Difference between a web application and a website?

Question

Hi,

I have been an android developer till about a week back when I shifter over to "web application" development. Now when I ask people how to get started for the same purpose I get the usual answer of studying js, HTML5, CSS, Ajax etc... So I strated out and I was pretty happy for some time learning new things and getting used to the idea of working on web development. Until now it had been all theory with me exexuting my js on w3Schools, but now I would like to start work with a small number of web application development exercises. Problem is I seem to be confused between the idea of web development and web application development!

So here are probably the dumbest questions to some of you pros out there, but I hope you take some time to explain the difference to someone like me! :)

Q1. Have I been cracking my head on the wrong topics to start with for web application development?

Q2. What is the difference between web applications and website?

Q3. What exactly did I need to start with to get prepared for web application development?

Q4. What would be a good IDE (if I require one) to start work with? (I have worked on android so eclipse plugin has been hugely benifitial in my learning phases)

I hope I have covered all the right questions over here. I am completely new to this and I am given very little time and option to prepare and as an intern you need to adapt very fast to whatever environment you are dropped into, so I hope you can point me in the direction where hopefully there is a fast-track to learning "web application development" :)

Thanks

Answer 1

I'll bite;-)

Your confusion certainly is justified. In my view the difference between a web-app and a web site is one more of degree than of definition.

If a web page provides interaction beyond clicking links and filling forms and provides a service for the user then I would say it is a web-app and not a web page. There is probably also the notion of taking user data and manipulating it in some form.

In my own work I develop web based simulators for ancient computers. HTML / CSS provide a flexible presentation layer and JavaScript provides the core simulation and user interaction implementations. I would say these are web-apps and not web-pages-others may disagree.

Answer 2

There are a lot of server side technologies/platforms you can use to develop advanced web applications, like ASP.NET, J2EE, PHP, etc. But regardless of what you use here, it is "compiled" to a HTML page before sent to the client, which can contain more or less of the different web technologies that you have studied. And you can always code directly in HTML, js, css etc. in perfect harmony with the server-side components.

Answers to your question list:

• Q1: No matter what server side technology you use, it is always useful to have good knowledge of the technologies you have already studied.
• Q2: It is no clear difference. It is mainly the degree of complexity. A site with complex functionality is Web application, and a more or less static informative site is website.
• Q3: You started in the right end. It is important to understand the concepts of HTML, CSS and javascript when developing for the web.
• Q4: I don't really know android and eclipse, so I don't know which IDE would be the best for you. Others would probably answer this better.