Web Development Technologies
Semantic Markup
Semantics here means adding the structure and meaning to textual content and not do include presentation information on this level.
Semantic Markup is a complete separation of content from presentation, i.e. the core content of website is stored separately from the visual presentation.
There are numerous advantages to separating content and style:
- It is simple to add, remove, or update content without having to worry about layout.
- You can keep your "frames of mind" separate: focusing on visual design and layout, or focusing on content, without worrying about layout.
- To do entire redesign without touching the content at all—you need to create a new style sheet.
Using Semantic Markup technology it is possible to develop websites that well suit for full screen devices as desktop and laptop computes, and suit well for small screens of mobile devices.
Thus, a website consists of two layers:
- Structure Layer, i.e. semantic markup, which adds the context and the meaning to the content of the webpage, it is coded in (X)HTML.
- Presentation Layer, which provides information for visual presentation of the webpage, it is coded in CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).
Besides these two layers, a modern website has a third layer: behaviour layer, which is scripted using JavaScript. This layer is used to update, add, or remove items from the webpage based on the user‘s behaviour.
Including presentational information within the document markup deprives you the advantages listen above, and the modification and scaling of your website turns to be harmful work. Design tools basing on WYSIWYG use mainly this type approach. Using the visual design tools is relatively easy and somebody can create a website very quickly, but the maintaining of this website is very difficult. Quite often, websites created by WYSIWYG tools and the respective technology are called professional, but actually, such website is only looking as a professional.
Behavioural Level
- Server-Side Technologies: PHP, ASP.NET, Perl, Ruby on Rails, MySQL, ...
- Client-Side Technologies: JavaScript, Marcomedia Flash, ...
- AJAX