100+ Web Development Things you Should Know

Summary

This video script offers an insightful overview of web development, highlighting its potential to impact global issues and the vast opportunities it presents. It delves into the foundational concepts necessary for building full-stack web applications, including the Internet's role, HTML for content structure, CSS for styling, and JavaScript for interactivity. The script also touches on advanced topics like server-client communication, responsive design, and back-end technologies, concluding with the reality that web development is a vast field where continuous learning is key.

Takeaways

• 🌐 Web development is a dynamic field with the potential to impact global issues and create wealth through various online activities.
• 💡 The Internet, born on January 1, 1983, is a global network of devices communicating via standardized protocols like IP and TCP.
• 🌐 The World Wide Web is a software layer that sits on top of the Internet, allowing users to access web pages through URLs.
• 🖥️ Browsers and servers facilitate the exchange of HTTP messages, with browsers as clients requesting data and servers responding with web page content.
• 🔍 Domain names are translated into IP addresses through the Domain Name System (DNS), which acts as the Internet's phone book.
• 📄 HTML is the language used to structure web pages, with elements and attributes defining the content and behavior of a page.
• 🎨 CSS is used to style HTML elements, offering various methods to apply styles, including inline styles, internal style sheets, and external stylesheets.
• 📱 Responsive design in CSS ensures web pages are accessible and visually appealing across different devices and screen sizes.
• 💻 JavaScript adds interactivity to web pages, handling user events and manipulating the Document Object Model (DOM).
• 🔧 Front-end frameworks like React, Vue, and Angular simplify UI development by representing the UI as a tree of components.
• 🌟 Node.js enables server-side JavaScript execution, providing a non-blocking event loop for efficient handling of multiple connections.

Q & A

What is the significance of the internet in the context of web development?

The internet is crucial in web development as it serves as the platform connecting nearly 5 billion daily active users, allowing for global communication and data exchange, which forms the basis for building web applications.

What role does the Internet Protocol (IP) play in the internet's functionality?

The Internet Protocol is used to identify different computers on the network by assigning each a unique IP address, enabling them to send and receive data using the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).

How is the World Wide Web different from the internet?

The World Wide Web is a software application that sits on top of the internet, allowing users to access web pages through the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), while the internet is the underlying global network of interconnected computers.

What is the function of a URL in web development?

A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is a unique identifier for a web page, allowing users to access specific content on the internet using a web browser.

Can you explain the concept of HTTP messages in web development?

HTTP messages are the requests and responses exchanged between a client (web browser) and a server in web development, facilitating the retrieval and transmission of web page content.

What is the purpose of the Domain Name System (DNS) in web development?

DNS serves as the phone book of the internet, mapping domain names to IP addresses, allowing browsers to locate and access web servers hosting specific websites.

How does HTML structure a web page?

HTML structures a web page using elements, which are tags with content in between, to define the content and the structure, such as paragraphs, headings, and forms.

What is the role of CSS in web development?

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is used in web development to change the appearance of HTML elements, providing styling and layout to web pages.

Why is JavaScript essential for web development?

JavaScript is essential for web development as it enables interactivity on web pages, handling user events, and manipulating the Document Object Model (DOM) to create dynamic and responsive user interfaces.

What is the significance of the Document Object Model (DOM) in web development?

The DOM represents the structure of a web page as a tree of objects, allowing developers to interact with and manipulate the web page's content, structure, and style with JavaScript.

How does server-side rendering differ from a single-page application in web development?

Server-side rendering generates the HTML on the server and sends it as a response to the client, while a single-page application renders most of the HTML client-side using JavaScript, making the website feel more like a native app.

Outlines

00:00

🌐 Web Development Overview

This paragraph introduces web development as an influential field with the potential to connect billions of users worldwide. It highlights the internet's role in facilitating communication and innovation, but also acknowledges its everyday uses like sharing memes and creating social connections. The paragraph emphasizes the importance of understanding web development basics, such as the Internet Protocol suite, IP addresses, and the distinction between the internet and the World Wide Web. It explains how HTTP messages are used for client-server communication and how domain names are resolved to IP addresses through DNS. The discussion also covers HTML, the building blocks of web pages, including elements, attributes, and the DOM structure. The paragraph concludes with an introduction to CSS for styling web pages and the importance of responsive design.

05:01

🎨 CSS and Responsive Design

The second paragraph delves into the intricacies of CSS, starting with the box model that includes padding, border, and margin. It discusses the display property and how it affects the layout of elements on a webpage. The paragraph explains the concept of positioning, including relative, absolute, and fixed positioning. A significant focus is on responsive design, which ensures web pages are accessible and visually appealing across various devices. Media queries and layout tools like Flexbox and Grid are introduced as essential for creating responsive layouts. The paragraph also touches on advanced CSS features like calc() for mathematical operations and custom properties for reusability. It briefly mentions the use of preprocessors like Sass to enhance CSS capabilities.

10:01

💻 JavaScript and Front-end Frameworks

This paragraph introduces JavaScript as a critical component of web development, detailing its role in making web interfaces interactive. It explains how JavaScript is executed in the browser and how variables are declared using 'let' and 'const'. The paragraph discusses event handling, a core aspect of JavaScript, and how it interacts with HTML elements through APIs. It also covers data structures like arrays and objects, and the concept of prototypal inheritance. The paragraph introduces front-end frameworks like React, Vue, and Angular, which simplify UI development by representing it as a tree of components. It concludes with a brief mention of Node.js, a server-side runtime environment that allows for server-side JavaScript execution, and the importance of delivering web content efficiently to clients.

