The simple guide to web languages. While it isn’t inclusive, these represent some 95% of the Internet’s languages:

HTML - Stands for HyperText Markup Language. The original classic by Tim Berners-Lee. Usually seen in the form of HTML 4.01 transitional. Although it is slowly going away, it’s still handy to use all by itself for very simple web pages. Easy to learn, with a handful of tags.

XHTML - The new, improved version of HTML, with the X standing for “extended”. “XHTML 1.0 Strict” is the most commonly found document type in the Internet. Works well with CSS, and still easily generated by server-side scripting.

CSS - Cascading Style Sheet. Not a stand-alone language, but more like an extension to XHTML, allowing the declaration of groups of elements to classes which designate style.

Javascript - The main client-side (in your browser) language used. Javascript is very common and has a number of derivatives like JScript in MSIE, Microsoft’s VBScript, and Action-Script which runs Adobe Flash. This little language has risen above its early reputation as a toy for script kiddies to become one-half of AJAX.

XML - Stands for Extensible Markup Language. Although it’s just as viable in most browsers as HTML, it is far less common due to its being incredibly difficult to write - and read! It is many steps above X/HTML in complexity, but is far more powerful. Put them both together and you get…

AJAX - The current fantastic buzzword! Stands for Asynchronous Javascript And XML. The idea is that the web page can be active, running as a program both in your browser and talking to the server. Before AJAX, you had two choices for web scripting: either script it on the server, generating the document to send to the browser, or send the script to the browser and let it run there. The big deal about AJAX is that the page can update “live”, with the Javascript responding to instructions from the server. this, for instance, is how GMail updates your inbox as you are looking at it.

Java - The other language used for client-side programming, although it’s also built for every other programming task you could imagine. Historically famous for being a proprietary language with a lot of marketing behind it, Java looked like it would take over the world in the 1990’s, but has recently been so overshadowed by newer technology that Sun Microsystems defensively re-licensed it as open source - not a minute too soon in the opinions of most programmers.

Perl - dying. Perl ruled the server-side scripting language throne for over a decade, but it is rapidly declining in use. Perl is so vast, that it’s more like five languages blended together.

PHP - The new server-side scripting heavyweight. Stands for PHP Hypertext Preprocessor (making it a recursive acronym). Does what it says; it responds to a GET request by building a web page on the fly and delivering it. Also easier to work with than Perl.

Python - Now, Perl isn’t just a server-script language; it is actually a stand-alone language capable of application development as well. PHP is mainly focused on web serving. Python is the smaller, cleaner general-purpose programming language, which is also replacing Perl on the application side. Python (actually named after the British Comedy troupe!) has a broad range of fans, but only had a brief day in the sun on the server-side scripting front before being followed up by…

Ruby - Most commonly encountered as “Ruby on Rails”, the web application framework. Young, new, and shiny, and with a fanatic fan base. Like Java, it is object-oriented. Like Python, it is simple and clean. Like Lisp, it focuses on achieving the most power in the least lines of code.

Between them all, if you’re coding applications, your best bet is knowing Ruby and AJAX - knowing these two, you can currently write your own paycheck. If you’re just a solid web designer, it’s XHTML, CSS, and PHP for your best bet. But don’t let go of Java just yet; its story is not over.

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• The Javascript Language
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• The Ten-Minute Web Developer’s Link List
• The Programming Languages Zoo

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