Combined Lessons

[4D1]

Hi Guys, Before I make a suggestion a would just like to say what a great website and a great set of tutorials.I have been studying the tuts on and off for a few weeks and I now feel I am more than compitent on HTML, XHTML, CSS and I understand some basic Javascript. I dont feel these tutorials are web building tutorials or web designing tutorials I feel they are different language tutorials, I want to create a website that displays different products dynamically from a database for example, I have studied HTML which is good I understand CSS but what should I do now, Javascript or VBscript? ASP or PHP or something else? I think there should be a web design tutorial that strings different languages together in the same tut to show how different languages work together how different databases work together, basically a huge tutorial on building a complex website from start to finish. As it is I will need to master every tutorial in order to decide what I would like to use. I also feel that some of the tutorials are a bit bland as they dont really show you what you can do with the language I used a javascript tut from another site to understand as the tut on here showed me document.write and then moved on to different variables without showing me what I can do with the language. I dont mean to criticise as the website is great but a web design and development tut would make it so much better in my opinion as there isnt a single college in 100 miles of me that offer any web courses.

[jeffman]

Look over some of the AJAX tutes. They do some of what you're saying.There is no serious choice between javascript and vbscript for client-side scripting. VBscript only runs on IE. You'll lose half your audience, and everyone who's on a Mac. That doesn't sound like many people, but the number of Macs installed in high-schools and college libraries is huge. On a university campus, one Mac may represent a hundred unique users.And with all due respect to my ASP friends, once you're learning Javascript, PHP is a natural choice for server-side scripting, since most of the syntax is the same. If you already know an ASP language like VB, then you might prefer to stick with that.

[4D1]

Thanks for your comments, I work for a web based company that supply tools & equipment accross the UK and Europe, I want to learn web design and development to save us money on costly developments and to prevent us being overcharged for any developments we do need to outsource. Unfortunately our website was coded in ASP many years ago so I need to learn .ASP but I have a general interest in the web so I would like to learn as many languages as possible.

[jeffman]

Then you have a good reason to work with ASP. Keep in mind ASP is an "engine" and it supports several languages. VBScript is the most common, and it is probably what your existing pages are written in. An advantage to learning VBS is that you'll have a head start on writing standalone applications in VB. (I can hear the groans from some of my pals on the board, but VB is a good environment for quickly producing non-commercial apps, the kind you might use in-house.)Strictly from a programmer's standpoint, I find VB needlessly cumbersome (more required typing than you really need), but a fan of Python would have the same complaint about PHP. So maybe that's a matter of what you're accustomed to.Languages like Python and Ruby may be the wave of the future, but PHP has a huge existing user base, and seemingly infinite code snippets and tutorials available on the net. PHP's number of built-in functions is huge, which makes development and execution fast. You don't have to invent so many things from scratch or import a lot of 3rd party modules.And it's fun. Really.

[4D1]

Yes most of the website is coded in VBscript but there are instances where the default language is changed to Javascript. I think it will be a while before I move onto the likes of VB, Java or C but hopefully at some point I will.

[aspnetguy]

Look over some of the AJAX tutes. They do some of what you're saying.There is no serious choice between javascript and vbscript for client-side scripting. VBscript only runs on IE. You'll lose half your audience, and everyone who's on a Mac. That doesn't sound like many people, but the number of Macs installed in high-schools and college libraries is huge. On a university campus, one Mac may represent a hundred unique users.And with all due respect to my ASP friends, once you're learning Javascript, PHP is a natural choice for server-side scripting, since most of the syntax is the same. If you already know an ASP language like VB, then you might prefer to stick with that.

I would just like to throw in that anyone serious about web programming shouldn't be using ASP. ASP.Net and ASP are very different. C# (ASP.Net) is just as similar in syntax to JavaScript as PHP.ASP.Net would fall into the same category as Java. They are used more for large systems while PHP and Python are great for websites and smaller apps.