» back to cloud XHTML

XHTML stands for Extensible Hypertext Markup Language. It's a tag-based language used to write webpages.

Simple example: if I want to write a paragraph in XHTML saying "Hello world", I will write <p>Hello World</p> in a plain text file and save it as an HTML file. When opened in a web browser, the latter will parse the tags (here: <p> and </p>), extract the content (here: "Hello World") and display it accordingly with the tags (here: as a paragraph).

XHTML documents should comply with much more complex rules than the one explained hereabove.

» back to cloud Ecommerce

Ecommerce websites are online retailing websites such as amazon.com for example. Building an ecommerce website involves skills such as CMS integration, secured online payment and workflow management.

» back to cloud Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

CSS is a presentation language used to give fancy shapes and colors to XHTML tags. Usually, CSS are written on a separate file included into the main XHTML file.

Simple example: the CSS rule to style a paragraph with blue text in it is p{color:blue;}.

» back to cloud .htaccess file

Apache servers use .htaccess configuration files to define precious rules such as recursive directory securitization (HTTP authentication) or URL rewriting. Mastering .htaccess rules is the very basis of webdevelopment.

» back to cloud Unobtrusive javascript

Javascript is the language used to animate a webpage. For example, the widget you're currently using to browse through the tag cloud and the definitions is powered by Javascript.

In old Internet times, Javascript code was included in the corresponding tags. For example, to define an event when the value of an input element was modified, one used to write something like

<input type="text" onchange="function();"/>

with function() being a predefined Javascript function. On top of being tedious, it was hard to maintain in case you had a great number of elements to animate.

Modern Javascript is now unobtrusive: instead of writing Javascript code directly into the tags, one will write Javascript rules separately and then link these rules to the tags (like CSS). Javascript libraries such as jQuery facilitate the process and guarantee cross-browsing rendering.

» back to cloud Blog design

Blog design is the process of designing custom themes for blogs based on blogging platforms such as Wordpress, Blogger or ExpressionEngine for example.

» back to cloud Structured Query Language (SQL)

SQL is the language used to access data in a database such as MySQL for example.

Simple example: to retrieve all the items from a library table (say all the books with their characteristics), one should write the following code: SELECT * FROM library.

» back to cloud Cross-browser websites

Cross-browser websites are websites which rendering has been optimized for all browsers (mainly Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Safari).

As a matter of fact, there is not only Internet Explorer to browse through the Internet. Alternative modern browsers are used by a growing number of people. But each browser has its own algorithms to render XHTML, CSS and Javascript. Writing cross-browser websites guarantees, after many tests and tweaks, that the website will look the same on all the main browsers (across different platforms).

The website you're currently viewing is cross-browser (you may test with Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari etc.).

» back to cloud Magento

Magento is a powerful CMS built to manage ecommerce websites. Magento is supported by a large and growing community and has the ability to manage up to several websites with a single installation.

» back to cloud Asynchronous Javascript And XML

AJAX is a set of techniques used to enhance user interfaces through asynchronous loading of data. AJAX needs Javascript to be activated on browsers.

In a larger meaning, AJAX can designate all kinds of Javascript enhancements. For example, the widget you're currently using to browse through the tag cloud and the definitions could be defined as AJAX enhancement (although in this case the loading of data occurs along with the webpage and not asynchronously).

» back to cloud User Interface (UI)

UI is the way human can interact with machines. In terms of webdesign, UI refers to the way visitors interact with the websites. Enhancing the UI is part of every web project: the website should be as clear and easy to use as possible for every visitor.

» back to cloud Wordpress

Wordpress is a popular blogging platform created by Matt Mullenweg and used by a growing number of people across the Internet. Flexible in its architecture, Wordpress can be used for various kinds of websites and not only blogs (thanks to static pages and plugins).

» back to cloud Drupal

Drupal is a free and opensource development framework and CMS. It can be used for a wide variety of projects and is supported by a strong and passionated community of developers.

» back to cloud CodeIgniter

CodeIgniter is a MVC framework for PHP originally released in March 2006. CodeIgniter is extremely lightweight and flexible, and can be used as a sound basis to build all kinds of websites or CMS. CodeIgniter is supported by a strong community and is regularly updated.

» back to cloud Semantic markup

Semantic markup refers to the correct use of XHTML tags when writing a web page.

Simple example: one could write a title like <div class="title"> Title of the page </div> and then define CSS rules for the title class, but the correct and semantic way of doing so is to write <h1> Title of the page </h1> using dedicated tags for titles (h1, h2... h6). The end user would see no difference because of CSS rules later applied to the markup, but a semantic page is more meaningful and therefore better interpreted by search engine crawlers for example.

» back to cloud Zend

Zend Technologies is the company behind the famous PHP scripting language. Zend is also known for having released a development framework based on PHP (Zend framework), which is becoming a reference in server-side architecture and development.

» back to cloud Create/Read/Update/Delete (CRUD)

CRUD is an acronym for the main four queries led on databases: create, read, update and delete. Create means adding date, Read means retrieving data, Update means editing data and Delete is self-explanatory.

