Editor’s Note: Ayo Emiloju is an open source enthusiast. He lives and work in UK.
Speed and changes in computing has been tremendous in last decade. With high penetration of internet and with application shifting from desktop to the cloud, the browser is becoming a place where everything now runs. Desktop applications are becoming more and more out of fashion and browser is gaining ground at a break neck speed.
What is the implication of this? The rule has changed and more people are embracing open web platform in deploying applications. Due to mobile platform gaining ground even faster than desktop, it is important that an application that works on a desktop should also work on mobile with minimal tweaking. Now enter html5, css and javascript. These technologies have been around for a while but flash and some other technology companies have prevented them from being popular in this part of the world.
From recent rumours, it seems Microsoft, the big one, will be moving to html5 and javascript with the release of its Windows 8. It is therefore inevitable that you also need to embrace these technologies. These technologies are being used to build everything from high performance games to solid web applications and mobile application.
Some important points:
- HTML – Hyper Text Markup Language – is the basic building block of a web page. HTML elements form the building block of all sites.
- CSS (cascaded style sheets) defines the appearance and layout of text and other material on the web page.
- It was Tim Berners Lee that specified the initial draft for HTML. Subsequent versions and spec are being developed by W3C
- Javascript is the programming language of the web. This is what is used to specify the behaviour of web pages. It is found on desktops, tablets and smart phones.
With these three tools HTML5, CSS3 and javascript, you can achieve a lot of development on both mobile and desktop. It is also worth nothing that the next big thing in computing is mobile computing. With ubiquitous presence of smart phones in the market, though it might be too soon to predict the death of desktop but with time, the most import platform will be mobile platforms. It seems therefore very important to position yourself at this stage before the boom finally comes.
To develop applications for Blackberry and Android phones, you will need to understand java programming and for Iphone, you will be expected to know Objective C. Though these languages are robust, they are difficult to learn. It takes time to debug and requires a lot of effort to polish. With CSS, html5 and javascript, you don’t need to be a master of all these languages. You can write your applications and port it to different devices using Sencha Touch, Phonegap or Appcelerator titanium. This means you can quickly go from idea to product faster than you imagine.
How to learn CSS, HTML5 and Javascript:
If you are serious about learning how to develop applications using these technologies, you will need to commit time and resources. You can easily pick a book or tutorial online and you have get access to these technologies at your finger tips. You can also check websites such as www.w3schools.com. If you have a personal computer system and internet access, Google.com will be your best starting point to get useful resources. You can also join some forums where you can get access to professionals already doing something with these tools.
Image credits: http://www.web3mantra.com/2011/02/10/top15-html5-ebooks/
