CS_WebDesign

=Background to Basic Web Design=

A basic website consists of web pages made using **HTML** which contain text, images and multimedia content e.g. **downloadable video clips, streaming audio and video, webcasts** which have been formatted using the HTML programming. All HTML codes are written in **tags** e.g.  is the bold tag. Sometimes **JavaScript** is used to add more functionality to a web page. This may include controlling the opening of a new page, having roll over effects when a mouse hovers over an image or text and validating input values in a form. To make the webpage easy to find by a search engine, **meta tags** need to be formatted correctly.

Web pages re linked together using **hyperlinks** which can be linked by words, pictures or hot spots on the page. Easy navigation of a site is important, so web designers may use **navigation** bars and will ensure that each page will give you access to the other pages. Most **images are tagged** by writing a description, so that people who choose to turn off images in their browser for a faster browsing experience, will know what would have been shown in the image space. In earlier days, web pages were made interactive by the creation of **forms**, where users could fill out forms either with registration details, orders for stocks or general feedback. These forms were then processed by the web server with information either emailed to the webmaster, employee of the organisation or would sit on a database stored on the web server until an employee accessed the information.

Many online stores are examples of **data driven website** which is constantly updating the content of its site (as stock details change). In order to do this, site designs have been developed to separate the content of the website from the formatting. This has been done using **CSS (Cascading Style sheets).** Also to facilitate the storing and easy searching of products they are stored in a database. The coding of the page is still using HTML however, the content of the site is drawn from the database and placed on the page. Perl and Java are two popular programming languages for this purpose. Dynamically created web pages may have the extension **.asp (Active Server Page Extended)**. With ASP files, you can activate your web site using any combination of HTML, scripting - such as JavaScript or VBScript - and components written in any language. This means your ASP file is simply a file that can contain any combination of HTML, scripting, and calls to components. ASP technology is built directly into Microsoft web servers, and is thus supported on all Microsoft web servers ( [|http://www.techiwarehouse.com/cat/15/Active-Server-Pages-(ASP))].

Alternatively for those not wanting to use Microsoft products an **open source** solution is. **PHP (Personal Home Page)**. It is a script language and interpreter, similar to JavaScript and Microsoft's VBScript, that is freely available and used primarily on Linux Web servers. PHP (the initials come from the earliest version of the program, which was called "Personal Home Page Tools") is embedded within a Web page along with its HTML. Before the page is sent to a user that has requested it, the Web server calls PHP to interpret and perform the operations called for in the PHP script. An HTML page that includes a PHP script is typically given a file name suffix of ".php" ".php3," or ".phtml". Like ASP, PHP can be thought of as "dynamic HTML pages," since content will vary based on the results of interpreting the script. []

The website is hosted by Carmen and is loaded onto a **web server** within the organisation. Some smaller companies choose to let ISP or other **web hosting** companies host their sites. In this case, **FTP (file Transfer Protocol)** is used to upload the edited files to the web server. While managing the site your job is to update latest news articles into the database and make any amendments to the HTML or structure of the page.

Visit the Site [] This is my cousin’s online Wedding Stationery website

a) Right Hand click the home page to view the source code – Examine how HTML, Javascript, CSS is used by the site

**a)** HTML is always at the beginning and at the end of the "Page Source" on a website; presented as "<**html**..." & ".

HTML codes basically consists all texts, images, links, etc. and are written in tags. The beginning of the HTML code is the, which involves the title of the site and tags to make the site easy to find through search engines. After, representing the end of the contents used in headThe is the next that follows, which consists all the contents of the website.

Used in WeddingStationeryDesigns (Beginning):

Used in WeddingStationeryDesigns (End): The syntax "< ** html xmlns=** " http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml "... is a default namespace that the website uses, and it specifies that it is a XML (**EX**tensible **M**arkup **L**anguage) document in use because of the use "xmlns". This XML namespace is defined as a collection of names that is identified by a URL reference used in XML documents as element types and attribute names.

**b)** ‘Wedding Stationery designs’ uses some Javascript language in their website to make it more interesting. One way they use JavaScript is for a page tracker. The page tracker monitors and tracks traffic on the website i.e the number of visitors that come to your site. The page tracker also tells you who your visitors are (a “member” or “guest”).  Java script is also used to connect to a HTTPS (secure website) when creating a new account. Creating a new account requires private information to be entered and a HTTPs protocol is activated through the use of Javascript. On the ‘create account’ page, JavaScript is used to create a list of countries and to check whether to form is valid / invalid. If it is invalid, JavaScript will display a message to tell the user to change the field and what is incorrect.  On the ‘shopping cart’ page, JavaScript is used to open a pop up window and details the size and features of the window i.e scrollbars, menus, if it allows the user to copy information, etc.  JavaScript on the site:

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CSS is also used to separate the content of a website from formatting in order to constantly update and improve the content of the site (as stock details change) and enable the web pages on the site to share the formatting.=====


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