» back to cloud Social web

Social web is a term coined to designate some recent evolution of the Internet towards social networks. Social applications allow users to create profiles and connect to each other in order to share news, pictures and all kinds of data. Social web is being standardized thanks to projects such as the Data Portability project.

» back to cloud PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor

PHP is a famous scripting language created and maintained by Zend, and mainly used for webdevelopment. For being the most widespread scripting language on servers worlwide, PHP is often the default choice for many web applications.

Simple example: to display "Hello World!" in PHP, one would write <?php echo "Hello World!"; ?>. Once parsed by the Zend Engine, the output would be Hello World!. PHP can be used to generate plain text, HTML, CSS, Javascript.. and PHP.

» back to cloud UTF-8

UTF-8 is a character encoding format allowing a large number of characters (and not only English or West European ones). Encoding a website in UTF-8 guarantees that wherever the user's input comes from, every user worldwide will see the correct characters and not characters such as é or �.

For example, nemetral.com is encoded in UTF-8.

» back to cloud Webdevelopment

Webdevelopment is a term coined to describe all activities related to the creation of a website or a webapp. A webdeveloper should be proficient in client side coding and master such languages as (X)HTML, CSS, Javascript (etc.) as well as in server side coding and master at least one scripting language (PHP, Python etc.) and database-related languages and tools.

Webdevelopment also includes the usage of webservices, APIs etc. to leverage on existing third-party architecture and data.

» back to cloud MySQL

MySQL is a free and open source database server mostly used for webdevelopment. A very standard free PHP interface to manage a MySQL database is PHPMyAdmin, but most of dynamic websites manage the database they are built on using custom administration interfaces.

» back to cloud Admin interfaces

Administration interfaces are private and secured areas of a website or a webapp where the administrator can update the website's content or structure in real time.

CMS focus on creating usable and extensible administration interfaces.

» back to cloud jQuery

jQuery is a free and opensource, modern and unobtrusive Javascript library making it possible to easily manipulate DOM elements, create effects and play with styles.

The following example will select all a elements in the webpage with the class name animate and give the following instruction to the browser: "when the mouse goes over these elements, the text color becomes red". Here is the code: $('a.animate').mouseover(function() {$(this).css('color', 'red');});

» back to cloud Python

Python is a free and opensource script language created by Guido van Rossum and that may be used for server side webdevelopment. Django is a famous Python-powered framework accelerating the process of building a dynamic website.

» back to cloud Model View Controller

MVC is a software architecture pattern focusing on a loose coupling between business logic and user interface. This pattern may be applied to webdevelopment: the URL requested by an internaut triggers a Controller which analyzes the URL and activates a Model to retrieve data, then formats the data and calls a View to display the data in a pre-defined XHTML template before sending it back to the internaut.

Famous frameworks such as Ruby on Rails (in Ruby) and CodeIgniter (in PHP) are built around MVC.

» back to cloud Adsense

Adsense is a popular Google product making it possible for webmasters to add ads on their websites and blogs and share revenues with Google. Adsense is the publishers' side of advertising at Google, the advertisers' one being called Adwords.

Adsense integration refers to the process of creating an account at Google Adsense and then create and customize banners to be displayed on a website or a blog.

» back to cloud Open source

Open source software is software which source code may be read, modified and forked.

Open source software are generally free; but all free software may not be opensource.

» back to cloud Access Control List (ACL)

In software engineering, an ACL defines permissions attached to actions. Applied to webdevelopment, ACL is particularly useful in defining permissions attached to administration interfaces for example (i.e. who has the right to add/edit/delete content and under which conditions?). In social webapps, ACL is important for it makes it possible to monitor privacy and define who can see and do what.

» back to cloud Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the process of optimizing a website so that the latter benefits from higher rankings in search engines for given keywords. SEO can be internal and external: internal SEO refers to the optimization of the webpage in itself (using relevant and semantic markup) whereas external SEO refers to the process of "making the website be known" through linking and promotion.

» back to cloud Best practices

In webdevelopment, "best practices" refer to such coding practices as MVC architecture for server side coding, usage of valid markup and unobtrusive Javascript for client side coding, etc.

» back to cloud Web 2.0

Web 2.0 gives the power back the user through blogs, social networks and more generally all kinds of user-generated content.

Web 2.0 often goes along with technological improvements such as the usage of AJAX-powered websites.

» back to cloud Internationalization (i18n)

Internationalization refers to the process of building a flexible and extensible multilingual architecture and working on the translation in foreign languages.

» back to cloud Google maps

Google maps is a free and popular webmapping application and technology from Google which makes it possible to see every single inch of the world on the Internet (through an iframe).

Google maps can be configured to show specific locations and display specific information through layers.

» back to cloud Content Management System

Dynamic websites are generally powered by CMS, whether they are paying, open source or custom built.

A CMS makes it possible to organize and manage one or several website(s), add/edit/delete content, manage users and ACL, manage documents etc. Famous opensource CMS include Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress, Magento etc.

» back to cloud Wiki

A wiki is an organized collection of webpages which can easily be modified by anybody. It's a widespread collaboration tool.

The most famous wiki on the Internet is Wikipedia.