Web Design

Currently there is a lot of demand for web designers as each and every organisation may it be commercial or educational or social requires a web site. And to make a website a web designer is required. A web designer is one who is well versed with the art of designing websites right from the website template to the finished code. The process of web design starts from designing a template for the website on any of the popular image editing software especially Photoshop.

Once the template is built on Photoshop and reviewed by the customer with minor tweaks here and there, the website is then ready to be coded into HTML and CSS. The current standards provided by the W3C are HTML5 and CSS3 respectively. A web designer, keeping these standards in mind, starts coding the Photoshop image into a fully fledged website. Once the website is coded, it has to be launched on a web hosting with a web domain. This is often handled by the customer or in case of inexperienced clients; it may also be handled by the designer. Once the website is launched it is on the internet for anyone to see.

Usability

Usability refers to the placement of various elements inside a web page including the navigation bar, the sidebar and the headers which make the most efficient use of space and provide the user with good navigability. Usability can be improved by adding custom gadgets and widgets which improve the overall user experience like on a blog site, the usability can be improved by adding the most popular posts on the home page, the most recent comments, etc.

With the advent of the Windows operating system which consisted of a Graphical User Interface there was a dire need of an easier and simpler programming language for writing windows applications. Earlier C++ was used to write windows applications, but in 1991 Microsoft came up with Visual Basic as a means to provide an easier and faster way to write applications for Windows.

There are currently 6 versions of the earlier VB language. Most of the earlier Visual Basic upgrades from VB 1.0 to VB 6.0 were backward compatible meaning code written in a previous version of the language could be used with the later versions. But with VB.NET the complete architecture of the programming language has changed and hence it doesn’t support the earlier versions from VB 1.0 to VB 6.0. The main difference between VB 6.0 and VB.NET is that VB.NET is completely object-oriented whereas VB 6.0 has a few of the object oriented features.

Difference in C# and VB.NET

As of now, more and more features are being added to each of the languages and there is an effort to bring both languages at par with each other. But as far as current market scenario goes, C# developers are often paid more than their VB.NET counterparts.

Philosophy

The rails philosophy boasts of three major things which include DRY, Convention over configuration and REST. DRY or Don’t Repeat Yourself suggests that repeating your code is a waste of time and should not be done. Convention over Configuration is basically the assumption that rails makes about what you want to do and how you want to do it rather than making changes in a number of configuration files. REST or Representational State Transfer is basically a set of principles which include giving everything an ID, linking things together, using standard methods, etc.

Features

RoR has a lot of tools which makes common development jobs a lot easier. For e.g. rails has scaffolding “out of the box” which can automatically construct a lot of the models and views which are required for a basic website. Rails requires a web server to run it and Mongrel was kept in mind while designing the language. Apart from that it can also be run on Apache, Abyss, Lighttpd, etc. RoR is divided into a number of packages. These packages can also be extended by developers as plugins. RoR is typically used with a database server like MySQL, Postgre SQL, etc. The future of RoR doesn’t look very bright as of now as it has limited standalone applications.

Application of PHP

PHP is generally used as a server side scripting language for creating dynamic web pages and run time content. PHP can be used on various platforms and operating systems. It requires a server to serve the PHP content and can also be used for local web development. PHP servers are also distributed as a part of the popular WAMP and XAMPP packages which offer other things apart from an Apache server to serve PHP pages.

PHP & MySQL

In most common implementations of PHP, it is used in conjunction with MySQL. PHP can be used as a standalone language also but modern web applications require both the languages to be used together as one provides the functional aspect for the site and the other provides the functions with data. Websites today usually consist of storing data in one form or the other for which databases are required and now to access these databases a query language like MySQL is required. It provides a framework for accessing the data in the format required. It can also be used for selective accessing of data when the entire data is not required and specific data which include certain specific attributes is required. The most important part about PHP is that it is free to use under the PHP license and hence is finding widespread applications in the open source development area.

Features

JavaScript is a proto-type based and functional programming language. It is functional as it supports closures and higher-order functions. It is prototype based as it supports prototypes instead of classes. JavaScript is also a dynamic language in the sense that it supports dynamic typing of variables. For e.g. a variable ‘a’ maybe bound to a number initially and then later on rebound to a string. JavaScript is also very structured and supports most of the C like constructs including if statements, while loops, switch statements, etc.

