Question For Web Designers- Trying to see the big picture of web development

[stoopertrooper]

Hi fellow techies I am new to this board so let me preapologize if this has been discussed or it is too long. I have a basic question about the structure of the various web development environments.

Recently I decide I want to learn and eventually master web design. I already knew some html so I bought a Javascript book. That led me to learn CSS. I have enjoyed the ride so far and I like the power these have given me, but I know I need more. So I need to learn some server side tools to help tie this together. Hopefully that is where you guys can help me as there are a lot of language.

Through some reading, I see you can use javascript to submit a form and then use ASP, PHP or Pearl on the server to read that form and store it in a database.

So if I understand this correctly, html, javascript,css, and asp will give me a fairly overall set of tools to handle most webdesign.

So I guess the meat of my question is this:

What are the other combinations of tool sets? What do you guys use ie what does the industry use? Is there one big magic tool that hadles everything

What is PHP. I hear PHP is a server side script language. Does it also do the things on the client side like javasript? rollovers, cool menu bars, etc. which could reduce the tools required to PHP and html. Does it have a css component? Are server side script languages just for server side?

I would really appreciate a push in the right direction.

Thanks,

 

[uluc]

Initially that's one f'in long question you've got there : )

Secondly, you are asking question which require really huge answers. I'll just give a brief answer to all your questions.

You were asking about cool menu bars, roll overs etc.. There are thousands of programs for doing such icons or bars whatever.. You could prepare the images in photoshop and edit in image ready, or you may say, i'm a macromedia fan (which now belongs to adobe but still...) and you would be using fireworks or then you may go into flash, where things are much fancy.
You could also write the code in php, java asp etc... and edit it at flash...
I mean, lets say you master at php but then one may ask you, i need a php code built-in my flash website which also has an html version, and i want the inputs combined in an excel file mailed to my pop3 account which may give you an "out of office" reply, in that case, save results in server and retry every day.

I kind of over-exagurrated but still doesn't mean that similar demands won't come up.

so....

What i would suggest to you is, start with tutorials. then do a project on your own using ridiculous efects just to understand the "big picture" as u've mentioned. and you'll know what to do later on.


it was a pleasure thanks