Archive for Web Development
E-Commerce Stores
E-Commerce is the collective name given to online shops, or any online practice where products are sold. Many businesses are slowly opening there own e-commerce stores. Before the beginning, you should identify all your needs within an online shop so that you are able to make informed choices.
Universal Needs
Once you have identified your needs, you will then need to identify the available e-commerce solutions which are able to fit your needs. There are universal needs which you should always take into consideration. Such needs includes: End-User Accessibility, Administration Accessibility and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Making sure that your shop is accessible for the end user is of the utmost importance, since you could be easily sued if a disabled person, or anyone for that matter can’t find their way around your shop with ease. In order to make your shop successful you want to make sure that the systems you look at are good with the Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Looking at the Solutions
Once you have worked out all your needs and have found the systems which suit them, you will need to start looking at the different types of systems which are available to you. Free and premium systems are all available with different features, although many add-ons are normally available for free systems.
If you are a new to the business and you are not expecting to earn much, then you should consider using a free system as many of them can be quite powerful and should suit your needs.
If you are going to be running a shop receiving thousands of visitors, or are going to be listing a large amount of products, you should consider a premium system since they are normally more scalable than free systems and should serve your needs for as long as your business is running.
CSS Basics
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is the language behind the design of most web pages. In order to achieve a good looking website, you should always build your pages using CSS. Its structure is similar to that of both PHP and Javascript.
The Basic Structure
CSS elements are normally contained within a code structure which normally takes this form: ‘[element type]#/.[element name] { style properties }’.
The element type is the type of element which you want to style, such as a div;
The element name is the actual name which you want to give the element, such as ‘bob’.
An element which is an id can only be used once within a web page, and in the CSS code is defined by using ‘#’ before the element name.
Elements which are defined as classes can be used multiple times within a web page and is defined by using a ‘.’ before the element name within a CSS document.
The actual properties of the element are contained within the ‘{} tags, ‘{’ being the opening tag and ‘}’ being the closing tag.
You can also style elements without using a name. This is useful is you want the same style to be applied to the same element type throughout a web page.
To do this you don’t need to use the id or class symbols since no name is being specified. All you need to put before the opening tag is the element type as seen in HTML format.
Style Properties
There are many different properties that you can use within a style block to make an element look good. The most important properties within a style block are the ‘width’ and ‘height’ properties since they control the size of the element. However, if you only want to style a text element, such as a ’span’ or ‘p’ element then you will not need to use either of these properties since they are only used to control a box object.
With the 'margin property' of the CSS you can control how far away other objects on the page must keep from a certain object. It has four ’sub-properties’ for each different side of an object, these being ‘margin-top’, ‘margin-bottom’, ‘margin-left’ and ‘margin-right. These ’sub-properties’ provide margin styling for each separate side of the object and can be defined individually.
Javascript Basics
Javascript is a client-side scripting language which can be used to manipulate client’s browsers as well as to fetch information on a client’s machine. The most common use of Javascript is for the popup adverts. However good Javascript may seem to be, it has its limitations, the main one being that older browsers don’t support it.
Creating Your First Javascript
Javascript functions are located within the ‘function()’ tag. These functions can be declared in two ways:
By creating a function with its own names and variables that can be called again at any time within a script. This would be declared in the following format:
‘function function_name(var1, var2, var3)’;
Functions can also be called directly which means that they can’t be used again within a script unless the code is copied since the function isn’t assigned a name. A function of this type would be declared in the following format:
‘var variable = function()’
Any code for a function, or any part of the script is located within the opening and closing tags.
Variables for a function are located in the brackets after a function name. These variables are set directly each time the function is called, and can be different each time. Variables can also be set directly within a function, but these variables can’t be different each time; these variables are set using the ‘var’ tag.
Basic Page and Browser Manipulation
The main use of the Javascript is to manipulate client machines and web browsers. Browsers can be manipulated in ways that include resizing browser windows, opening new windows with custom settings as well as creating transition effects in between the web pages.
Opening new windows with Javascript is simple as there is the built in ‘window.open’ function. The variables of this function take the following form:
‘window.open(url, windowname[, variables])
Javascript can also be used to close windows by using the ‘window.close’. To use this function, you can either close another window, or you can close the window which currently open. To close another window you will need to use the function in this format:
‘windowname.close();’
To close the window which is currently open you need to the function in this format:
’self.close();’
Page transitions can be achieved with the use of special meta-tags within the ‘head’ section of a page. However, page transitions only work with Internet Explorer.
To use page transitions you will need to add a meta-tag named ‘Page-Enter’, if you want to use effects when someone enters the page and a tag named ‘Page-Exit’, if you want effects to be used when someone leaves a page.
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