Advanced Web Application Development Tools - XOOPS

XOOPS is a new technology meant for web developers. It is acronym for Extensible Object Oriented Portal System. It is a web application platform that provides tools for online application development. It was developed by organization known as XOOPS Project and is an open source content management system. It is written in PHP.

The name might suggest it as a Portal System but it is mainly used as web application platform. What Extensible Object Oriented Portal System provide is template for every type of website development. It has a modular architecture and developers require installing all the required modules. Once the installation is done it allows developers to customize, modify, applying theme and maintaining website with regular updating.

It has been one successful platform receiving many awards and accolades. It has gained a reputation in PHP based Content Management System forte and is considerably rated among top % platform since 2008.

XOOPS provide database support using Relational database, currently MySQL. It also has advanced control on the access. The access control allows administrator to manage user groups and grant them with only necessary rights. The right and facilities can be blocked by administrator.

Every single module can be handled separately including installing and uninstalling. It has different administration for every module that looks after activation and deactivation. Every module thus separately manages the comment, permissions, access controls and notifications. Along with this administrator can specify specific permission to users as well.

Since XOOPS is open source and released under the terms of GNU General Public License, the development in it depends of the contribution from worldwide communities. It is one of the best tools and web application platforms and can be developed further.

Introduction to jQuery

Developing a web site requires updating skills and use of new tools. While developing dynamic web pages, it is also mandatory to consider size. jQuery is a library and is open source library. It allows adding advancement in pages with help Java. This library was thought of due to popularity of Java Scripts. Though the scripting language was popular, it had some shortcomings. It was very basic language and has no features offering advance modification and any special effects. It was also incapable of animation. Cross browser incompatibilities was main issue that was faced using Java Scripts. All these problems needed solution and hence jQuery came into picture.

jQuery provides easy solution for every issues faced with Java Scripts. It has also maintained the benefits of scripting language by offering light weight libraries. The library strengthens the scripting language by making it cross browser compatible. It also offers advancement to the basic language. There are many components available for modifications in this library. It is compatible with JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). It simplifies the client-side scripting.

It is very easy to install and use jQuery. All that is needed is to download the library package and import it in web page code. There are two versions of library package available minified version also known as min and development version. It is small yet efficient and development version makes it easy to read and debug. Following is the one method of importing library.

<script type="text/javascript" src="jQuery-1.4.1-min.js"></script>

This will upload the min version library package and is ready to use.

About Scripting Languages

Scripting languages are based on high level programming language. High level languages are more compatible to human language than system and it is very useful to system hardware to recognize the various instructions. C, C++ etc. are the example of high level language and all these language are converted into machine language via interpreter and compiler. Scripting means a programs that are written in scripting languages are not executed in front of specific period for particular system. As a substitute scripts which are made in plain text get interpreted into system compatible code when the program runs.

We can add the interactivity into web pages using scripting language. We can use it in many places in our web pages to carry out various cyclic jobs like filling the content in web based form along with users.

JavaScript is popular web scripting language and we can use it with HTML language to improve the functionality of web pages. We can use java scripting with HTML many times to perform some action such as to check validation of input which is put by user, playing audio and video file and image sliding etc.

There are various browsers and they are Internet explorer, Firefox, safari, Google Chrome and Opera etc. all are interpreting these scripting languages along with languages which are used to build web page. In other way this can be done at server side means these scripting are run at server. In server base scripting common gateway interface allow client to execute the scripting located in web server.

Software for website development

All the necessary tools which are mandatory to develop websites are bundled together in one suitable package i.e. Software of website development. The tools are image editing tools, graphics, webpage template, scripting language support tools and documents which are helpful in website development. There are various tools and they are as WebPlus, Yola silver, webpage maker, Ezypage and SiteSpiners etc.  There are various large options included in the software. 

This software supports to use the scripting language like JavaScript and VBScript in your website.
 It also supports various multimedia including animation, video and audio files so you can easily add this types of media in your website by using this features.

