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!" $%$&'() *+$%, '& -,. ',/0"&1&*$,)y Joseph C Lawrence: Columnist on 5 November, 2010

eneral Tech /

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

nd web developers every day, but you don’t always get the tech, and you

ave to fake it when the techies start speaking. No need to be shy, you

on’t need to understand everything, just how it all fits together in the

igger scheme of things.

et’s take a whirlwind tour through some of the most popular technologies being used online today.

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HTML (Hypertext

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

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

is text and what is images, and what is a link and where it

links to.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)

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

 but visually awesome way – CSS3 does cater for some

animations). It is used to define the styling of a website in

n easy and efficient way. A CSS file allows a web designer to specify such rules as the colour of a link, the

width of a content area or the border around images in just one place, and then reference those rules on any 

umber of web pages, making updates incredibly easy.

XML (eXtensible Markup Language)

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

which to describe things – you can create your own. What is important to know is that this means that

ifferent applications, different services, and different programming languages can share data. As long as

ach application or service knows what the XML tags mean, data can be shared between two completely 

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

avaScript

avaScript is a programming language of sorts, usually used for fairly light functionality, although recently 

sed 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 website’s server.

his has a few implications – firstly users can turn it off, secondly different browsers might support (or not

upport) 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

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

avaScript libraries

avaScript libraries are collections of pre-written JavaScript code that one can reference, style and tweak to

chieve certain functionality on a website, without writing everything from scratch. Whilst JavaScript is a

airly versatile language, most of the more popular libraries deal with creating fluid and dynamic interface

lements, such as tabs, drag-and-drop functionality and live system messages (imagine the password

trength indicators present on many websites). Popular JavaScript libraries include JQuery , MooTools and

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rototype.

Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)

his is a term that is bandied about quite a lot these days, and refers to any kind of dynamic interface

lement. Technically ‘ Ajax’ refers to the use of a group of technologies (including HTML, CSS, JavaScript

nd XML) to dynamically retrieve data from a server, and present it on a web page without the web page

aving to reload. A good example is the new Google Instant interface, where search results are retrieved

utomatically as the search query is entered, and the user does not have to click submit and wait for a page

eload as with previous Google interfaces.

QL (Structured Query Language)

A language used to access and edit databases. Commonly used database systems online include MySQL and

ostgreSQL which are both open source, and Microsoft SQL server. Almost all dynamic websites and web

pplications utilise databases to store information. SQL is a common language used to store, edit and

etrieve the information from these databases.

Programming languages

ava is a big boy, often used for enterprise level development. .NET, C# and ASP.NET are all Microsoft

echnologies (which means you have to pay to use them), and are also often used for enterprise level

evelopment. PHP, Ruby  and Python are all modern open source favourites for creating web applications

nd dynamic websites of all sizes. Perl is these days often used for more nitty gritty tasks such as CGI

rogramming. ActionScript is the programming language of Flash, and used heavily in sites that require full

nd extensive animation.

Web Frameworks

Web Frameworks’ is a fairly generic phrase, that could refer to a number of different things, but most

ommonly it refers to a bunch of pre-written code that is paired with an existing programming language.

his pre-written code includes lots of commonly found structures and functionalities in web applications,

uch as administration panels and membership functionalities, as well as architectural structures, such as

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

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

Well, that’s 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

rofessions. Hopefully, this was a good starting point.

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