Web programming tutorial

Question

Hi,

I'm a programmer with some experience working on various languages and platforms, but I lack any web development experience (apart of some very basic HTML produced by PHP).

I'm looking for a tutorial about the basics of web programming under Linux. I am less interested with apache configuration and server maintenance which I know quite well, but with the actual building of a website using modern techniques. I am familiar with python, but I'll handle any scripting language quite well.

Do you have any recommendations? Can you tell anything about the W3Schhools tutorials?

Bunch of thanks,

Udi

Answer 1

With your Python knowledge, you'll might find tutorials like Django useful. It is modern enough to be used in Google App Engine.

Also try the TurboGears tutorial, another Python web framework. This will give you a different angle on (modern) web programming.

Find an introduction and many pointers to other frameworks on Wikipedia.

Answer 2

Ruby on Rails is really interesting for rapid development. It's clean, it's neat, and it lets you focus on the important things like your database and front end.

There are a plethora of RoR tutorials. There are almost two hundred Railscast tutorial videos on loads of subjects. They get pretty in depth too.

There are also plenty of places to look for help on your current app. APIDock is pretty good for finding method uses and how different parts of Rails work. You might also consider going on freenode IRC and getting in the Ruby chatroom: #ruby.

Hope that's helpful!

Answer 3

This is a fairly broad question you are asking. You have to be aware that there are a lot of potential answers, the ones already given here being decent ones. And you have to be aware that it is very much a platform decision that you make, whatever tutorial you choose. And that's because web (application) development is a complex thing that can be addressed on various levels (particularly outside the MS world).

• I have no close knowledge about the W3Schools you mention, but on first glance it looks they will be teaching you a lot of basic frontend technology: HTML, XHTML, Javascript, CSS and the like. This is not bad and will give you a solid foundation in these things. But web development is usually not done on this level, as it is too tedious and inflexible for larger applications. And you would be missing out on backend/database technology altogether.

• Then there are platforms (and I would guess this is the majority) which have a templating approach. You implement page and business logic in a mix of HTML and programming code in some language (Python, Perl, PHP, ...) within an HTML file that is then processed by an engine to generate the final HTML for the user interface and transaction code for the database. Django and TurboGears are the prominent Python representatives of this, Ruby on Rails probably the biggest name currently. But there are a lot others (how about Scala/Lift?), so it's worth taking the time to see which one you like best. They usually do a good job for the database handling. On the UI side you still have page changes.

• In that vein there are platforms that try to move away from HTML with embedded code to a pure programmatical approach. You just write code and use specific APIs of the given platform. "Compiling" your project in one way or the other will then generate all the necessary stuff which you have to deploy in a runtime environment. I think Google's GWT and Eclipse RAP are such approaches, and if you think, dream and breath in Java, this is probably for you.

• Yet another approach is interesting when page changes in the browser (the most disruptive part of the web experience) is not good enough anymore, when you want desktop-like user interfaces. The way to attack this is to create "fat web clients", with lots of interaction logic built in, usually in Javascript, and have them interact with a server backend only for essential data transfer using Ajax, REST or RPC protocols. Candidates for the client technology are e.g. qooxdoo or Dojo. On the server side you can still use whatever technology you are comfortable with (from RoR to Servlets and beyond). If I had my pick, I would choose qooxdoo for the frontend, and Erlang/CouchDb on the backend.

You have specifically asked about tutorials, and I haven't mentioned a lot. The point I was trying to make was whatever you choose, it is most likely that you will invest quite a bit of time and effort in that technology since they are all quite deep, and will stick with it for some time. During your evaluation you will also check the instructional material for the given platform (don't forget online videos - they're big these days), but this will inevitably be specific. AFAICS, there is no such thing as a "general introduction" to web programming.

Answer 4

ok ... the most important thing is to completely abstract your output mechanism (this may even seem trivial to you, but the truth is, too many people disobey that rule and too few tutorials emphasize this point), so that behind a concise API you have some rendering engine (bet it for HTML, XML, JSON or what so ever), most probably using templates ... this is one of the fundamental aspects of request based web applications (this is the actual difference to desktop apps to me) and covered by any better framework ... using MVC architectures is the next step ... there are tons of MVC frameworks for nearly any server language that do A LOT of work for you ... and MVC is perfect for request based apps ... the seperation between business logic and output generation works just about PERFECT ... the key point to a scalable web application is the implementation of your business logic, which in general always involves databases ... this is also a thing you'll have to work with a lot ... creating good HTML templates is a hell of a work, but i'd claim it is relatively easy once you get the hang of it ... no need to come up with super creative solutions and new approaches here ... plus, to me, styling and skinning is replacable ... it is far more difficult to design a good UI that exposes your functionality in the most efficient way, than to implement it, or even make it fancy ...

in your place, i wouldn't delve too much into CSS unless you really want to DESIGN pages (find someone else to do it. maybe even the HTML templates. seriously, you will learn to hate that VERY quickly, especially if you try to get it work in IE7 or lower). rather try to produce rocksolid semantically well structured HTML (good for SEO and accessibility (look at progressive enhancement for that matter)) and learn JavaScript. look at some good frameworks ... jQuery, Ext ... whatever ... don't reinvent the wheel here ...

apart from that, haxe might be of interest for you ... many helpful libraries on haxelib ...

well, hope that helps ... ;)

Answer 5

There are a few sources to learn HTML, javascript and CSS which is what you were asking for. w3schools is a little company from Norway with not always very good article, but can be used as a quick reference.

I would recommend the following two

• WASP InterAct Curriculum
• Web Standards Curriculum

There is also HTTP which most people do not really grok. A good way of understanding HTTP is going through REST as an architecture style. Joe Gregorio has created a wonderful series of articles to implement a Web service step by step.

• The RESTful Web

Hope it helps.