Interactive Web Tehcnologies Teppo Risnen LIIKEOAMK 2011 General

Interactive Web Tehcnologies Teppo Räisänen LIIKE/OAMK 2011

General Information n n The basic (X)HTML pages are called static pages By using interactive techniques interactive content can be provided: n n n Order an item from e-shop Control a Web camera Find out about available books in the library

General Information n Interactivity by itself should not be the goal of design Design of interactive pages requires more time and effort The limitations of server/client end must be thought of when designing an interactive Web site

Web Forms n n n HTML forms look lot like printed out forms The processing of a HTML form is completed by a computer Form element is used as an interface between the processing side and the user

Web Forms n n n There are form fields included inside the form for different pieces and types of information An address of the processing script is written as a part of form element’s declaration Scripts are small scaled computer programs

Web Forms <form method=”post” action=” http: //www. myserver. com/cgibin/formprocessing. cgi”> <input name=“id" size=“ 20” /> <input type="submit" value=“Send” /> </form>

Web Forms n n n The script for processing can reside in any available server After submitting the form, the information inside the form is sent for processing The form data is often ’raw data’ not meant to be analyzed by human resources

Server-side Scripting n n A script can include e. g. database search It is not necessary to know the inside contents of the script but it’s programming interface: n n Information needed by the script process Information returned by the process

CGI n n = Common Gateway Interface Describes only the interface between the browsers and the scripts CGI does not limit the use of programming language Of the languages Perl is most commonly used

ASP n n Active Server Pages Designed for Microsofts server technologies There are ASP modules available for e. g. Apache server The most common programming language for ASP pages is VBScript

PHP n n n = Hypertext Preprocessor A programming language PHP contains libraries for e. g. n n n Localising String analyzing, modification Graphics, diagrams