Classroom Programming
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page was last updated: Jun 22, 2022 23:32
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sorry ): this page is incomplete. feel free to ask me directly for any help ^_^
Overview (web) LA1

What will be covered

Web as in 'World Wide Web' but not the 'Internet'. Typically, when WWW is the websites or pages you visit that servers you documents. In contrast, the Internet is a network of devices that may or may not server a webpage for WWW. Example: Wikipedia is a website but a Minecraft game server is not a website. Both are on the Internet. If it is on the Internet, it implies that it is publicly accessible!

There are many tools to easily setup websites and make it all look pretty and featureful. This tutorial won't go over those at all. Before using those tools, you should at the very least have some basic knowlege of the code. Otherwise, if the tool is doing something weird (and I'm sure it will at some point), you can't figure out why.

Languages

How does a website work?

A basic understanding is needed.

  1. "I want to see this page" -client
  2. "Ok lemme get that for you" -server
  3. Process, send to client -server
  4. "cool thkx bye" -client
  5. Process, show user -client

Ok. That's an oversimplification but it's good enough. However, every single resource (images, sounds, style sheets) have their own connection and go through that process. The client gets all of the resources on the page, lays it out, and shows it to the user.

What's needed?

If you're reading this page, NICE! That's 90% of the basics. There is a difference between setting up a web server versus programming a website / series of webpages. A web server serves the webpage to the client, the reader's browser. For simple web pages, you don't even need a webserver. The browser can read the webpage straight off of your drive. We will need more than just the browser if we want databases, server-side processing, live communications, etc.

For now, a browser will get you through HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Later on, we'll need a webserver suite for PHP and SQL.

Internet Explorer - The abandoned zombie that won't die

PLEASE! Just stop with MSIE. This deserves it's own section. There's a reason that it has a "compatibility mode." There are serious issues with MSIE adhereing to standard HTML and it really doesn't implement alot. At the very least, if you must support it, use IE 11. And I'm not talking about MS Edge. Edge is a complete rewrite as M$ is trying to run away from their monster. Edge isn't quite there yet, but it will (hopefully). LOL! Microsoft gave up and Edge is now Chromium based AKA Google Chrome.

A browser ability comparison

Resources / links