3 Web Technologies Every Web Developer Should Know

If you are a business owner, you have most likely heard the term “web technologies”. Web technologies refer to the techniques and tools used as a means of communication between different types of devices over the Internet. They allow you to create a website that looks and functions as you like.

You might have also come across terms like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. However, have you ever thought about what they actually mean? These three languages are core web technologies that dominate web development.

Now, you may wonder why these languages are important. In this article, we’re going to explore the three web technologies every developer should know in detail. We’ll also explore the different methods of web development and why it is essential for your business needs.

What is Web Development?

Website development involves creating, building, and maintaining a website using web programming, web design, and web publishing. Additionally, it ensures the website’s infrastructure is functional, stable, and secure. If a website lacks strong web development, it is at risk of not functioning efficiently; It may lose traffic, decrease sales, and have possible security concerns.

Methods of Constructing A Website

There are several methods for constructing a website. A website can be built with in-depth handwritten coding or with free, user-friendly website development platforms, such as WordPress. Both ways of website building have their own pros and cons. Depending on the situation, one way of developing a website might not be suitable for developing the other.

Building a website from scratch is more difficult and requires more expertise. However, pre-built website development platforms, also known as Wysiwyg editors, like WordPress, are based on the concept that what you see is what you get; You basically drag website elements onto your page wherever you need them. But even with the pre-built website templates, you still need patience, knowledge, and understanding.

Who Are Web Developers?

Specialists who create and manage websites are known as web developers. A web developer is basically the architect of your website. They ensure that your website has a strong core infrastructure and functions exactly how you want it. They are highly skilled in making websites through several platforms and programs. 

Web developers, often considered the architects of a website, play a crucial role in ensuring a strong online presence. They handle a myriad of tasks, from optimizing SEO to enhancing performance. An essential aspect of their work is understanding how to measure developer productivity, ensuring that the focus goes beyond mere functionality to encompass the efficiency and effectiveness of the development process.

Creating a strong, engaging, and aesthetically pleasing website is a complicated process. However, a poorly developed website frustrates users and may even affect the brand’s reputation and potential sales. A skilled web developer creates a high-performing website that best suits your business and industry needs.

The Three Core Web Technologies

When it comes to actually building your website, there are three core web technologies being used all the time: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. If you are starting out in your journey to become a web developer, it’s essential to know that these three core web technologies are the main languages used by developers and programmers to build websites. 

1. JavaScript (JS) is the actual programming language. It is defined in terms of the behaviour of certain elements on your website, like buttons and sliders.
2. HTML is used to structure the website.
3. CSS is used to style the website’s colours, padding, margins, and more. It is purely for design in the beginning. Although technology is ever-evolving, CSS has evolved to a place where you can implement smooth transitions and even animations with only it. You can also do basic programming with CSS and something called media queries.

Media Queries

Before we dive deep into the three core web technologies, let’s first explore media queries. Media queries are rules written in CSS to apply different styles for different media types and devices when the viewport of a website changes.

Media queries could also be used to check the width and height of a viewport, the width and height of a device, the orientation, and even the resolution. They are a popular technique for delivering a tailored stylesheet, essentially a responsive web design, to desktops, laptops, tablets, and even mobiles.

Media Types

Media types define the broad category of devices for which the media query applies. You can use media queries to specify that certain styles are only for certain layouts on certain devices. They are:

• all is used for all media-type devices.
• print is used for printers.
• screen is used for computer screens, smartphones, tablets, and more.
• speech is used for screenreaders to read the page out loud.

Media Features

Besides media types, there are also media features. They provide specific details about the browser, which is sometimes called user agent, display device, or environment. For example, you can apply files to only those screens that are greater or smaller than a certain width. Always consider that each media feature expression must be surrounded by brackets. Media features may include:

• any-hover
• any-pointer
• colour-index
• device-height
• display-mode
• hover
• monochrome

CSS Syntax of Media Queries

@media not|only mediatype and (mediafeature and|or|not media feature) {
  CSS-Code;
}

The syntax of media queries is similar to this previous one. You have the media, the media type, and the media feature with the and or not feature. It is then followed by the actual CSS code.

• not reverts the meaning of an entire media query.
• only prevents older browsers from applying the specified style. These browsers do not likely support media queries with media features. However, only has no effect on modern browsers.
• and combines a media feature with a media type or other media feature.

The keywords of not, only, and and are optional, but if you use a not or only feature, you must specify a media type.

