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New to Web Development AND the Mac... Please Help!!!

H

h0kie99

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 31, 2004
82
0
VA
I did a LITTLE bit of web design about 5 years ago on the PC, but now I've got the iBook (very happy with it!!) and I am getting into the web development business. I am CLUELESS about what I need and I need someone's help!!

My future employer says I need to learn HTML (no problem), ASP, and SQL. So, I am taking some courses through the International Webmasters Association in a couple weeks. Can anyone recommend any other good sources of online training? I'm not looking for anything cheap, I want QUALITY!

As far as software goes, what do I need?? I'm assuming I need Fetch or something like that for FTP. OK, so if a client gives me access to his website, what do I need to make sure that I can edit and test his ASP and SQL code? I am not necessarily going to create my own ASP websites, but I will need to edit them!

Do I sound clueless? I need help ASAP!!

Thank you!
Jenny
 
One great book that i really liked for learning HTML was " HTML the complete reference" http://www.htmlref.com/ I own the third edition and it is great!!!!

This book also covers CSS and XHTML very well! It is a little weak in the basics like how to create a page ie. <html><head></head> and that kind of thing but u should know that and if not it is easy to figure out!
 
I had a web developer recommend the site webmonkey.com to me once, but that was a few years ago, don't know if it is still good.

ASP is a microsoft technology, so I don't think you will be able to get an ASP server for the Mac. If you just want to be able to access someone else's server remotely and edit the site, you could try downloading the Remote Desktop client from Microsoft, but whether or not it will work depends on the network security your client has.
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherproducts/otherproducts.aspx?pid=otherproducts
 
I suggest going to Barns and Noble, and pick up some self help books on ASP, PHP, and MySQL. I personally liked the "SAMS Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache". I learned how to make a full server and create a web interfaces for the MySQL database.

And I would suggest to your boss about using PHP instead of ASP if possible, because ASP is more of just a Microsoft thing (but has been moved to other platforms http://www.halcyonsoft.com/products.asp?s=1), where PHP can be easily installed to any server platform and is free.

Dreamweaver is a good way to start out with understanding HTML. You can write the HTML in text, or use a GUI. Free 30 day download is avaliable at Macromedias website, this goes straight to the dreamweaver section. www.dreamweaver.com

Also, looking at other peoples websites, then viewing source is a great way to find out how someone did something. You can also see peopls CSS so that you might find out how they did something.
 
HTML can be learned very quickly and easily. Just look at simpler sites and see what does what. A great thing about HTML is that it's a very English like language (compared to C++ or something), and you can easily decipher tags. From there, learn CSS and learn it well. I find Dreamweaver's CSS reference tool very valuable.
 
varmit said:
I suggest going to Barns and Noble, and pick up some self help books on ASP, PHP, and MySQL. I personally liked the "SAMS Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache". I learned how to make a full server and create a web interfaces for the MySQL database.

And I would suggest to your boss about using PHP instead of ASP if possible, because ASP is more of just a Microsoft thing (but has been moved to other platforms http://www.halcyonsoft.com/products.asp?s=1), where PHP can be easily installed to any server platform and is free.

Dreamweaver is a good way to start out with understanding HTML. You can write the HTML in text, or use a GUI. Free 30 day download is avaliable at Macromedias website, this goes straight to the dreamweaver section. www.dreamweaver.com

Also, looking at other peoples websites, then viewing source is a great way to find out how someone did something. You can also see peopls CSS so that you might find out how they did something.
Click to expand...

I completely concur with varmit's Dreamweaver recommendation in this case. DW is really the only Mac software that supports authoring in ASP, and the code output has gotten much cleaner over previous versions. The only question I would have for varmit is this: DW 2004 ships with Opera 6 as it's preview engine. Is there any way for that to be upgraded to Opera 7.53?

If you were a true masochist and felt like going into CPAN, you could install the ASP::Apache bundle. I never got it to work successfully, though I thought I was close on a couple of occasions :(

I'd also be happy to help you with learning XHTML+CSS. One last suggestion: O'Reilly's Safari bookshelf is a wonderful wonderful thing for $20/month. Eric Meyer's CSSEdge website and A List Apart are extremely useful too.

