What is the best web-designing language?

[chem3]

Hi,

I am a new beginner at this field (web designing) and I want to learn web designing, so what are the best and the most common-used web-designing languages to learn?
Are there any useful recommendations you can give me about how and from where to start? What does a web designer need to learn and know? Any useful websites that provide free tutorials on web designing?

And lastly, (excuse me if I seem stupid for asking the following question, but I am not so good in english) Is there any difference between web designing, web building and web developing?!

Thanks!

 

[pdrucker]

ummmm.....HTML? Designing generally has to do with images and templates, building is like working the template with the content, and developing usually has to do with actual programming like php/asp.

 

[djtheropy]

If your new stick to plain HTML, then maybe mess with css, javascript and once you have the confidence try php

 

[pdrucker]

if you are going to do simply design you need html css and javascript, if you are more focused on web programming you need html and php and maybe xml thrown in somewhere.

 

[chem3]

Thank you all for your response

And I have another issue, please!

When professional Web-designers design Web-pages using some Web-designing language, do they use the elementary language and manually type its complex codes; you can open any Web-page and from menu bar in your browser select View > Source and the Web-page will appear in the Notepad with the elementary designing-language codes.
The question now is: Did the designer of that Web-page use the elementary designing-language codes and type them all manually using some word-processing program or did he use some assisting Web-designing program???

And IF professional Web-designers do use Web-designing programs for designing Web-pages (as I think) and not the simple elementary designing-language codes, then why don't they just learn and have command of Web-designing programs and softwares (which they use for designing Web-pages) without learning the complicated elementary designing-language (which they don't use for designing Web-pages)??!

 

[pdrucker]

certain tasks cannot be performed with the design programs. it is always good to have a background in html and css, that way you can best express your design. also these design programs offer nothing or minimal in the way of programming (php, javascript, asp) so if you plan on doing that it is important to have knowledge of the languages. i personally use dreamweaver because if the speed increase from manually typing everything. If i needed to edit my pages on the road and only had notepad, i could work with that as well.

 

[chem3]

Thank you again

And this is really my last inquiry,

As you all know, each of the Web-designing languages has many versions, as an example of that let's take HTML, php and JavaScript:

HTML: there are HTML, HTML+, HTML 2.0, HTML 3.0, HTML 3.2, HTML 4.0, HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, XHTML 1.1 and XHTML 2.0
php : there are PHP 3.0, PHP 4.0.6, PHP 4.1.0, PHP 4.1.1, PHP 4.2.0, PHP 4.2.1, PHP 4.2.2, PHP 4.3.0, PHP 4.3.1, PHP 4.3.11, PHP 5.0.4 and PHP 5.1.0 Beta 2
JavaScript : there are JavaScript 1.0, JavaScript 1.1, JavaScript 1.2, JavaScript 1.3 and JavaScript 1.5
:confused4
What is the difference between one version and the other of the same language?
And as a fresh language-learner what version of a Web-designing language shall I start with? (Older>>>newer or learning just the latest version of a Web-designing language would cover all the previous versions of the same language???)

Sorry for disturbance!

 

[mad_cow11]

The differences are just certain extra commands etc. If you just find an online tutorial it should matter. All of them should be for the latest one. I wouldn't worry too much about the different versions. Profesional web-designers as far as i know make the base in a web designing program but then add extras and finishing touches in html to customize it more.

 

[buddy16cat]

Html

Well HTML is the current layout language used in web pages (I say that because it isn't a programming language like you would use to preform a procedure) XML can be used to do a little more than HTML and a cross of both maybe used more commonly xhtml. A cascading style sheet just can be used for creating style. This what the web designer uses along with graphics software like photoshop, illustrator, and flash. The other stuff is more programming like PHP and SQL deal with databases and pulling pages off it so the need to design multiple pages for something like Amazon. Web designers deal with the visual- what the person sees but people who know HTML have an easy time with programming. Learn HTML or maybe XHTML.