What exactly is Java?

Java isn’t strictly to do with web development, it’s an entirely different ball game. Java applications can run inside of a web browser though, which means that they’re occasionally used for things like chat applications.

However, as Javascript (confusingly, completely unrelated to Java) becomes more powerful thanks to frameworks like Prototype, Java is rarely used anymore.

There’s very little you can build for the web in Java that you can’t do in Javascript, and Javascript applications are more widely supported, don’t look like terrible, rarely require an overhead loading period and are easier to develop.

Hope this helps!

@richardhenry: GA, :)

You might also be interested in this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_(programming_language)

When is Fluther going to fix the issue with parantheticals?

To further my example, the Fluther support chat room (I’m in there now as a moderator, actually) is a Javascript based chat app.

On the other hand, take a look at this nasty ass chat application I just pulled up on Google. It takes ages to load and doesn’t even look native is Java-based.

The user gets a much better experience out of the web app than the Java app.

Ummm. Isn’t Java a language that needs to be compiled before it can be run? Javascript is a language the is interpreted by the browser. The only thing the two share is a similar name.

Indeed, but it’s based upon some similar standards.

Java is a programming language. Its original claim to fame was that (at least in theory, and heavily promoted by marketing hype) you could write and compile the code once, and then run it anywhere that there was a suitable environment. This is where “write once, run anywhere” comes from.

In the early days of the Web, one of the environments that Java could run in was an applet—think of a Flash movie, because Flash really filled that niche in the end. The idea was that you could bundle up a chunk of Java written to a certain specification, and the web browser would run it in a special secure environment, and this would let you have most of the power of a full programming language, but working in any browser.

(Meanwhile, Netscape had been experimenting with client-side scripting, and produced a scripting language. In one of the more idiotic marketing moves ever made, they named it Javascript, even though it has nothing whatsoever to do with Java.)

Practically speaking, Java applets were a flop, because Java was only ever supported by Sun on three platforms—Solaris, Windows, and Linux—and even then, making sure that the version of Java you had installed on your computer matched the version that the website expected was a royal pain.

Java did find a niche – it largely replaced C++ and COBOL for big corporate applications, the sort that companies maintain a base of in-house programmers for. On the web, the interactive and multimedia aspects have been taken over by Flash, and the complex applications have been taken over by Javascript using AJAX techniques.

@cwilbur: Awesome explanation, thanks for chipping in.

Like those above me have said, if you’re a web designer, Java has little relevance to you, unless you’re working for a client who is living in 1998.

If you’re a web developer, on the other hand, Java could prove to be very important. While many people prefer developing web applications in more lightweight scripting languages like Ruby and Python (myself included), there’s still a pretty big demand for good Java developers to write JSP web applications.

Coffee.

@CherryRed: Coffee is actually an integral part of web development. I mean that with no sarcasm. :)

Thanks everyone. Okay so basically Java is of no use or concern to me. Thanks. But what is Javascript? Is it a program? An application? Both? It can run OR create chat rooms? Can I design a web site without giving a crap about either Java or Javascript?

Currently I’m using QuarkXpress 8 to build a web site on working on. Is this a perfectly suitable program to design dynamic web pages? Thanks again, and if you can pitch in further please do.

-Link

Rich: That coffee joke was funny.

Javascript is a language that all (well, pedantically, most) browsers have support for.

HTML defines the text on the page and links to images, stylesheets, and whatnot.

CSS describes how the text on the page is to be styled and positioned.

Javascript lets you add interactivity—if you want to put a button in that lets you hide or show a chunk of the webpage, you write the code for that in Javascript.

I don’t think Quark Xpress is suitable for webpages at all. The web is not WYSIWYG, and Quark is a page-layout and publishing program. I wouldn’t use Quark for anything short of a wireframe/mockup of the site, and I’d code the HTML and CSS by hand.

And the reason for this is that you need to know about the quirks in the support for HTML and CSS that various browsers have, and you’re going to need to make certain that the HTML and CSS is correct. No webpage-editing program I’ve ever seen has been even a tenth as good at this as a competent person. It’s likely that Quark has boilerplate HTML and CSS and Javascript for a variety of situations, and so you can probably get by with Quark, but if you want to do a really good job of it you’ll need to at least review the code by hand.

I appreciate your advice cwilbur, but my web site is coming along good (at least I think so). Quark8 has added a lot of new stuff to help you build web pages. Also I’m not a coder lol, so I need programs like QX8 if I want to build my own web pages. I know QX is mostly known for desktop publishing, but I can probably reproduce the Fluther.com’s home page with QX8. Anyways though, thanks for your help.

-Link

You won’t really be able to do any dynamic web development using Quark Xpress. If you’re wanting to really get into web development, I’d buy this book to get started:

http://www.sitepoint.com/books/html1/

Once you’ve got to grips with HTML and CSS (it’s not that hard, promise!) come back to Fluther and ask a question about dynamic web development and I’ll come suggest some more learning resources.

Hope this helps.

Thanks again for the advice. Sorry to keep this thread going, but RichardHenry, what do you mean by “dynamic web development”? Thanks for all your help so far.

-Link

Websites that perform a transaction with a server to change the information they display in some way, would be considered dynamic.

For example, Fluther is dynamic. You post a question, and receive responses. The pages you are viewing were generated from software that asked a database for content (the questions, the answers, how many people great answered a specific answer, your user information… etc) and it now inserts that content into HTML output that the browser can understand.

Another website, for example a small company website with some contact information and details about what they do, probably would be served from a series of HTML pages, that are not generated on-the-fly from software. You created those pages using Dreamweaver, or a text editor of some kind. This is called “static”.

The websites you are talking about creating are static. I highly recommend that book. If you don’t necessarily have a programming head, that book and other resources briefly cover the main things to consider, so that at least if you’re outsourcing to some other developer, you have a sense of what you’re talking about.

HTML is simple enough to grasp, and you’ll have a good understanding within a couple days. The book I linked to (and many others like it) cover most of what you need to know.

If you’re interested in making websites, there’s a lot more to it than simply the graphics and wire framing aspect; and it’s really not that hard once you get into it. Enjoy!

Hope this helps.