What tools should i use for web development?

Question

Is learning html, xhtml and css even necessary if i use IDE's like dreamweaver, wordpress, etc?

Answer 1

Depends on what your goal is.

IDEs are only so good and tend to have limitations. If you don't understand the code/markup they are generating, there's no way for you to fix anything wrong with it or work around their limitations. So if you want to take upon the job of web programmer or web designer seriously, you absolutely need to learn the web technologies in depth.

On the other hand, if your goal is to just dabble around for your enjoyment, and be able to quickly whip up basic sites like a small blog, then no you don't need to learn any web technologies. Though, it be good to pick up at least the very basics.

Answer 2

Well, if you want to know effectively what you're doing, it is extremely necessary. Drawing a div blindly in Dreamweaver, for example, won't get you any far, because you won't know what a div is for, or whatever other element.

Answer 3

First learn some basics at W3Schools. Here are some good IDEs/Editors.

and if so which one is best to learn, html, xhtml, xml, css?

You will need to know all of them with the passage of time but initially on you should definitely start with html and css at least.

Answer 4

Yes.

Those who are best in their craft (whatever it may be- finance, carpentry, cooking, baseball, etc.) must know the fundamentals of said craft. What is a carpenter without knowledge of a hammer, or a cook without the knowledge of a simmer? So it is with those who practice the alchemy of computer programming - the more of the fundamentals you learn and come to understand, the better you will be able to improve your skillset and, in turn, become a more "serious" developer of any kind.

Start with HTML (and quickly, but later, CSS) and go from there. If web development is your aim, it is a good start.

As for the best "starter" IDE, honestly I'd recommend Notepad. Seriously. Once you have a fundamental understanding of markup down, you will be able to survey the array of more advanced IDEs out there and pick the one that is right for you. (Insert religious arguments of vi vs. emacs vs. whatever else here.)

Answer 5

Of those only html/xhtml are markup languages, and in most cases yes you should learn them. With xml there isn't much to learn as it is quite a simple syntax, but you will absolutely need to be familiar with the generic ways that xml is parsed and written, and the specific way in which that occurs in your language. Css is also important.

None of those are hugely complicated, and you can learn enough basics via tutorials to get started and pick up the details as you go. You want have to learn every detail off by heart, you can always look things up online, but you have to have an understanding of how things work and what you may need to look up, and that comes mostly through experience.

Answer 6

Your first mistake is asking this question. As previously said, without knowing the basics, you cannot be "serious" about anything. Or even taken seriously for that matter. There is no "Best" IDE for a CMS. Each CMS has it's own preference. You need to do a lot more reading.

Answer 7

It's not something I'd worry about. Just about everything that exists in programming exists to save time and effort in some way or another. Learning something new often quickly translates into getting things done faster.

That said, learning the basics will practically happen by accident if you start working on a related project, and the basics are enough to get you pretty far.

Answer 8

You have to know html(x), xml and at least how CSS works. If you start programming you will see that this stuff is really easy. So don't worry about them.

You can't make your own CMS that easy so I would recommend that you start with an Open-Source one. Tre are a lot of diffrent Open-Source CMS's most are in PHP. There are Typo3 and Joumla. The are pretty bit and probably hard to get into. I alsow know a smaller one called drupal. I never worked with one of them but the are all good.

The Hype for Web Development is Ruby on Rails witch is realy godd and easy to make cool stuff in but I don't know any CMS in Ruby.

If your a mircosoft fan you could learn ASP.NET (in C# oder VB) there is Open Source CMS in C# called umbraco.

Then there is the really cool Zope and Plone Web-Publishing-Framework witch is in Pyton.

Don't learn VBScript that really bad and out of date.

If i hade to start with something I would take Zope and Plone because I wanted to learn Pyton anyway. If just want to make cool Websites take Ruby on Rails. If you really want to learn about CMS's PHP is a good place to start.

Just start with something. If you know one of them you can learn the others pretty fast.

The microsoft stuff I wouldn't use personaly but mabey for business.

Answer 9

While you can get by without learning HTML and CSS while using IDEs like Dreamweaver, working with these IDEs is usually more productive if you at least know what's happening to the underlying HTML & CSS while using them.

Wordpress and/or other CMSes might allow you to implement extra functionality to your websites without coding but you'll need at least basic HTML & CSS knowledge when it comes to customization, especially in the area of themes e.g making little changes to themes created by others.

Answer 10

Yes absolutely - at least if you want to use the word "develop" in any meaningful (non-trivial) sense.

Yes, you can create web pages and sites without knowing what it is that you're producing but sooner or later, if you want to do something interesting, its all going to stop working.

So, to produce web apps you need, as a minimum, an understanding of how html works and how a web page is constructed and of how css works (you don't necessarily, yourself, have to be a CSS guru - but if you don't know what it is, what its for and what's needed to make it work you'll be limited both in your ability to construct pages and to identify and fix problems with pages which will arise for all kinds of reasons).

Pragmatically you're also going to need to understand javascript and the way it interacts with a the Document Model of a web page - even if you use an IDE and a framework that does all the heavy lifting for you you need to understand what's going on so that when things don't work as you'd expect you can determine why.

I could go on... but you get the general idea.

Answer 11

my personal developing tool is notepad++, it's free and clean and help me code better. It's now on on 5.6.8 version. And has many pluggin / add-on support such as snippet, function list, etc.