Use in client-side scripting of web pages

Since JavaScript code can run locally on a web-browser it has a host of uses in client side scripting mainly because it is faster to load the script on a browser and then execute it rather than executing it on the server and then loading it onto the browser. The main uses of JavaScript in scripting are validating inputs from web forms, pop-up windows and their position, size, etc. and effects to enhance the user interface like rollover images, text-boxes, mouse-over content, etc. JavaScript has evolved into a very handy language for a web developer and is a must for client-side web pages.

HTML

HTML provides the building blocks of a web page. It basically consists of text which is marked up in a particular way using tags so as to perform a particular function. The HTML5 standard provides a definite set of guidelines which are used to evaluate any HTML5 document once it has been written. There are a lot of text editors which can be used for writing HTML5 code including both text-based and WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors. The text based editors require the entire mark-up to be written manually whereas the WYSIWYG editors generate the code automatically.

CSS

CSS is the design aspect of the web pages. It deals with how the various markup elements in the HTML need to be displayed. It basically provides control over the visual aspect of the content meaning one can define the alignment of the content, whether the content is to be bordered or not, if there is a background or not, etc.

HTML and CSS are used jointly to produce great web pages.

History

The first version of Haskell was defined in 1990 when “Haskell 1.0” was released. In 1997, after a lot of research and development “Haskell 98” was made available which came with a standard library for teaching. In 2006, the Haskell programming language started undergoing revision and in November 2009, the “Haskell 2010” was released as a part of the Haskell’ (Haskell Prime) project.

Features

Functional programming languages like Haskell are much more concise and have an easier to understand code. One of the most important features of this language is that it is lazy (lazy here means “non-strict”). This means that the logical evaluation of statements does not happen until it is required i.e. one can define an unending list of numbers and still there wouldn’t be a problem as it wouldn’t be evaluated until and unless it is required. This leads to quite a few smart solutions to a number of problems which would not have been possible in other programming languages. Haskell also has a few object oriented features like data encapsulation and polymorphism. All in all Haskell has its uses but it cannot be used everywhere especially when performance is required.

Conversion rate may also be dependent on a lot of other external factors which include customer reviews, product quality, shipping time, cost of shipping, etc. All of these factors have to be taken into consideration when one is developing a shopping or similar website which sells goods. The external marketing apart from the website also matters i.e. if the marketing is done on a high level and on good websites then the credibility of the website automatically goes up and also increases the conversion rate. One important detail which is often overlooked is that most of the points in the value proposition of a website are made from the seller’s point of view based on the seller’s strengths, which more often than not does not appeal to a buyer. The value proposition should be from a buyer’s perspective so as to increase the conversion rate.

Security

One of the important features which a consumer looks for in a website at the time of buying is the security of the website. The website has to be secure and there cannot be any loopholes through which a hacker can extract the customer’s private details because once such an incident happens the credibility of the website goes down drastically.

All in all conversion optimization of websites is important for getting customers and traffic to a commerce oriented website.

C++ is one of the most versatile compiled languages that exist today. It has the capability to take on simple tasks as mathematical calculations to more complex fully fledged enterprise applications. It is the first language that most people learn when they start programming. C++ has been derived from C. The major difference between C++ and C is the addition of object oriented programming in C++ like the addition of classes and various class handling methods which are not present in C. C++ is the most basic language if one wants to learn any of the Microsoft languages like ASP.NET, Visual Basic, etc. C++ is used for systems software, device drivers, embedded software, entertainment software, application software, etc. among other applications.

There is a number of Integrated Development Environments (IDE) that exists today for the development of programs written in C++, including Turbo C++, Borland C++, etc. Some of them are cross platform IDE like CodeBlocks which exists both on Linux as well as Windows and has separate versions for the different operating systems. The language was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Labs. His aim was to develop a better version of the C programming language. Yet he created something which changed the way people programmed and the transition from procedural programming to object oriented programming took place.

Modern day C++

Today C++ is considered as a standard language that is taught in most schools and also in Computer Science courses. C++ has a Standard Template Library (STL) which adds a lot of functionality to the language. The latest standard for C++ is the ANSI/ISO standard. The standard for the next level of the language i.e. for C++0x is still in development. C++ is a safe bet when it comes to beginning a course in object oriented programming.