Good luck! And like varmit said, get your boss to 86 the ASP!
 
Thanks for all of your suggestions.

I have been thinking a bit more about this and my major question is in regards to editing/testing client sites. I doubt I will be developing sites from scratch (although it would be nice to learn how regardless), I will mainly be given access to a client's server and I will have to juice up the client's current website. If his website is written in ASP, what do I need to have on my Mac to be able to properly edit/test it. I mean, I know I can write ASP code and it doesn't matter if I'm using a PC or a Mac, but how can I test it to make sure the site works the way I want it to? What should I buy? Will Dreamweaver allow me to do my job?

What is Apache? Do I need that? I am clueless about the Mac.

I would hate to think that my Mac purchase was a bad idea if I'm getting into web development!?!?!

I can definitely use different languages (like PHP) instead of ASP if I am creating a site on my own, but what about editing client's ASP code?

HELP!!

Thanks!
 
Another thing... (thank you for being patient with this total newbie!!)

The clients we have will be small businesses (no more than 25 or so employees!) and the websites are not that complex. I have been advised to learn HTML, not XHTML because most of the clients will not be using that level of technology. Advice?

Still, my biggest fear is the ASP thing...
 
The difference between XHTML and HTML is not that great, its just that XHTML has much stricter rules than HTML. Websites in XHTML doesn't hurt much plus Dreamweaver has an inbuilt function to check for XHTML. Actually it doesn't really matters to code in HTML if your clients' site are not expected to scale up in the near future to other medium especially mobile technology. Its up to your judgement to advise your clients.

Do you have experience in Visual Basics? Don't fear about ASP. Just look through a few tutorials and make yourself go through the gruelling process of a few web projects. Then you should pick it up in no time.
 
h0kie99 said:
I have been advised to learn HTML, not XHTML because most of the clients will not be using that level of technology. Advice?
Click to expand...
If you are relatively new to web design you should probably get a good grounding in HTML 4.01 (the latest specification).

XHTML is not that different though and understanding it will be useful for your work in future. The differences are mostly small things, like unclosed tags such as <img> and <br> needing a backslash (<img.../>, <br/> etc).

I do most new sites in XHTML but stil have a few HTML 4 sites on the go.
 
h0kie99 said:
Thanks for all of your suggestions.

I have been thinking a bit more about this and my major question is in regards to editing/testing client sites. I doubt I will be developing sites from scratch (although it would be nice to learn how regardless), I will mainly be given access to a client's server and I will have to juice up the client's current website. If his website is written in ASP, what do I need to have on my Mac to be able to properly edit/test it. I mean, I know I can write ASP code and it doesn't matter if I'm using a PC or a Mac, but how can I test it to make sure the site works the way I want it to? What should I buy? Will Dreamweaver allow me to do my job?

What is Apache? Do I need that? I am clueless about the Mac.

I would hate to think that my Mac purchase was a bad idea if I'm getting into web development!?!?!

I can definitely use different languages (like PHP) instead of ASP if I am creating a site on my own, but what about editing client's ASP code?

HELP!!

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Apache is useful as it has been around for some time and it is quite robust in serving webpages (its open-source and the most popular web server around). It's built for linux and unix so Mac os X has no problem with it at all (plus os x has it pre-installed). For ASP, it would be preferable to get IIS on windows server.

Do not buy your workstation just for the merit of testing/hosting the site, buy it because you are comfortable using it.

I think you should be clear about one thing is that testing the web application involves both the client computer and the server. Server shouldn't be much of a problem as it is dependant on your clients' setup. and most probably, you are going to get access to different servers later.

For web development, you shouldn't restrict yourself to just 1 OS. You should try to have different OSes. The idea is to test out your projects on different platforms and browsers. Especially if you just test your site on IE, you are going to find that it looks different on safari or mozilla. plus some javascript syntax might give you problems on different browsers.

