"Jon Slaughter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Also, can anyone recommend any book or web page that gives an introduction > to the method in which one programs web sites? I am not clear on who one, > for instance, would use C++ as the language for a web site except by using > it to create html... I'm not sure if basicaly all languages goal is creating > html dynamically or if there is more to do. What I mean is that basicaly > one is using some other language to wrap the html code or possibly generate > it at run-time for dynamic results. (so all client based web interfaces are > really just html readers but all this "extra" stuff is used to make certain > things easier and dynamic(just as generating tables and forms and all that).
That's one way to look at it. Personally, I prefer to think of HTML as the "UI toolkit" for web development. It's more like CLI code that GUI code, in that you have three distinct phases of "process, display, await response" rather than waiting for UI events which trigger data processing and a display update. As such, you can use pretty much any language that can connect to the toolkit. CGI is pretty low-level, and pretty much anything can be used. C++ and Java both certainly get used. Others have mentioned LISP variants. I've used the shell and Rexx. These days, I prefer Python, but that's what you'd expect from somene reading c.l.python. Anything you're comfortable with should work. In particular, since the user is going to spend time waiting on network delays, any performance issues the language implementation may have will be negligible for a single user. Someone mentioned that you might "require JavaScript on the client side". I recommend against that - people and organizations disable JavaScript for security reasons, and browsers on portable devices may not have JavaScript at all. Why limit your audience? If you understand HTML, it's possible to write a web page that uses JavaScript (or any other such technology) for flashy effects, but still functions properly if the user has disabled JavaScript, or doesn't have it available. But that's a long discussion - see <URL: http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/papers.green.html > for more information. <mike -- Mike Meyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
