Oversimplifying Web Development

My experiences with the Web design until recently have led me to believe that I was both a designer and developer for websites. BOY was I wrong. I believe that knowing CSS, HTML and being able to edit snippets of javascript so help me do things was enough to call myself a developer.

Sorry design Team, knowing CSS and HTML does not make a web developer.

I hear all the signs and see all eye rolls from the developers now.

I cannot be the only one who has thought that. Sorry, designers do not shoot me for this one, but it is not enough. With that said, that does not mean that you cannot create great sites with CSS and HTML because you can, and I have. Incorporating Javascript and other programming languages opens a whole new world to design and features we offer.

When I started to learn programming Javascript was not my first choice. Python, was a great first language to start with but it really didn’t improve on what I already knew, it did give me a whole different skill set that I could start exploring and it taught me fundamentals that I can now bring over to any other programming languages. When I decided to learn a programing language I saw it as a way to pave out new services to offer; I wanted to grow RC3 my freelancer brand. So that I could provide my customer with more creative and technologies that are current. -- One of my biggest fears is to be left behind, that is why I am always learning. -- What this drove me to learn which languages would be the best work with HTML and CSS create better pages. And I started to learn PHP! HA! Just kidding.

Javascript
Implementing Javascript has done so much for me in improving my services to my customer. I must say I am still learning, and that makes me very happy. This means that I can only grow and continue to provide new designs, to enhance my customers brand and bring it to life.

The anatomy of a web page is very simple. You have the HTML that is like the skeleton and muscles of the site, it has all the core data and information. Your CSS is like the skin of the site, this is where you make, shape and create the layout of the site. Finally, you then have the javascript, this is what create action, animation, and changes; I would like to say this is like the ligaments that pull the muscles causing the bodies move and react with the user.

Most of the times on a simple page a majority of the elements are in CSS, you do not need javascript to do animation and visual changes. With that said using javascript keeps your code cleaner, concise, easier to replicate and implement in different areas of your site or even on other sites. Programming looks and conditional statements make it easier to it helps us by not having to write the same code multiple times. Creating clean easy to read and not repetitive code.

Design team here's a simple example for you; let's say we’re are developing a blog page on a clients site. And we want to have a drop down with the 5 latest blogs. Using Javascript makes this very easy to do and it becomes something that automatically updates every time a new blog post is published without expecting the user to manually update it. In the same scenario imagine having to create a comment section on the blog page for user interaction. With javascript, you can take in and manage user input as well validate the input. This means that adding readers post to your client's site would also be something that is handled automatically. This, in turn, assist with creating more Dynamic or Smart content while the users are visiting the page.

Developer team, you would agree that this may be one of the only times where plagiarism okay. Take some else's code adapt it to what you need and make sure you study it and understand it. This is one of the best advice I was given and now I pass it to you. Not only has this helped me learn it has also helped improve on what someone else has done.

All in all, I know that I still have much to learn and that I am not an expert, and this is my journey into learning and furthering my knowledge to provide better services for my customers. I will report more findings as time progresses, hope that you have learned something from my reporting.

Thanks for reading Team.