Newbie HTML Questions

Question

I learned html years ago and never really did anything with it.  I am now taking a web design class at uni and its very basic. I grew board and kinda googled html and found that building sites without tables was something you could due.  So I created a bland little site without tables and I would like how do you create an easy way to update the site.  I have a center <div> and I like the way it looks when you have a heading then a paragraph.  Is there a way to use or write a program that you just insert in your post and it will update the website?  like, I write the post, it then opens up the html document, inserts the formatted post above the previous post?  If I didnt explain myself properly im sorry.  I would just like a easy way to update a website without actually having to open up the document, edit it by hand, and then save it.  I think this would be some sort of content management system?

Answer 1

I definitely think that you, and anyone interested in getting into webdev, should jump on the "new tech" bandwagon, while learning about current tech too. So, learn all of the following - all slowly of course:
HTML 4 Strict/Transitional and CSS: what your class will probably teach you
XHTML 1.0 Strict/Transitional: these are the current new-fangled toys everyone's playing with, but it's mostly buzzword and boringness - nothing "deep". You may learn this at your class also.
HTML 5 and CSS 3: These are the next big things, IMHO. HTML 5 appears to be awesome, and in the upcoming months it'll slowly catch on. Microsucks IE is the sucky bottleneck here - it doesn't support HTML 5 properly, but the Web has pushed for standards over commercial control before, and it'll do it again, at which point I'm expecting these to explode. It might take a few years, but hitting the ground running can't hurt at all, especially in a time when there won't be all that many webdevs familiar with 5.
XML/XSLT: I have no idea what IE's support model is for these since I haven't used winfailure in months, and I'm not sure about Opera as well, but these are definitely a look if you want your site to be easily CMSified. They operate on quite a different model to basic HTML/CSS though, so you might want to get comfortable with those before you dive into here.
PHP: Learn this but regard it as the winfailure of scripting languages, so don't make it your "heart language", if you know what I mean. It's slow, it's a huge hack, but for some reason it's popular so it's everywhere, so you may as well learn it. You might like it, but I guarantee you that one day you'll look at yourself, your code, and what you want to be doing with your life, and say "hey, PHP doesn't work for me anymore."
Be sure to learn another language in addition to PHP, especially if you don't already know a programming language - here's a list:
- Ruby: I personally recommend this for its legibility.
- Python: I haven't tried this but it seems quite powerful and is general purpose.
- Perl: The UNIX scripted C. The emacs of programming languages. On all geek's workstations. Extremely rapid prototyping - there's a library for EVERYTHING.
- Falcon: I recently discovered this. Uses a VM but is also really, really, really fast. On my considerably slow computer, hello world takes 44ms to run.
- C, C++: Learn these. Just learn them. Even if they bring you to tears (they might not). You'll be a better programmer for knowing them.
- REBOL, Haskell, Io, Smalltalk, Lisp, haXe: these are all good languages to learn "further down the track". They'll teach you various ways of thinking.
-dav7
Last edited by dav7 (2009-02-14 07:53:44)