@media screen and (max-width: 600px) {
  div.example {
    display: none;
  }
}

We use the media screen type in the previous CSS with the media queries to test the screen of the device. The display none will hide an element when the browser’s width is 600 pixels or less. Then, we write the CSS code.

@media screen and (min-width: 400px) {
  body {
    background-color: lightgreen;
  }
}

@media screen and (min-width: 800px) {
  body {
    background-color: lavender;
  }
}

In the first example, the media queries are used to set the background colour to light green if the viewport is 400 pixels or less. Moving to the one underneath, if the screen of the device is 800 pixels or less, the background colour will be lavender.

So, between 400 and 800 pixels, we’re looking at lavender, and anything less than 400 pixels will change to light green. Purely with CSS, it allows you to change the behaviour of how your website acts. It is no longer just for a design; It is used for a different number of things as well.

The Three Web Technologies

Now, let’s move back to the three core web technologies that are essential in every process of web development. We mentioned that there are three main languages that developers and programmers use to build a website: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. However, they are not the only ones.

HTML

Starting with HTML, it stands for hypertext markup language. Defining what the layout of your website should be, it is a set of detailed instructions and rules that is essentially used to format and structure your web page before it gets shown. It usually contains an opening tag, a closing tag, and the content between them. It helps you structure your pages into paragraphs, images, navigation bars, and other elements.

A typical HTML document will look something like the following example. As a typical HTML document, everything is structured. You have the heading section where you will define the doc type, the used language, and the link to any kind of stylesheets that you want to use. All these elements are defined within the head tags of the HTML doc.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
  <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="ie=edge">
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="video.css">
  <title>Document</title>
</head>
<body>
  <h1>This is first heading</h1>
  <h2>This is second heading</h2>
  <h3>This is third heading</h3>
  <p>This is a <i>paragraph</i> I italicised the word "paragraph".</p>
  <p>The objective of this blog is to show you how to:</p>
    <ul>
      <li>Formulate a web document using HTML.</li>
      <li>Design a web page using CSS.</li>
      <li>Program a web document using JavaScript.</li>
    </ul>
    <Input type="button" id="sumButton" value="Click Here!">
</body>
</html>

Within the body tags is where the actual page layout content will go. The markup contains web elements, like heading one (H1), heading two (H2), and heading three (H3). There are also elements like buttons, list elements, and paragraph elements.

This example shows what the HTML markup looks like on an actual web page. You can see all of the headings that we have defined, all of the paragraphs, and all of the buttons as well. So, this is essentially what the front end and the back end are. For advanced UI customization needs, partnering with a front end development company experienced in HTML, CSS and modern frameworks is key. Once you click Save, you can preview and see side by side how all of these elements look.

Any page created using HTML only will be really basic and unattractive. HTML is used to structure and format a website page and place all of the elements on the page exactly where you want them. To style the page and make it look nice and presentable, what you would use then is CSS.

CSS

CSS stands for cascading style sheets. In general, a browser is designed to present documents, which are text files structured using a markup language. Presenting these documents means converting them into forms usable to users. So, CSS styles allow you to create a great-looking website page to make it more attractive and pleasant for the user to view and use.

You can use CSS to position elements in specified areas of your web page. You have to select a single or multiple web elements and specify how you want it/them to be positioned. You can also set the colour and background of your elements and other things like the typeface, margins, spacing, and padding.

In the example mentioned in the previous section, you can change the background colour of the headings (H1, H2, or H3) or the italicised words using CSS. You can add some text beside each element. For example, you will write “add red background” in H1, “add blue background” in H2, and “add green background” in H3. Next, name this stylesheet video.html, for instance. Then, click Save.

<body>
  <h1>This is first heading. Add red background colour</h1>
  <h2>This is second heading. Add blue background</h2>
  <h3>This is third heading. Add green background</h3>
  <p>This is a <i>paragraph</i>. I italicised the word "paragraph".</p>
</body>

In a different style sheet, define each heading’s background colour. Then, name this stylesheet video.css, for instance. The following example shows how we defined the background colours of the H1s, H2s, H3s, and italicised words.

h1 {
  background-color: #ff0000;
}

h2 {
  background-color: #0000FF;
}

h3 {
  background-color: #00FF00;
}

i {
  background-color: #000000;
  color: #ffffff;
}

The trick now is how you could link the two stylesheets you have saved. Now, go to the head section and make sure that the video.css stylesheet is linked correctly to this stylesheet. This could be done by typing the name of the CSS stylesheet between the inverted commas beside the href. This way, the page is going to look for this CSS stylesheet in the same file that it is in. Then, click save and refresh the page. The website page preview now should follow the stylesheet.