We can easily modify the HTML code of your website in this software because of it give the permission to developer for editing HTML code.

Website creation software has built in file transfer protocol function. We can also develop business based website because of this software should supports feature of e-commerce.

All these characteristic and information of this package are easy to discover and very simple to understand to beginners website developers. This software provides large number of tutorials related to website development to developer.

Website developments software is very useful to beginners or experienced website developer to build website for personal or professional purpose in minimum time period with include various functionality.

Important things at the time of Web Design and Development

We can assess the company representation and make important clients by developing the website using various content management system techniques like Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress etc. Website design and developing is an organizational task and using talent suitably. We should follow the various key features during website designing and development and they are as

1.    We should design every website according to your business and personal needs.

2.    Ths site can be developede by taking minimum time. This is possible  when we have huge set of template in various styles and other important tools.

3.    We should design our website which should user friendly interface by focus on delivering an easy navigation for users.

4.    We should develop  web site based on SEO technique so it’s very important to increase the ranking of website.

5.    Developer should keep in mind the important thing is that Website is simply navigable and the content of site is csn be easily explored.

6.    Website should be compatible to all browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera etc. without changing the look and feel of website.

7.    It should take minimum time to open its pages and it should give fast downloading speed.

8.    Web 2.0 tools are very important in web designing and developing like RSS, Blog and social media.

Word Press in web designing and blogging

Word press is based on pre-processing hypertext language and Mysql database and it is free and open source blogging software. It contains variety of features like plug-in structural design and template system.

Currently word press is most popular content management system on Internet. There are various features provides by Word Press and they are as

1.    Themes: We can change the look and feel of our website or webpage by using different themes without changing the page content. We can do all this process in word press administration tools.

2.    Plug-in: It also very important part in web development based on word press. There are lots of plugins available and we can use it to build various part of our website.

3.    Widgets:  We can easily drag and drop the sidebar content position and also implementation of many plug-in facility and we can increase the functionality of webpage by adding share icon, newsletter slider and many more etc.

4.    Multi user and multi blogger: In word press we can do one blog for every installation and also numerous parallel copies may be run from various directories when construct to use different database tables.

Word press is most popular web design and development platform. Most of the web developers use it to build websites by use of its various SEO compatible feature.

Standards for website design and development

People have been using every type of medium to promote and sell their products and services. Yet Internet is the best medium for this.  Attractive and catchy websites can pull attention of consumer towards their company thereby increasing their sales. However there are some standard for designing and developing websites.

There are not any obligatory web standards. Anybody can design and develop site according to his own initiative. However following the recommendations of institutes like W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), ISO (International Organization for Standardization), ECMA (European Computer Manufacturers Association), ensures the quality of sites, lowers the cost of production, makes sites accessible to most of the people and on most of the Internet devices. They require less bandwidth. They are extensible, easy to maintain and compatible with most of browsers.

There are following web standards.

Structural and semantic languages: Developer should use structural and semantic languages like HTML, XML, and XHTML.

Presentation Languages:  CSS which stands for Cascading Style Sheet is a presentation language. There are three levels of this.

Object Models:  DOM stands for Document Object Model. Again there are three levels of DOM.

Scripting Languages:  ECMA which is advance version of JavaScript.

Additional Markup Languages:  Mathematical Markup Languages like MathML 1.01, MathML 2.0.

These were the languages and other aspects recommended by W3C to build standard website.

As written above the first thing is the code on site, it should be validated. The code doesn’t mean only HTML but also XHTML, CSS, JavaScript. The validation of code means it should be according to definition of doctype. The code should be semantically correct. It means each element in web page should have it’s conform value and purpose. Following these standards helps Google and other search engines to properly understand the each and every part of web page’s code. It provides great help for SEO.

Asynchronous JavaScript and Xml (Ajax) Technology

Ajax is assembly of correlated web development tools and which is used on the client side application to build asynchronous application. The application which is developed using Ajax tools that can be send and retrieve data to and from the server without disturbing the any other part of same page of that web application.