I hope I'm clear in these few lines.
 
mcarvin said:
DW 2004 ships with Opera 6 as it's preview engine. Is there any way for that to be upgraded to Opera 7.53?
Click to expand...

You can install the newest Opera, or any browser you want, and under preferences, change the primary and secondary browser to what you want. Then his the quick keys and bam.

And for the original poster, Dreamweaver is the best thing out there for coding any type of webpages out there in my opinion.

Apache is an alternative web sever to Microsofts IIS. Its free, and it runs on any platform, Linux, Windows, Mac, Unix. No need to own Windows server, just run apache and regular windows becomes a web server. Mac OS X has Apache built right into it. System Preferences, Sharing, Check Personal Websharing, BAM, you have a webserver.
 

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I'm just picking up web designing myself. Can anyone recommend some more books for me. I know the basics of HTML but would like to pick up a bunch of the web programming languages. I don't yet have any ideas for site that I want to design or anything like that, I just want to be able to play around and have some fun with it all..

Thanks,
einsteinium
 
Thank you all SO much. This has been hands down the best resource I've found so far. I was really nervous yesterday because I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to do what I need to do on a Mac. Now that I know I can, I'll just start with step one!

I am taking an online course through the International Webmasters Association for Intro to HTML. I'm sure it will all come back to me once I start.

I am usually better learning on my own as opposed to going to a class... does anyone have any other suggestions for online training. It's a happy medium because it's flexible but it also forces me to complete assignments and learn more quickly.

I'll be here often!!

Thank you so much!!!
 
web schools

w3schools.com is an excellent site. It has some good basic tutorials in just about everything you need - HTML/XHTML, CSS, ASP, PHP, SQL, and so on. I still use it now for reference when I need to as it's pretty thorough and covers the latest specifications. It also warns you about some potential browser incompatibilities and issues with specific features, which is better than a poke in the eye...

Macs are GREAT for web developing. You're going to have a ball!
 
The key distinction to make here is between static and dynamic web pages. If your client has a web site that never changes - i.e. just a collection of pages that tells about their company - then all you need is HTML and Javascript. Javascript lets you do fancier web pages - ones that change as the mouse moves over things etc.

ASP/JSP etc are only for dynamic websites. These are ones where the user types some sort of query in to a web form and them the customers computer queries a database and makes up a custom HTML page on the fly to answer their question. You should definitely learn HTML and Javascript first, and become really good at it, before you even look at ASP. Save ASP for later.
 
As far as other online courses go, I have heard great things about:

www.weavingtheweb.net

Web design is very easy to learn, PROPER web design is a bit more difficult. The one thing I definitely recommend is to learn how to design your code properly, to the web design standards set out by the W3. Start with the mark up code of HTML / XHTML, always including a DOCTYPE at the beginning, and then validating the code on the W3 site HTML Validator.

Next, learn how to style your pages with CSS, again always validating your CSS declarations on the W3 site.

The beauty of a properly marked up, validated page, is that it renders properly in the most search engines. When a page doesn't have a valid doctype, or has errors in its code, it throws the browsers into what is called quirks mode, where the browser than has to decide how you meant the HTML/CSS to be rendered. Sometimes the result is less than desirable. The other beautiful thing of using external style sheets is that you can have one sheet dictate the appearance of ALL your pages... so if later a client states that they would rather have a certain header in a different font, a different color, or a different location you just have to edit ONE declaration in your style sheet, and the change is manifested in ALL your pages!

Over time you will learn about a few common browser rendering problems and common work arounds for them.

To me, then, the final step is to learn the more "programming" type languages, such as PHP, Javascript (though never count on any client sided script for an important part of your page), ASP, etc.

The reason I made that comment about never depending on a client sided scripting language, such as JS, for your site is that many people disable client sided scripting in their browsers... up to 13% of the viewing web population according to some statistics. This means, that if your site has something dependent on Javascript, for example, that it won't work for 13% of your viewing audience! Javascript and other client side languages are great for non essential things, however. I think this 13% number is on the high side, but you should still never use a feature for a crucial component of your site that a client can simply disable in the preferences!

