) vs. client-side programming – JavaScript, VB Script etc …

Video: Server-side programming vs. Client-side programming

PS: after you watch this video, you may want to take it to the next level and actually learn PHP.

Stefan Mischook

I recently had this question put to me, and I thought it would make an interesting blog post:

"What’s Apache, Perl, MySQL?  As a web designer, will I need to know these for my clients?"

Apache, Perl, MySQL

Apache = a web server. The most popular (in terms of use) in the world. If your host is on Linux, they are running Apache.
 
You don’t need to know much about Apache as a web designer, since your hosting company will configure that all for you.
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Perl = a programming language used a lot on Linux servers. It can be used to do all kinds of things but it is mostly known for its legacy as the programming language used to write CGI scripts – think guestbooks etc …

You don’t need to know much about Perl as a web designer. But Perl is still widely used and you will find that many scripts out there (like guest books,) are created with Perl.
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MySQL = is a database program. Database software like MySQL are used to store information. Used a lot with things like message boards, e-commerce shops and other programs like that.  MySQL is often used with PHP (a programming language) to create database driven websites.

MySQL becomes important to learn IF you want to learn how to create dynamic/database driven websites.

A final point:

There is so much (out there) in the web design world, that you will probably never need to know or use. I can tell you from 12 years experience, that nobody knows everything – there is just too much. 

My advice is to concentrate on what you need NOW and to continue to work on basic skills … let the projects that come up dictate what you’ll learn.

The short answer: These days, the line between a scripting language and a programming language is blurred. As such, in practical application, the differences are meaningless. So the answer is: no.

Some details … what a nerd might tell you: Scripting or writing scripts, is programming within a program. Traditionally you would write scripts to automate certain functionality within another program. Traditionally scripts would have very specific task like for example: reading a text file to extract all the email addresses.

Why use a scripting language?

• Easy to learn – compared to traditional programming languages.
• It takes much less code to do something with scripting than when using a traditional programming language.

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