Type of site | Web development portal |
---|---|
Available in | Multiple languages |
Owner | Refsnes Data AS |
Created by | Refsnes Data AS |
URL | www |
Commercial | Yes |
Registration | Required for forum |
Launched | 1998 |
Current status | Active |
W3Schools is a freemium educational website for learning coding online. [1] [2] Initially released in 1998, it derives its name from the World Wide Web but is not affiliated with the W3 Consortium. [3] [4] W3Schools offers courses covering many aspects of web development. [5] W3Schools also publishes free HTML templates. It is run by Refsnes Data in Norway. [6] It has an online text editor called TryIt Editor, and readers can edit examples and run the code in a test environment.
On the site, source code examples with explanations are shown free of charge in English, most of which can also be edited and executed interactively in a live editor. Other important code elements are hidden so that the user can focus on the code shown (developer sandbox). The tutorials are divided into individual chapters on the development languages. In addition to the basics, application-related implementation options and examples, as well as a focus on individual elements of the programming language (so-called "references") are documented. In addition, there is a YouTube channel, which takes up and explains certain topics in web development, and an Internet forum. The languages HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JSON, C, C++, C#, Java, PHP, React, AngularJS, SQL, Python, Django, Bootstrap, Node.js, jQuery, XQuery, Ajax, and XML are supported. [7] [8] [9]
The Document Object Model (DOM) is a cross-platform and language-independent interface that treats an HTML or XML document as a tree structure wherein each node is an object representing a part of the document. The DOM represents a document with a logical tree. Each branch of the tree ends in a node, and each node contains objects. DOM methods allow programmatic access to the tree; with them one can change the structure, style or content of a document. Nodes can have event handlers attached to them. Once an event is triggered, the event handlers get executed.
JavaScript, often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the Web, alongside HTML and CSS. 99% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior.
XSLT is a language originally designed for transforming XML documents into other XML documents, or other formats such as HTML for web pages, plain text or XSL Formatting Objects, which may subsequently be converted to other formats, such as PDF, PostScript and PNG. Support for JSON and plain-text transformation was added in later updates to the XSLT 1.0 specification.
Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors that is used for programming, scripting, or markup languages, such as HTML. The feature displays text, especially source code, in different colours and fonts according to the category of terms. This feature facilitates writing in a structured language such as a programming language or a markup language as both structures and syntax errors are visually distinct. This feature is also employed in many programming related contexts, either in the form of colorful books or online websites to make understanding code snippets easier for readers. Highlighting does not affect the meaning of the text itself; it is intended only for human readers.
A web developer is a programmer who develops World Wide Web applications using a client–server model. The applications typically use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in the client, and any general-purpose programming language in the server. HTTP is used for communications between client and server. A web developer may specialize in client-side applications, server-side applications, or both.
Web development is the work involved in developing a website for the Internet or an intranet. Web development can range from developing a simple single static page of plain text to complex web applications, electronic businesses, and social network services. A more comprehensive list of tasks to which Web development commonly refers, may include Web engineering, Web design, Web content development, client liaison, client-side/server-side scripting, Web server and network security configuration, and e-commerce development.
XMLHttpRequest (XHR) is a JavaScript class containing methods to asynchronously transmit HTTP requests from a web browser to a web server. The methods allow a browser-based application to make a fine-grained server call and store the results in XMLHttpRequest's responseText
attribute. The XMLHttpRequest class is a component of Ajax programming. Prior to Ajax, an HTML form needed to be completely sent to the server followed by a complete browser page refresh.
A collaborative real-time editor is a type of collaborative software or web application which enables real-time collaborative editing, simultaneous editing, or live editing of the same digital document, computer file or cloud-stored data – such as an online spreadsheet, word processing document, database or presentation – at the same time by different users on different computers or mobile devices, with automatic and nearly instantaneous merging of their edits.
A web framework (WF) or web application framework (WAF) is a software framework that is designed to support the development of web applications including web services, web resources, and web APIs. Web frameworks provide a standard way to build and deploy web applications on the World Wide Web. Web frameworks aim to automate the overhead associated with common activities performed in web development. For example, many web frameworks provide libraries for database access, templating frameworks, and session management, and they often promote code reuse. Although they often target development of dynamic web sites, they are also applicable to static websites.
Markdown is a lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor. John Gruber and Aaron Swartz created Markdown in 2004 as a markup language that is intended to be easy to read in its source code form. Markdown is widely used for blogging and instant messaging, and also used elsewhere in online forums, collaborative software, documentation pages, and readme files.
A JavaScript library is a library of pre-written JavaScript code that allows for easier development of JavaScript-based applications, especially for AJAX and other web-centric technologies. They can be included in a website by embedding it directly in the HTML via a script tag.
Ext JS is a JavaScript application framework for building interactive cross-platform web applications using techniques such as Ajax, DHTML and DOM scripting. It can be used as a simple component framework but also as a full framework for building single-page applications (SPAs).
Brackets is a source code editor with a primary focus on web development. Created by Adobe Inc., it is free and open-source software licensed under the MIT License, and is currently maintained on GitHub by open-source developers. It is written in JavaScript, HTML and CSS. Brackets is cross-platform, available for macOS, Windows, and most Linux distributions. The main purpose of Brackets is its live HTML, CSS and JavaScript editing functionality.
Elm is a domain-specific programming language for declaratively creating web browser-based graphical user interfaces. Elm is purely functional, and is developed with emphasis on usability, performance, and robustness. It advertises "no runtime exceptions in practice", made possible by the Elm compiler's static type checking.
Front-end web development is the development of the graphical user interface of a website through the use of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript so users can view and interact with that website.
The following table lists notable online software source code playgrounds. A playground allows learning about, experimenting with and sharing source code.
PureScript is a strongly-typed, purely-functional programming language that transpiles to JavaScript, C++11, Erlang, and Go. It can be used to develop web applications, server side apps, and also desktop applications with use of Electron or via C++11 and Go compilers with suitable libraries. Its syntax is mostly comparable to that of Haskell. In addition, it introduces row polymorphism and extensible records. Also, contrary to Haskell, the PureScript language is defined as having a strict evaluation strategy, although there are non-conforming back ends which implement a lazy evaluation strategy.
GDevelop is a 2D and 3D cross-platform, free and open-source game engine, which mainly focuses on creating PC and mobile games, as well as HTML5 games playable in the browser. Created by Florian Rival, a software engineer at Google, GDevelop is mainly aimed at non-programmers and game developers of all skillsets, employing event based visual programming similar to engines like Construct, Stencyl, and Tynker.