Coding

is the latest revision Hypertext Markup Language for creating web pages, a markup language uses tags to describe to a browser how content should appear on the page. The latest HTML5 features include support for audio and video content as well as graphic shape elements and full integration with CSS3 (See Below). It is important to have standards when it comes to web design code so that pages are displayed correctly and appear the same in any of the many browser versions, tablets and mobile devices available.

(Cascading Style Sheets) contain code used to describe formatting elements on a webpage like font style, size and colour or position of elements. The same styles can then be applied several times to different HTML elements and so eliminate the need to repeat the same code many times on a website. CSS3 is the most recent version of the Style Sheet language and integrates seamlessly with HTML5.

is an Open Source Programming language developed by Netscape and Mozilla. It has many applications, for instance it can be used to enhance the functionality of web pages like you might find on facebook or twitter or can be used to validate forms, for example, say if you wanted to check if someone has input a correct date. Javascript has existed since the mid 90’s and has evolved over the years into AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) a more recent evolution, it is a mixture of Javascript, XHTML and CSS and is used to update pages and communicate with the web server in the background without the need to refresh a webpage. Facebook, Twitter and online email services such as google mail will use AJAX.

is a Javascript Library, it uses Javascript and a set of simplified commands and syntax to interrogate web page content and alter it, meaning you can build interactive forms among other things using far less code than you would by using Javascript alone. If you check out my Get a Quote page you’ll see an excellent example of JQuery in action, the entire set of quote forms has been built using this dynamic and flexible code.

(Hypertext Preprocessor) is a popular open source web server scripting language and is used to create content software such as Wordpress and Joomla. It differs from Javascript in that the PHP code is interpreted by the web server and the web pages are generated dynamically rather than being part of a HTML page. This website and the page you are now looking at has been generated using PHP code.

(depreciated) is the programming code used by Adobe Flash, it’s syntax is based on Javascript and the current version has similar features to AJAX. I have developed quite a few flash animations and scripted web content in the past but because mobile devices such as the iPhone and now android no longer support flash, the future of this platform is not certain which is why i would only use it if no other alternatives are available.