I have started on a web app for the ORG i work for, using notepad++ for html and css and of course php and javascript. I must say that the ORG did not used to have software developers, all software they have is off-the-shelf or oracle forms and am a recent grad.
We got a new hire he has much more experience "he claims", the thing is that he has been criticizing me for using notepad++ for html, he instead suggests using ASP.NET in VS. His argument comes from security risks and better support point of view.
The web app will consist of a website for the visitors to browse, in addition to an intranet for employees to use onsite and globally.
So i am not sure if i am on the right track and he is showing off, or i should be following his advice "he could be our new IT manager".
I thank you very much in advance.
The editor you are using has literally nothing to do with the security of the programmed application. Notepad++ is perfectly fine, even though i would recommend something like Atom, Visual Studio Code or Sublime.
One thing they have as a "security advantage" over Notepad++ is, that it is easier to install plugins that try to check your code and point out possible bugs. Otherwise blaming the Editor for Security issues is nonsense.
I have no experience with ASP.NET, i tried it a few times but never liked it. I think it comes with some authentication solutions out of the box.
HTML and CSS have very little to do with security. JavaScript and especially PHP is what you have to be careful with. I would recommend to use some kind of PHP framework as there are often well tested authentication components included. Frameworks I know of are Symfony and Laravel (which is built on Symfony).
Related
Lookioing for a free (prefered open source) software for building a static web site.
The site has few pages with links between them. Prefer something that has templates to choose from.
This is for a novice user, with office knowledge. Up until now he used MS-Publisher, but from 2010 MS stops the support on web site publishing using publisher.
I lookked at wordpress, but it requires a web server that support it (and has MYSQL).
If it has to be free, and WYSIWYG (as I assumed), than, maybe KompoZer. i didn't used it, but its only (free) I know about.
I would suggest you guys to have a look at something similar to:
HAML
StaticMatic
Nanoc
A compiled list of static website generators
But really there is a lot. I'm not a ruby user myself but you just need to adjust your search terms.
Just a side note. Static and WYSIWIG does not go well together. Unless you use something as a backend to store the WYSIWYG editor (think even the like of Mercury Editor... that renders it not static anymore.
I don't have a lot of experience developing web-based data entry software, but comparative to Oracle Forms, Visual Studio, and various 4th generation languages, creating the user interface layout used to be a snap.
It seemsl ike these days, just creating the user interface for developing web applications is a huge pain in the butt. Just trying to get your text entry fields and widgets to go where they are supposed to is extremely painful, and requires you to know JavaScript, CSS, jQuery, HTML, etc. There has to be an easier way to develop data entry forms that produce the needed, underlying code for a webpage.
Am I just not looking in the right place? It seems like there must be some kind of WYSIWYG GUI development tools out there for developing data-entry forms.
Can anyone give me some good suggestions?
C# used with ASP.NET is strong in this area, but there is a learning curve to overcome. You can get the free versions by downloading the latest Visual Studio Express from Microsoft. The catch is that you are stuck with Windows for development, for better or worse. Visual Studio only runs on Windows.
Most web frameworks handle form generation for you. If yours doesn't then there are easily a dozen others that you can pick up for no money.
Dreamweaver. That's about the best WYSIWYG you're going to find.
http://www.sencha.com/ Ext JS is a Cross-browser JavaScript framework for rich web apps.
it also has a gui to create the interfaces. That gui app is not free.
I am very curious about what you think is the best approach for people that want to start webdevelopment. I'm now talking about people that finished their education and so want to start from scratch.
I still have questions like:
Where do you start?
What software gets involved in webdevelopment?
What tools / setup would you recommend?
Offcourse i'm interested to hear alot more then only the answers to those three questions.
I am not writing this to get a load of people react on my post, i am trully interested in knowing how much work and money it will cost a webdeveloper when starting from scratch.
I hope to get a clear view on how to approach and to maybe hear some best practices.
Well one thing's for sure, education isn't finished! There's a whole lot to learn, and the more we learn the more we seem to need to learn.
If you're really starting from having no programming background whatsoever then I think you'd be advised to take a staged approach. For example:
1). A web page with a few different text formats and pictures and colours. Here you're just learning HTML. For that any browser and a notepad editor would do, but probably a tool such as Eclipse that gives some HTML editing capability would help.
2). More adaptive HTML - stylesheets that let you change appearance without changing all the html. So that's CSS.
3). Using the above, improve your designs. There are loads of formatting tricks good web sites use and you'll need to learn those.
Note that by now we've done a lot of study and we have not actually written any programs!
4). Dynamic web pages. Now we move to the programming side, rather than just writing some HTML files write a program that delivers the HTML and in some way changes the content. Starting with something really simple such as including "today's date is ..." on the page. For that You would need to pick a server development technology such as Ruby/Rails or PHP or Java/JSP ... You'll get a lot of different advise about "best" for this.
5). Now you can start to work on accepting input from the user and doing something with it so that useful work gets done. Things such as databases start to become important.