<head>
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
  <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="ie=edge">
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="video.css">
  <title>Document</title>
</head>

So, we used HTML to structure the web page and CSS to colour it and change its appearance.

JavaScript

Next, let’s explore the third core programming language, which is JavaScript. As we mentioned before, HTML is a markup language, and CSS is a design language. JavaScript is the actual programming language that develops web pages and is completely different from Java. Scripts are the programs in this language.

Programming languages are essentially the rules that are written to allow a web page or individual elements to react in a certain way if a certain situation happens. They are written in a web page’s HTML and run automatically when the page loads. You can program calculations, actions, conditions, network requests, and many other types of instructions.

JavaScript allows you to make your website page think and act, which is what programming is really all about. It allows you to add animation, add image slideshows, validate the content of a form, and display messages to users in the form of message boxes. It can be implemented in an internal script section in the head or body of your web page, an inline section in an HTML tag, and an external JavaScript document.

function displaySum() {
  let firstNum = Number(document.getElementById('firstNum').innerHTML)
  let secondNum = Number(document.getElementById('secondNum').innerHTML)

  let total = firstNum + secondNum;
  document.getElementById("answer").innerHTML = ` ${firstNum} + ${secondNum}, equals to ${total}` ;
}

document.getElementById('sumButton').addEventListener("click", displaySum);

JavaScript also allows you to sum up two numbers and display the result on the page. The displaySum function gets both items from the web page, converts them to numbers, sums them up, and passes them into another element as inner values. The reason why you can access these elements in JavaScript is because you have set unique attributes to them.

Each element on the website page is represented on the Document Object Model API, also known as the DOM. The DOM is not part of the programming language; however, it is a web API used to build and control objects in website pages. It is like a tree representation of a web page getting loaded into the browser.

Through the DOM, you can use methods like GetElementById to access elements from your web page. You can also make changes however you want to any element.

HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

So, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are the core web technologies every web developer should master. They are used to format, design, and program different web pages respectively. When you link some web pages with hyperlinks and assets, like images and videos, it gets rendered into a website. This rendering happens typically on the front end, where users can see what is being displayed and interact with it.

On the other hand, sensitive information, like passwords and card details, are all stored and supplied from the back end part of the website. This part of a website exists only on the server computer and is not displayed on the browser’s front end. This means the user cannot really see or readily access that information.

PHP

As mentioned before, the three main languages that we use are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. While these are the core technologies, they’re not the only ones that developers use for web development. PHP is another core web technology used specifically for building dynamic and interactive websites, especially those built in WordPress. It is a programming language and a scripting language.

WordPress is written using PHP. PHP is open source and a server-side language, which means it runs fully on your web hosting server. If you want to create a WordPress website, you do not need to know PHP at all; You can purchase or even download for free certain themes that already come with the elements and styling all laid out.

PHP is useful to know whenever you want to create your own completely custom-built theme. This theme is always written in PHP, and you can use some JavaScript as well. PHP is a lot more flexible and adaptable than other web technologies. You will not need to hire a highly skilled web developer to create a business website from scratch and apply your own specifications.

In general, custom theme development and custom web development are really popular options for businesses, as they can create websites that need bespoke functionality, complex branding, and leading performance. A custom-built website is not bound by the confines of preexisting website templates, like those used on some of the WordPress themes or even Shopify and Wix themes.

A custom-built website does not only encourage longer visits and better conversion rates. It is also an opportunity for scalability as the business grows. It allows businesses to better manage their customers’ data as well.

A fully custom website is considerably a lot more flexible than a website builder or template-based platform. Although it is more expensive, it is ideal for big organisations that receive large volumes of traffic and seek higher ranks in search engines. Top web development services in New York specialize in building fully custom platforms tailored to unique business needs. Their expertise in complex custom web development empowers crafting sites with capabilities beyond template constraints.

When it comes to web development, we understand that you want to know how you can update and manage your businesses yourself. So, we have courses and training sessions for you.

At ProfileTree, you can learn how to alter information and content on website platforms. Additionally, we can train you on how to make content appealing and more functional.

If you’d like to learn more about the basics of web development to better manage your business website, get in touch today and see how we can help.