Ajax is a collection of multiple technologies. In which we should do the mark up and style the information using HTML and CSS tools. We can develop a web application in which information exchange asynchronously between server and browser using the concept of JavaScript and XmlHttpRequest object.

              

Figure: Comparison between classic and Ajax based web application model. It can reject the start and stop environment of communication on web application by hosting the concept of Ajax engine between the user and web server. The whole process looks similar to putting new layer in application and that takes longer time to react. This process loads only particular section of web page instead of whole page. When session is started the web browser loads

Ajax engine which is built by using JavaScript and frequently put left in unseen frame. When we work on client side programming at that time we cannot access the function of server side. But this is possible when we uses Ajax technology. In this technology we can access server side function by using page method which is built in JavaScript.

Most of the Google products are developed using Ajax Technique and they are Orkut, Google map, Google suggest and Google groups.

Why a Web site?

Web is connectivity through Internet extends across the globe. Invention of this technology had helped human race in every field. It was observed before this invention that people were unaware of trade and business across countries. It was difficult for ordinary people to reach beyond their own cities. This network has helped people getting aware and provided recognition.

With all this advancement it was necessary that business and work change according to the requirement. Since people were now able to reach remote location virtually without traveling in real. For this it was necessary that the data and the information to have hyperlink. Web consists of data transported over hyperlinks. These hyper links are obtained once a person loads all the required information on website. The website acts as connection. These web sites are developed depending on the purpose of use and uploaded over servers. The server is actually a system meant for hosting website and has some IP address which is used for its recognition across Internet.

Web sites provide easy access to online business ventures. It allows people across web to get basic information about you from anywhere in world. Thus it improves your visibility and also your improves cross country business. Website had to be functional and well designed for easy access. The links must have accurate information.

In today’s time it is important for companies to have well designed and developed web site to represent them over Internet. Your business website also carries the service provided, location and contact information, for people who are interested in approaching. A good website always gives good business.

Designing & Developing Website

Developing a website is easy said, than done. The work needs information about how to initiate.  The languages used for the purpose are known as Markup languages. Before you start on with the task, you must take care of requirements. The concept should be clear much before the whiteboard stage.

There are various Markup languages to select from like Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), Extended Markup Language (XML) and Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) etc. These languages require text editor for development and formatting purpose. The file thus created over text editor is to be saved with respected markup language extension.

Markup languages define tags for related formatting. They are incapable of generating results and hence for further coding either VB or Java are infused.  There other languages like PHP (hyper text pre-processor)  are strong enough to format and code simultaneously.

There are many tools available for aiding the development. These tools are actually the development environment. There are varied types including the one that provides framework and theme to the one where in we have to develop everything from scratch. The site development involves managing content and data queries both.

Data queries are generally meant for passing down the data across the pages or for retrieving it from storage. These queries have to be effective enough to get the required data without delay. To perform such queries it is necessary to have a storage. The storage mostly used is called the database. It is used to store the data acquired from site. This makes processing easy and fast.

Developing a site solely depends on the requirement. If the site is static informative, it will have simple functionality. If site is dynamic and information processing, then it will be complicated.

Website Design for Mobiles

The design of website of your business, organization and any other related services is most important. Similarly design of web site for mobile phones, iPhones, tablets is important as well. This is because now a days most of the people of the world use mobile phones, iPhones, tablets etc.

If the website already exists then you have to make changes in it so that it will easily available on smartphone or any other device which have smaller screen display then desktop or laptops.

When designing website for mobiles or any other device that has smaller screen than desktop computer or laptops: 

1.    One column design: Most of the web pages have more than one column of content and it is difficult for user to read and scroll. But the single column design is easy to read and scroll the content of the web page.

2.    Less Content of information: The content of your web pages should be limited and meaningful so that user can easily read and understand the concept of it.

3.    Important and limited images: You should use limited and important images to build your website. But at the time of development you should optimize all this images in 8KB or below 8KB. Before embedding in your website make the entire images small in width. This way all images will easily display on mobile phones or any other small size devices.