When I finally decided to jump into entrepreneurship, I approached a web developer to code. What looked like a simple work, in the beginning, started to look like a mission to Mars with all the website jargon. Every time I came to terms with his jargon, he would throw something new to disturb the balance.
It would remind me of an Einstein’s quote “If you cannot explain it simply, you have not understood properly”. It was my meeting with another developer when I realized that everyone is too used with these same terms. This made me realize that I was illiterate in the field. My concepts needed some revisions, in fact, some improvements before I could understand what these techies were talking. Tech people love talking in jargons and when it comes to web technologies these jargons can sometimes become confusing.
Let’s look at few concepts that you should be aware of:
A browser is a terminology used to denote several software applications which you use to browse through the internet as a whole. The most popular web browsers are Chrome, Safari, Opera, and Firefox.
The work of a browser is when you enter the URL (Ex www.yocreativ.com) of the website you want to check, the browser finds the website files on the server and presents it to you.
2. HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language)
This is a markup language which provides the structure of a website. This can be considered as the bones of the website. You can check the HTML codes of any website by simply pressing CTRL + U on the website. The structure of the website will show you which tags and divisions have been used for which part.
3. CSS (Cascading Style Sheet)
This is yet another markup language that allows a developer to give styling to the premade structure, these styling mainly include colors, fonts, placements, action on hover or click, drop downs etc. This is where the creativity of the developer and the website comes in a display as it adds a beauty element to a website. It can be considered as the looks of a human body.
JQuery, on the other hand, is simply a library of such java scripts. Instead of writing the complete code, you can refer to the library and make coding easier.
5. Programming Languages
There are many programming languages and you need to decide which one to use for your website very carefully. It’s a never-ending list with each programmer preferring one to other depending on their need, skill and learning. There are different languages for the front end, database and for the back-end.
If you start building a website from scratch, it takes a lot of work and time. Actually building a website from scratch is not necessary most of the time. Instead, if you choose frameworks, the same can be done in a much lesser time and does not require a lot of effort, to begin with. Some of the frameworks are:
Full stack Frameworks
Ruby on Rails
CMS (content management system) framework
They store various kinds of data from the user and will sign in data to the files you have assigned for the purpose. The data range from a simple login data to a highly complicated one depending on the website features.
A database can be of two kinds mainly: SQL and NoSQL. SQL can be considered as excel sheet kind of database where columns are the fields of data and every row is a new data entry. Anything regard to database apart from this becomes NoSQL and provides a lot of flexibility in working and running.
8. API (Application Programming Interface)
The travel industry is the best example to get the hang of this. Flights are operated by airlines but instead of focusing on sales directly, they provide these inventories (seat reservation) to flight aggregators. They do not sell directly but provide their APIs to websites who provide flight booking services like Make my trip and Yatra. When a user on these website books a flight, he provides input which through API goes to airlines for booking. The booked ticket goes from Airlines through aggregators and online ticket sellers to the user.
The connection and flow of inputs and output are done by APIs.
In short, if you are using some features of another website, you will need to sync with the website to attain the input and deliver the output. For which you’ll need APIs. Another example is the payment gateway APIs which maintains the flow of transactions between users, banks and any vendor involved.
The files on your computer can be accessed directly by you as you have local control, but if you want the whole world to access it or if you want to showcase it to the whole world; you need to store it on a server. The website is also a set of files (A coded One) and for the world to check it; you need a server to host them. Buy a cheap one when starting out and when you are sure of response and are confident about the market then upgrade it. Servers come with various features like a shared server or dedicated server which needs to be understood completely before proceeding.
10. Client Side or server-side
It basically refers to where the code would run. If the code runs on the web browser, it is called as client-side for obvious reasons and if the code runs on a server before the website is loaded it is called as server side.
UI stands for User Interface. It is a term to evaluate the user’s needs and provide the user with a rich user-friendly design. UX deals with user experience i.e. the impact a website leaves over its visitor or the feel of the website when a person visits it. It would seem that UI and UX is the same thing yet there is a minute difference in them. UI is the communication with the website and the visitor whereas the UX is the interface itself.
The above given are some of the Jargons you might be thrown when working with a techie who deals in website development. The list is for amateurs primarily and more detailed and in-depth Jargons will be discussed in the upcoming blogs.