Ste said:
Is ther anybody who can help me? Or atleast point me to an FAQ? I'm really
new to programming in HTML and have so far just been following books and
building up a web page bit by bit. I have no fancy editor, so I'm just doing
it by in notepad and saving as a HTML file. The problem is that the books
just don't explain enough.
My main problem is with automation. I know from other websites that I can
use html to have a form collect data and automatically update an information
file that will then automatically change information on a webpage, but I
haven't a clue how to go about it. The books suggest something about
scripts, but what they are I don't know
There isn't any one book that explains it all, simply because what you've
brought up in your posting actually covers quite abit of ground
What you are going over now is HTML... and how to build "static" websites.
These are sites that don't change and just present the information in the
form of web pages.
HTML encompasses the basic presentation of a website... how it is going to
be layed out and displayed to the user
Some examples of HTML markup would be: <p><br><table border=1 cellpadding=1
cellspacing=5>
From there the next best step is CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) this will give
you more control over your HTML so you can define the layout and display of
your web page with more control.
In its most basic form, an example of CSS would be something like:
<div style='font-family:arial;font-size:100px;'>BIG TEXT</div>
Once you have a good working knowledge of HTML and CSS the next step would
then be to look into "Server Side Scripting". It is difficult to explain
Server Side Scripting in one or two lines since it can encompass so much,
but in a nutshell: Server Side Scripting is a webpage written in a
programming language that is executed on a webserver and then results (if
there are any) are presented to the user. This can be as simple as loading
a file within another, printing the time on the page, reading information
from a database, returning search results, etc.
There are quite a few different choices as far as Server Side Scripting
languages go, an example in ASP (Active Server Pages) would be:
<%
for x = 1 to 10
response.write "<br>Item Number " & x
next
%>
Then once you have the hang of Server Side Scripting (with whichever
language(s) you choose to learn) the next step would be to delve into SQL.
SQL is a database language that differs from database to database but for
the most part has the same core structure and commands. SQL commands are
combined with Server Side Scripting to read/edit/update/delete database
data.
An example of SQL would look like:
(SELECT i.name FROM inventory i LEFT JOIN (SELECT show, itemID, storeID FROM
prices WHERE storeID=1) p ON i.itemID=p.itemID WHERE (i.itemType=1) AND
(i.canusa='usa') AND ((p.show IS NULL) OR (p.show='y'))) UNION (SELECT name
FROM mopsop WHERE storeID=1 AND itemType=1) ORDER BY name
In your example of being able to update and change a page with a form would
use all of the above:
- You would use HTML and CSS to design the page with the form you are
entering the data on
- You would use Server Side Scripting and SQL to process the form data and
write it to a database
- You would use HTML, CSS, Server Side Scripting and SQL to build the page
the user sees: you would use the scripting and SQL to pull the information
from the database and then the HTML and CSS to render it into the web page
the user sees.
This was probably a long and overly complex reply to your question, but
hopefully it provides some insight into what you need to do next to advance
to the next level.
Clint
