Talk:Web development/Web development (rewrite): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 04:03, 2 January 2007

Revision as of 04:08, 2 January 2007

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These days most modern browsers have solved most of these quirks in CSS rendering and this has made many different CSS layouts possible. However, some people continue to use old browsers, and designers need to keep this in mind, and allow for graceful degrading of pages in older browsers. Most notable among these old browsers are Internet Explorer 5 and 5.5, which, according to some web designers, are becoming the new Netscape Navigator 4 — a block that holds the World Wide Web back from converting to CSS design.

====Flash====

''I moved this section here from the current article on Web design. It is currently unchanged. I need to research whether any other articles cover this subject matter.'' [[User:ChrisLoosley|Chris Loosley]] 04:08, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[[Adobe Flash]] (formerly [[Macromedia]] Flash) is a proprietary, robust graphics animation/application development program used to create and deliver dynamic content, media (such as sound and video), and interactive applications over the web via the browser.

Flash is not a standard produced by a vendor-neutral standards organization like most of the core protocols and formats on the Internet. Flash is much more restrictive than the [[Open format|open]] HTML format, though, requiring a [[Proprietary software|proprietary]] plugin to be seen, and it does not integrate with most [[web browser]] UI features like the "Back" button. However, those restrictions may be useful depending on the goals of the web site design.

Flash as a format has become very widespread on the desktop market. According to [http://www.npd.com/ NPD] [http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/npd/ study], 98% of US Web users have the Flash Player installed [http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/flashplayer/], with 45%-56%[http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html] (depending on region) having the latest version. Numbers vary depending on the detection scheme and research demographics.

Many graphic artists use Flash because it gives them exact control over every part of the design, and anything can be animated and generally "jazzed up". Some application designers enjoy flash because it lets them create applications that don't have to be refreshed or go to a new web page every time an action occurs. Flash can use embedded fonts instead of the standard fonts installed on most computers. There are many sites which forego HTML entirely for Flash. Other sites may use flash content combined with html as conservatively as gifs or jpegs would be used, but with smaller vector file sizes and the option of faster loading animations. Flash may also be used to protect content from unauthorized duplication or searching.

Flash detractors claim that Flash websites tend to be poorly designed, and often use confusing and non-standard user-interfaces. Up until recently, search engines have been unable to index Flash objects, which has prevented sites from having their contents easily found. It is possible to specify alternate content to be displayed for browsers that do not support Flash. Using alternate content also helps [[search engine]]s to understand the page, and can result in much better visibility for the page. This, however, does not enable search engines to read images used in the place of text for styling purposes, nor are the vast majority of Flash websites disability accessible (for screen readers, for example) or [[Section 508]] compliant.

The most recent incarnation of Flash's scripting language (called "actionscript", which is an [[ECMA]] language similar to [[JavaScript]]) incorporates long-awaited usability features, such as respecting the browser's font size and allowing blind users to use [[screen readers]]. Actionscript 2.0 is an [[Object-oriented programming|Object-Oriented]] language, allowing the use of CSS, [[XML]], and the design of class-based web applications.

====Static and dynamic page generation====

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The traditional method of laying out web pages, HTML, is static. There are two ways of delivering content dynamically:

=====Server-side=====

A web server, running special software, constructs an HTML page '[[on the fly]]', according to the user's request and possibly other variables, such as time or stock levels.

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[[MySQL]] and [[PostgreSQL]] are popular free [[SQL]] databases, suitable for use with the above. They can be used to allow users, subject to password access if required, to update content.

=====Client-side=====

''The next paragraph reflects a particular POV, not common practice -- see [[Ajax (programming)|Ajax]]''. [[User:ChrisLoosley|Chris Loosley]] 06:58, 1 January 2007 (UTC)