Oh, and make sure you rock in Photoshop!

Cheers!

James.

p.s. I have learned a LOT from these forums:

http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/
 
angelneo said:
For web development, you shouldn't restrict yourself to just 1 OS. You should try to have different OSes. The idea is to test out your projects on different platforms and browsers. Especially if you just test your site on IE, you are going to find that it looks different on safari or mozilla. plus some javascript syntax might give you problems on different browsers.

I hope I'm clear in these few lines.
Click to expand...

This is probably the most important thing I've read on this topic so far. Things work differently from browser to browser and platform to platform. Here's my testing list, just as an example: IE6/Win, IE5.5/Win, IE5/Mac, Safari, Firefox or Mozilla. If you want to learn more about browser quirks, Peter-Paul Koch has a great website at quirksmode.com.

Personally, the most frustrating aspect of freelancing is dealing with clients who've never heard of anything other than Windows, or my one client who insist that my standards-compliant authoring doesn't cater to Windows users. I believe that the web should be as it was intended: platform-independent, accessible to everyone. Likewise, I've found that it takes at least as much effort, if not more, to build sites that are Windows-specific.
 
broken_keyboard said:
You should definitely learn HTML and Javascript first, and become really good at it, before you even look at ASP. Save ASP for later.
Click to expand...

Right on! At my last full-time job, we had several developers who couldn't find their way around HTML, yet they were ASP developers. I never could understand how they built these large, dynamic sites without knowing the fundamentals.
 
You guys rock!! I'm learning so much! Keep it coming, I'm making note of EVERYTHING you've said!

My future boss did recommend that I learn some graphics work, although I figured I could always get my graphic artist/animation friends to do that for me. But then as I was browsing some of the clients' sites, I discovered that I really will need to learn some stuff about graphics. I suppose Photoshop should be the next on my list of purchases...

I agree that HTML will be easy to learn. I knew it years ago, so I'm sure I'll pick it back up quickly. I can't wait!!!
 
Books/etc:

Any of the O'Reilly books should be good, while they do have a couple 'duds', the vast majority are excellent. Also as mentioned above, Eric Meyer's CSSEdge (he also has a book on CSS) and A List Apart are quite good.

FTP/SSH:

OS X comes with a built in FTP program, but it runs in the terminal - if you aren't good with the terminal, Transmit is widely regared to be pretty good. Cyberduck also looks good, and has the advantage that it's free. I've not used either extensively (prefering the command line most of the time), but both have their followers.

You may find that some hosting companies (if you go that route) offer SSH/SCP/SFTP rather than FTP. SSH encrypts all of the traffic making it much more secure (your passwords are much harder to get at). The best program to get for this is Fugu, and it has a similar interface to Transmit which is fairly intuitive.

XHTML/HTML:

I would go the XHTML/CSS route if at all possible, at least when creating new pages. HTML4 appears to be on it's way out (though in WWW terms, this means it will linger for a number of years yet). The nice thing about XHTML/CSS is that it enforces the separation of style from content much, much better than HTML4 (XHTML does not allow some tags that HTML4 does, mainly because the functionality is in CSS and is much more powerful). If you want to see what is so cool about this, check out the "CSS Zen Garden" link from Eric Meyer's CSSEdge. The different layouts are done entirely with CSS - the html page code is not changed.

Whatever pages you build (or maintain) make sure they validate with the W3C's tools. See the HTML Validtor and CSS Validator. Those people who really know good web design will appreciate your efforts. :)

Graphics:

Depending on how in depth you need to get into web graphics, you may be able to get by with the Gimp - it's free, and I believe there is a pretty easy to install Mac OS X build floating around. It does require the optional Apple X11 package installed (but that is on the install discs, or downloadable from Apple). I find it's interface more intuitive than Photoshop as well, but others disagree. It's free though, so it's at least worth a try. Also, I have come across a couple of reviews that suggest Photoshop Elements does just about everything but what the top 5% of Photoshop users need. You may check that out, as it is quite a bit cheaper than the "full" Photoshop.
 
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