#1 - PHP is kinda useless for doing anything other then web-sites/web-applications. Even though there are some people in the linux world working on a way to use php code to create desktop applications it's still not a great idea. #2 - Just because someone can do "real" programming that doesn't mean they know the first thing about setting up a decent web-page. HTML, CSS, and Javascript are the main 3 things you need to learn to put together a decent web page. The "real programming" experience is useful when you want to use Ruby On Rails or asp.net or php or something similar to dynamically generate you html files using content pulled from a database. Or when you need to do some seriously intricate javascript on your web page or process data on the server side based on data/instructions submitted throug a form on the page. Javascript, despite it's decade long bad reputation is actually a very serious programming language. It's the differing browser implementations of JS that make it hard as hell as well as the annoying objects/methods of the default DocumentObjectModel(DOM). Luckily, in the last 2/3 years a lot of serious programmers have been migrating to the web and have created libraries that simplify all the common things you'd do with javascript. For example, lets say you want an element on your web page to disappear when the user clicks on it. In old school javascript you'd start by writing something like: document.getElementById('instructions'); ....followed by a dozen or more lines of crap you need to write to make the
area disappear. With a JS library like JQuery or Prototype all you need to write is: $('instructions').hide(); ONE LINE! THAT'S IT! ----------- ECLIPSE http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/12/googles-android-os-early-look-sdk-now-available/ The last video on this page shows a Google employee using Eclipse to create an application that runs on the new Google Android cellphone operating system. He uses eclipse to write XML and I think Java. I only do websites so 50% of my time is spent writing just html, css, and simple Prototype based javascript. I don't really need any of the capabilities of an IDE like Eclipse to do those things so I just use BBEdit (which is a Mac-only really good general purpose text editor. 5 billion times more useful than notepad. And 5x more useful than JEdit(which is a cross-platform text editor that has lots of plug-ins available for it which give it some of the features of an IDE)) But when I find myself needed to write a lot of Object Oriented PHP code then I'll use the Eclipse IDE (with the php-specific developer tools plug-in) because it knows how to read the class files I wrote myself and autocomplete my code. It also lets me ctrl+click on any function to open the source file where that function was defined. You may have never heard of eclipse and probably think everyone uses Microsoft products for everything but that's not quite true. Google uses a combination of C++, Python, and Java Google also has their own desktop OS (not Windows), their own server OS (not windown NT, not Windows 2000, not Windows Server 2003), their own file system format (not NTFS, not FAT32) Yahoo uses almost all PHP with some C/C++ and Perl Youtube is all Python Facebook is all PHP And now I'm going to just bombard you with links. I've kept a list of almost every single thing I've read regardign MODERN web-design since I started at thyme-online.com. I'll just give you the need-to-know ones for now. A Roadmap to Standards http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2004/04/30/a_roadmap_to/ The Business Value of Web Standards http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/essays/archives/000266.php The Beauty and Business of CSS (sorry i cant find the audio) http://www.stopdesign.com/present/2004/sydney/beauty/ http://www.alistapart.com/ A List Apart - This is wher it all really started for me. I tell people new to web development to just look at the archives starting around 2004/2005 and read 1 article a day and they'll know what I know in no time. http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200605/levels_of_html_knowledge/ http://friendlybit.com/css/levels-of-css-knowledge/ http://dean.edwards.name/weblog/2006/06/levels/ http://blog.fawny.org/2006/06/02/niveaux/ http://www.keepthebyte.ch/2006/08/levels-of-knowledge-sharing.html http://www.phrogz.net/tmp/WhyTablesAreBadForLayout.html http://www.spidertest.com/ http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/wrongWithIE/ http://www.satzansatz.de/cssd/onhavinglayout.html http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer.html http://www.positioniseverything.net/articles.html http://www.emf.net/~estephen/htmlner/whitespacebugs.html [css] http://www.csszengarden.com/ http://www.stopdesign.com/present/2004/sydney/limits/ http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/archives/3d_css_zen_garden.html http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/Style http://home.tampabay.rr.com/bmerkey/cheatsheet.htm http://www.redmelon.net/tstme/box_model/ http://css.maxdesign.com.au/floatutorial/ http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listutorial/ http://www.wellstyled.com/css-nopreload-rollovers.html http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=328772 http://veerle.duoh.com/index.php/blog/comments/a_css_styled_table/ [js] http://developer.mozilla.org/en/A_re-introduction_to_JavaScript http://javascript.infogami.com/Javascript_in_Ten_Minutes http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/essays/archives/000385.php http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2006/10/20/video-crockford-domtheory http://www.xkr.us/js/ http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/ [php] http://www.phpvideotutorials.com/ (free lessons on the side) http://www.killerphp.com/videos/ http://www.w3schools.com/php/ http://hudzilla.org/phpwiki/index.php?title=Main_Page#Table_of_Contents ---- not really need-to-know stuff down here but interesting http://veerle.duoh.com/ http://www.designmeltdown.com/ http://www.andyrutledge.com/fox-news-redux.php http://www.dapper.net/ http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ http://www.webdesignpractices.com/ http://www.welie.com/patterns/ http://www.sitepoint.com/article/really-good-introduction-xml/ :( my old online bookmark provider went out of business apparently. This is all I could find of my old bookmarks http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:VlwXXFnwzAsJ:thinsoldier.com/spurl/+thinsoldier.com/spurl&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=bs&client=firefox-a