This section, web code, is totally nuts. The problem is, web developers could not be happy with just one code. They have to keep creating more code. And it is getting a bit crazy! Now it is true that newer code does more stuff and that is good. But the browsers that interpret that code seem to be struggling to keep up. And most folks aren't even upgrading their browsers so this makes the problem worse.

The other problem is that as new code gets developed, older code will hit the skids and no longer be supported. They call this code deprecation. The bad part is that if you write your code in basic HTML, they (The World Wide Web Consortium) says that eventually, this code will be deprecated and may become extinct.

This gets really ugly. So many millions of web pages will no longer work? I know, it is hard to beleive. I'll believe it when I see it. So savy web designers are moving on and developing their websites in XML now. So here we go. I'll try to run the gambit of different coding languages with a brief description of how they work.

• HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language): This is the mainstay of web coding languages. It allows the merging of text and graphics in numerous layouts with ability to jump to other pages or websites. Most websites use this code.



• XML (Extensible Markup Language): A newer version of HTML that allows custom tags. Tags are the specific code that tells the browser how to format or place the text and graphical elements. It uses stylesheets that link many pages to one style page that controls all web pages. The formatting options are nearly unlimited, but so far, much of this style information can't be read by browsers created before 2001.



• CSS and CSS-P (Cascading Style Sheets and Cascading Style Sheets - Positioning): This is part of the XML code. This website uses CSS to format the text displayed. CSS uses a separate document to link this formating to all the pages within this site. CSS-P does the same to position the text and images on each page.



• Java Script: Designed by Netscape, Java Script is another coding language that adds a bit of interaction to your websites. A mouse rollover is one of the most frequent uses of this code. For example, when you roll your mouse pointer across a link or a link button and that button changes color, that is a mouse rollover. A small window that might pop-up when text is entered incorrectly in a form is another example of Java Script. Java Script can add a lot more code to your websites, so certain trade-offs are necessary.



• Flash: Designed by Macromedia, this code is for designing web animations. You must have the Flash Plug-In and modem users frequently get frustrated while waiting for those animations to load. Probably better for sophisticated users with DSL or other high bandwidth lines.



• ASP (Active Server Pages): Built by Microsoft, this code deals with processing forms and working with external databases. Most sites with shopping carts use ASP.



• DHTML (Dynamic HTML): This code blends HTML, XHTML, XML, Cascading Style Sheets, Java Script (or other scripting languages) and the Document Object Model (DOM) to ultimately form DHTML. Unfortunately, I am not quite there yet, but will hopefully learn it before they come up with something else!

One other note. Why not just use FrontPage or some other program that converts a word processing document into a web page document? Unfortunately, these programs saturate their code with too much extra code that makes it tough to get into and change. Many times code needs to be changed (for so many reasons) and these programs make it extra difficult for the web designer to make the corrections necessary.

So, what started out as easy HTML gets a bit more complicated the further down the path you wander. And basic HTML and XML is the easiest, fastest code to create and download, so it should be used whenever possible. HTML will unfortunately bite the dust before too long, so XML is the current way to go for most of us unless you need an extraordinary website.