Can you make brilliant websites with just html and css?

pog it

Hope I've not annoyed too many of you with my recent thread about copy and pasting. It was a genuine question posed in the context of a learner using this method to learn programming and I hope it wasn't taken up wrong by many others.

Just want to ask if it is necessary to use php, django, etc. to get a really good looking site. And I don't mean a run of the mill website.
Can you achieve it by just using html and css?

Also, would you regard these as easier to learn than python? I've found my progress to be good but slow with python and am thinking I should just start with html and css?

TrueDub

A good-looking site? Definitely. A useful one, or one that actually performs a function beyond brochureware, not really.

HTML and CSS are presentation tools, and very powerful ones these days. Static content (content that doesn't change) tends to date or go stale quite quickly. Dynamic content, and particularly websites that achieve a purpose, need some level of extra tooling, even if it's just Javascript (not knocking JS, it's extremely powerful these days).

ThrowinShapes

A site isn't much without interesting content, unless it offers some useful functionality.
If we're talking about just aesthetics, then absolutely. Some fantastic examples here without even using JavaScript http://codepen.io/

You have to understand that HTML and CSS aren't programming languages. To that extent they are easier to learn and implement. From there you could always look into JavaScript given that it's basically the language of the web.

sheesh

you probably could if you had really great design chops

otherwiseI agree with the other posters HTML and css are important corner stones but the impressive sites (I'm not talking about the useful ones like google youtube twitter reddit) do require an amount of user interaction and also must be able to be viewed on different platforms alot of this is done with javascript.



continue learning HTML and CSS but also start looking at Frameworks like foundation, skeleton and bootstrap. look at adding jquery scripts, and then look a cmses like wordpress. and you will be well on your way.

pog it

Thanks everyone. Just a couple of questions that spring to mind from that. Is knowing html a benefit when you go to learn JavaScript?

Also, in terms of building a good website, not just in terms of aesthetics but functionality and interactive features, etc. what difference is there between a programming language and a scripting language? Do you need programming langs for building high end websites?

Procasinator

pog it wrote: »

Thanks everyone. Just a couple of questions that spring to mind from that. Is knowing html a benefit when you go to learn JavaScript?

Also, in terms of building a good website, not just in terms of aesthetics but functionality and interactive features, etc. what difference is there between a programming language and a scripting language? Do you need programming langs for building high end websites?

Knowing HTML and CSS is useful for the majority of JS work. While JS can be used outside of web pages (such as a server side or glue language), this is still where the language is most utilised.

A scripting language is a programming language. Generally, when people say scripting language they mean something that is interpreted at run-time and has a specific purpose or niche.

pog it

Cool! So how would javascript vs. python vs. Java (programming lang) differ when it comes to making a website?

sheesh

pog it wrote: »

Cool! So how would javascript vs. python vs. Java (programming lang) differ when it comes to making a website?

javascript is used 'on' the webpage by the users browser to create things like pictures changes and the fancier mouseover events. python is used on the server for creating pages on the fly.

Java is used on the client as an applet and and also in java server pages and on the server is still used alot in financial programs that might need more complex computations

onemorechance

A typical web-site can be broken up into 3 parts; front-end, middleware, back-end.

Java, PHP, etc. (typically) runs on the web-server (middleware). It can be used to handle requests sent by a web-browser and return responses to the web-browser, e.g. a HTML document. It will allow you to apply business logic and rules, query other systems, databases (back-end).

Javascript runs in your web-browser (front-end). It allows you to manipulate the document or data that the web-server has sent to your web-browser. It lets you add special effects, form validation, and one of it's most popular uses, it allows you to send (AJAX) server requests in the background, i.e. without a re-load of the web-page being displayed in the browser.

Ideally the front-end, html, css, javascript etc. should all about presentation, good user-experience etc.

The middleware should be all about business rules and logic.

The backend should be about data.

pog it

onemorechance wrote: »

A typical web-site can be broken up into 3 parts; front-end, middleware, back-end.

Java, PHP, etc. (typically) runs on the web-server (middleware). It can be used to handle requests sent by a web-browser and return responses to the web-browser, e.g. a HTML document. It will allow you to apply business logic and rules, query other systems, databases (back-end).

Javascript runs in your web-browser (front-end). It allows you to manipulate the document or data that the web-server has sent to your web-browser. It lets you add special effects, form validation, and one of it's most popular uses, it allows you to send (AJAX) server requests in the background, i.e. without a re-load of the web-page being displayed in the browser.

Ideally the front-end, html, css, javascript etc. should all about presentation, good user-experience etc.

The middleware should be all about business rules and logic.

The backend should be about data.

Thanks a mil for explaining all of that, makes it much clearer and can actually visualise the inner and outer workings now!

Just a question re. middleware- what do you mean 'business rules and logic'?

onemorechance

pog it wrote: »

Thanks a mil for explaining all of that, makes it much clearer and can actually visualise the inner and outer workings now!

Just a question re. middleware- what do you mean 'business rules and logic'?

The rules that a business has or operates under. For example, I think boards.ie have forums which only paid subscribers can see. This can be seen as a business rule.

When you log-in to boards.ie, the middleware will check your profile and apply business rules, i.e. should this user be able to see forum xxx, if subscriber, yes, if not, then no.

Fussgangerzone

When I started messing around with sites, I only knew some html and css, and began by altering templates for larger systems.

With a bit of poking and prodding, you can start chopping and changing, for example, Wordpress themes, and learn a bit about how sites are put together.

You can't make a brilliant site with just html and css, but you can make a site look brilliant, if you work at it.