Web Designing for Beginners: Real World Coding in HTML & CSS

As a beginner in the world of Web Designing, the theme of programming often seems mysterious. It is difficult to get an idea of ​​what programming methods and tools or coding can look like when you have no experience. Learning to program is a considerable test, especially if you plan to learn by yourself for your own project. We will summarize what you will need to make your learning of coding, commands, and scripting language successful.

Do you want to become a web developer? But are you a total beginner in this area?

First, we will learn the basics of web development, that is to say, HTML and CSS.

What is HTML?

HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is a markup language for creating a web page. Web pages are usually viewed in a web browser. They can include text, links, images, and even audio and video. HTML is used to mark and describe each of these types of content so that the web browser can display them correctly.

What is CSS?

While HTML is used to structure a web page, including defining elements such as headings and paragraphs and allowing you to embed images, videos, and other media, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) allows you to specify the style. the web page; layouts, colors and fonts are all determined with CSS. You can think of HTML as the foundation of a house and CSS as the aesthetic choices as if you are making the difference between a Victorian mansion and a mid-century modern house.

Programming for beginners: preparation

Anyone who wants to learn a programming language must do a lot of research. Reading forum topics and books is the first step. Thanks to careful reading, we can acquire the necessary knowledge bases. Each programming language has its own discussion forum. Thus, most imaginable questions have already been asked and Internet users have no doubt also answered them, or at least attempted them. If you do not find a satisfactory answer, you can ask your question yourself to the large community of programmers. Note the important information that will help you during the initiation phase. A clear personal database with interesting notes will help you solve your problems in a targeted manner later.

Web programming

To design Internet pages or to adapt a Web application, you have to start with the basics. HTML and CSS are not programming languages ​​per se, but they represent the basis of most sites and are therefore the starting point for a programming beginner. You can set up elements of web pages using HTML and thus design the skeleton of a site. The next step is the discovery of HTML5 which offers more audiovisual possibilities.

With CSS, it's about design and organization. All the characteristics of the various elements are fixed by this means, namely their colors or their positions for example. However, HTML and CSS only allow the design of functional static and simple pages. If you manage to get to grips with these basic tools, you can do programming. For first attempts with dynamic pages, the use of JavaScript is the best choice because it is quite simple. Using JavaScript, you can design dynamic websites that allow for example automatic image size adaptation.

PHP and SQL complete the basic package for programming web applications. PHP is an open-source scripting language and can be integrated into the HTML protocol. SQL is a database language with which you can define the structure of the data, modify the latter or even extract data sets.

When designing complex pages (including a member identification area for example), the use of a content management system (CMS for Content Management System) considerably reduces the knowledge required on PHP and SQL.

The elements presented above are of course only a small choice of the many possible scripting languages ​​for the Web. The languages ​​HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL, and PHP still constitute a solid and sufficient knowledge base for most Web projects.

Program an application

In order to program applications such as games or even photo editing programs, it is advisable to bet on other bases. Among these are C, C ++ and Java. These three languages ​​have a similar syntax. Those who master C or C ++ will more easily take charge of Java.

It is possible to program applications for iPhone and iPad using Cocoa. It is not a scripting language but a transmission interface for the Mac OS operating system. X code is a development interface for Mac OS, with which you can develop Mac and iOS applications related to Cocoa. Interface Builder is graphic design software for application interfaces. Among the languages ​​used are Objective-C, among others.

Android apps

Applications for Android operating systems are programmed with Java. The Android Studio interface and the Java development kit from Oracle, combined with adapted basic knowledge, make it possible to create a wide variety of applications.