There's a whole load more after that, JavaScript and so on. An experienced programmer can pick up this kind of stuff quite quickly, if you've never done any programming at all then you will need to be prepared to take a while before you can get to the level you probably target. I think the key is to acknowledge that a great commercial web site reflects a lot of collective wisdom and skill picked up over many years, and probably is the result of a multi-disciplinary team working together. For one person to match that is a big ask. For one person to produce something nice and useful is more practical, but still does need a lot of different skills. It's quite reasonable to specilaise in a subset of the skills. For example, good visual designers write little or no code but are highly valuable.
you need:
a browser, eg. FireFox, Internet Explorer. A webdeveloper toolbar might also be useful.
a webserver, eg. Apache, Tomcat, IIS
a programming environment, eg. Php or ASP.NET
a development tool, eg. Notepad, Notepad++, Visual Studio .NET, Eclipse
most of the times a database, eg. SQL Server, mySQL
I'd say it depends what you want them to master: the technologies only (up to which skill level ?) or the whole software engineering behind a web project
A sample and fast technologies learning tree could be:
1) HTML
2) CSS
3) HTTP
4) Server side programming (PHP ?): programming concepts, interacting with HTML/CSS, then PHP API
5) Databases (start simply with MySQL for instance) + SQL (CRUD with Joins, Subselect, Indexes, Views and Transactions)
6) Client side programming (JavaScript first then Ajax)
7) A web framework (ZEND ? cake ?) and a good IDE (lots of...)
Full-time learning those technologies requires at least 1.5 year , based on the experience I have with my students and people must be trained mainly on concrete projects.
Then people should learn software engineering (cf link text) covering at least
- software requirements
- software design
- software construction
- software testing
I think people can have useful experience in this software engineering tree in 1 year and can (should) combine learning technologies with learning software engineering.
For training someone from scratch (technologies + software engineering) I'd say a least 2 years if working on at least three 6-month projects
This answer is Microsoft specific.
For starters you'll need an editor, a (optional) database and a few starting points.
Microsoft supplies most of these for free: you can download the Visual Studio Webdeveloper 2008 Express Edition for free, this includes most of the stuff you'll need.
If you plan on developing database driven websites, and who isn't, you might want to use the free SQL Server 2008 Express Edition
When you have the tools setup it's time to download some samples and see see how they work. Again Microsoft supplies some for free. You can check out tutorials and samples at their Asp.Net site.
When you are ready for some more advanced stuff, check out ASP.NET MVC, again at Microsoft.
With these tools and examples you should be able to get started.
I just want to add that you will most likely also need Photoshop or other tool to create the graphics for your web sites.
In spite of java/.net/php,the HTML,CSS,JavaScript are the basic web development toolkit.
Get a job as a junior developer that will put you on a project that is developing a web application. I personally think it should involve one of the two most established platforms, Java or .Net. I know some will disagree, but these are good foundations to branch into other tech platforms later.
Make sure you open an IDE (e.g. Visual Studio or Eclipse) everyday and code something. If not, find a new job immediately.
Read religiously at night. Start with "Code Complete", then move on to other books.
Learn the fundamental technologies of the World Wide Web:
HTTP
HTML
CSS
JavaScript
DNS, URL's
Good luck and happy travels!!
you need:
a google chrome . This provide you some advantage like inspect option. A webdeveloper toolbar might also be useful.
2. Html, Css, JavaScript are the basic language that you should be know
a programming environment, eg. Php or ASP.NET is needed for storing data and making login type page
a Visual Code Studio is needed for coding. This provide you emmet facilities that suggest you while you are coding
I mean this quite literally. A close relative wants to create her own website for her business and asked me for help. I've offered her to set up the website, take care of domain registration and all, but I don't have the time to design the website for her. So, I want to give her a software in which she can edit the page and publish it on her own.
My feature-wish-list. The software should
of course, be easy-to-use, as she's not a pro at the computer
be able to publish the website, once the ftp-connection has been entered
have some predefined themes, but also the possibilites to define a custom theme
offer a german UI, since she doesn't understand english
I so far looked at Nvu (too complicated), zeta Producer (crashed even before I could start editing the first page), CityDesk (very promising, but still too complicated and not in german). I'm quite happy with Namu6, but unfortunately, it is english only.
I'd be happy for any suggestion.
[edit]
Some were asking for a platform: She is only using windows, so Mac or Linux is not an option.
My mom uses vi for this
Consider setting up a CMS for her and let her edit the pages in the browser.
I was happy with citydesk for imachines.com, but lately I've moved towards just suggesting a blogging tool and doing it that way (e.g. wordpress, blogger, etc...). Websites are complicated because they are a 'web'. I'm not sure my mom could ever do it.
Google has a webpage service, besides Blogger, I think it' called Pages. Or if she has a Mac iLife has a decent tool set for the average non technical user
You don't mention which platform. If Mac is a possibility, take a look at iWeb, part of the iLife suite.
Depends on what she needs the site for and what you are capable of setting up for her. Google sites are free and easy to set up/use, but they're damn ugly.
Set up a free Blogger or WordPress account or run a hosted WordPress installation.
Engines like Joomla tend to be a bit technical on the admin back-end, but are also easy to edit from a front end editor's point of view - their WYSIWYG editor allows you to edit content from the front end, which I've found useful for non-technical types.
Wordpress is actually a nice and capable basic CMS system that just happens to have a blogging engine built into it.
Chances are, non-technical people will struggle with any editor. I mean, how do you expect her to do layout?? How do you expect her to edit the templates? How do you expect her to publish the site from her local machine to the server that's hosting the website?
Come on man, I know these things seem common sense to us, but really, every non-techy person around me that I can think of wouldn't have the least clue about where to begin with any of this, even my sister who knows how to use photoshop wouldn't have a clue about running a website. (I'd have to spend a lot of time tutoring her, and even then I'm not sure she'd get it).
Just give her a CMS or a blogging application like wordpress or the like (I assume you'll have to set it up for her).
EDIT
Even if you do find a good-easy-friendly editor, what about deploying her changes to the server? The problem is not only editing HTML, but running a website, managing content on it.
If your mother's business is a legitimate business that she gets her living from, wouldn't she want a professional to do it? A non-professional website, like hers is BOUND to look, is only going to make her business seem unprofessional.
If it is not a "real" business, but more like a hobby business, perhaps she would get what she needs from www.blogspot.com [or Wordpress], which is very simple to use.
I've tried this a few times with non-technical folks. For those that can handle desktop software, I use RapidWeaver (OS X only). (I don't set up non-technical folks with Windows PCs.)
But more often, I've found that something like WordPress works better. They can easily edit the site online and it's limited functionality keeps them from getting confused.
if she isn't a geek, maybe a simple cms is sufficient for her. editing html, and layout stuff can be pretty painful, as well as managing files on a server for the average user. i'd go for wordpress, which has simple admin ui, and since it's php, can be run on almost every hosting service you find. Also, using a widget-based sidebar and page layout makes her able to do almost anything she could do with an html editor (of which, imo dreamweaver is by far the best) - and even more! just think about already done plugins available through a simple plugin manager! i think there is a german translation available, too. (i found a hungarian one, there must be a german as well)
WordPress could be a good option and it has some options to install in German and other languages. See WordPress in Your Language for more information.
What about an online web site creator, something like GoDaddy's Website Tonight? It provides templates and lots of support for a simple web site. There is a monthly fee, but it's quite reasonable, and could be a good solution for someone who doesn't want to delve into the complexities.
I don't know if they offer a German UI, but it might be worth checking out.
Have you tried http://goodbarry.com ?
It’s an easy to use CMS focused to business owners.
As hasen j said: “The problem is not only editing HTML, but running a website, managing content on it.”
However I’m not sure if there is a German translation.
Movable Type is another option for a simple CMS.
My mother is using TextMate. I set her up with Subversion, so to publish her site she just commits and a hook on the Subversion server will update the site. The big benefit here is that when something goes wrong I have a record of every change she made which makes it much easier to sort out. There's some simple PHP (that was what was easily supported on her MacBook for testing and on the webhost she uses) to minimize the boilerplate stuff on each page.
CushyCMS is the only thing I would let a totally non-tech person near. It's very easy to setup an manage, and there's very little chance she can actually break stuff.
Dot Net Nuke, just copy, install and a way she goes.....
We're not doing real web development. We get our HTMLs from our designers, and have our web app generate those HTMLs (with some specific content). Simply put, we don't use any major web development infrastructure (ASP, PHP, JSP etc). Having that said, we sometimes do need to edit HTML, JavaScript and CSS files, and I'm tired of using rocks and stones and having no proper backup. What I'm looking for is a rather simple editor that would handle those kinds of files, and most importantly - will support source control, and will be free (or very cheep).
I've been looking into Aptana, and it seems to be a bit of an overkill. It has a lot of features we can do without, and this makes it too heavy. VWD express is lighter, but has no source control integration. There are probably a million other HTML editors, but I couldn't find one that satisfies the basic requirements - relatively lightweight, supports source control and is (almost) free. Any suggestions?
Not exactly what you want but you could try and use Notepad++ combined with TortoiseSVN.
Eclipse is pretty good. It's also very popular among developers and can edit HTML.
Why is supporting source control a requirement? I find that the place for good source control is not in the editor. The editor just gets in the way and only implements a subset of functionality.
NetBeans can edit about anything, is free, cross-platform, and directly supports CVS, Subversion and Mercurial version control systems. It's not exactly lightweight, although it is lighter than any comparably featured competitors I'm aware of.
Pick your poison at Wikipedia's Comparison of HTML editors page.
The Revisionator is a cloud based html editor that has built in source control. It'll even do wysiwyg diffing and merging of different versions.