🌐 Server-Side Rendering and Web Performance

The fourth paragraph explores server-side rendering (SSR), explaining how servers generate HTML and send it as a response to client requests. It contrasts SSR with single-page applications (SPAs), where the server only renders a shell and JavaScript handles subsequent page rendering. The paragraph also introduces static site generation (SSG) as a method to pre-render pages for better bot readability. It emphasizes the importance of web performance, suggesting tools like Lighthouse for optimization. The discussion includes module bundlers, web servers, and deployment strategies, such as using cloud providers or decentralized blockchain technologies. The paragraph concludes by acknowledging the vastness of web development knowledge and the common practice of learning through problem-solving.

Keywords

💡Web Development

Web development refers to the building and maintenance of websites. It encompasses several skills, including front-end and back-end development, which are crucial for creating interactive and functional websites. In the video, web development is portrayed as a dynamic field with the potential to impact global issues and create economic opportunities. The script mentions that web developers need to know a plethora of concepts to build full-stack web applications, highlighting the complexity and breadth of the field.

💡Internet

The Internet is a global network of interconnected computers that use the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to communicate with one another. It was officially born on January 1, 1983, and it serves as the foundational infrastructure for the World Wide Web. The video script emphasizes the Internet's role in connecting billions of users and facilitating various forms of communication and data exchange, from sharing memes to advancing science.

💡World Wide Web (WWW)

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. It was invented by Tim Berners-Lee and is a service that sits on top of the Internet. The video explains that while the Internet is the hardware, the WWW is like software, allowing users to access web pages through URLs using tools like web browsers. The script highlights the WWW's role in making information accessible and user-friendly.

💡Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

HTML is the standard markup language for creating web pages and web applications. It is composed of a series of elements, each defined by a start tag, an end tag, and the content in between. The video script describes HTML as the building blocks of web pages, allowing developers to structure content and create interactive forms. It is essential for defining the structure and semantics of web content.

💡Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

CSS is a stylesheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in HTML or XML. It allows web developers to control the layout, colors, and fonts of web pages. The video script explains that CSS is used to make web pages visually appealing by changing the appearance of HTML elements. It also touches upon CSS's cascading nature, which allows styles to be applied to multiple elements and the use of selectors for granular control over styling.

💡Domain Name System (DNS)

DNS is the system that translates human-friendly domain names (like example.com) into IP addresses that computers use to identify each other on the network. The video script uses DNS as an analogy to a phone book, mapping domain names to IP addresses so that users can access websites via familiar names rather than numeric addresses.

💡JavaScript

JavaScript is a high-level, interpreted programming language commonly used for adding interactivity and dynamic content to web pages. The video script positions JavaScript as an essential part of web development, allowing developers to handle user events, manipulate the Document Object Model (DOM), and create a more engaging user experience. It is also noted as being a dynamically typed language, which simplifies development but can lead to errors without proper type management.

💡Event Handling

Event handling in web development refers to the way browsers respond to user actions like clicks, mouse movements, or form inputs. The video script explains that JavaScript is used to listen to these events and execute functions in response, creating interactive web pages. Event handling is crucial for making web applications responsive and user-friendly.

💡Front-end Frameworks

Front-end frameworks are libraries or sets of tools that help developers build user interfaces for the web more efficiently. The video script mentions frameworks like React, Vue, and Angular, which allow developers to create components and manage the UI in a declarative manner. These frameworks abstract complex DOM manipulations and state management, making it easier to build and maintain complex web applications.

💡Node.js

Node.js is a runtime environment that allows developers to run JavaScript on the server side, enabling the creation of full-stack JavaScript applications. The video script highlights Node.js's use of an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model, which makes it efficient for handling multiple connections and ideal for real-time applications. It also mentions the importance of the Node Package Manager (npm) for managing dependencies and sharing code.

💡Databases

Databases are essential for storing and managing data in web applications. The video script briefly touches on the need for databases in full-stack web development, where they serve as the backbone for user data, content management, and application logic. Databases can be relational, like MySQL, or non-relational, like MongoDB, depending on the application's requirements.

Highlights

Web development is a dynamic field with the potential to connect billions of users worldwide.

The Internet, born on January 1, 1983, is a global network of machines communicating via standardized protocols.

The World Wide Web is a software layer that sits on top of the Internet, allowing access to web pages through URLs.

HTML is the language used to structure web pages, consisting of elements and attributes.

CSS is essential for styling web pages, offering tools like media queries for responsive design.

JavaScript adds interactivity to web pages, handling events and manipulating the DOM.

Frameworks like React, Vue, and Angular simplify UI development with component-based architectures.

Node.js enables server-side JavaScript, leveraging the same language and engine as modern browsers.

HTTP methods like GET, POST, and PATCH are crucial for client-server communication in web applications.

Single Page Applications (SPAs) use JavaScript to render pages client-side, enhancing user experience.

Static Site Generation (SSG) is a strategy for pre-rendering web pages, improving SEO and performance.

Lighthouse is a tool for optimizing web page performance, focusing on metrics like First Contentful Paint.

Full stack frameworks like Next.js, Ruby on Rails, and Laravel simplify backend and frontend development.

Module bundlers like Webpack and Vite package assets for efficient loading in browsers.

User authentication is a critical aspect of web development, ensuring secure access to user data.

Web servers like Nginx and Apache are used for hosting and serving web applications.

Cloud providers and PaaS services offer scalable infrastructure for deploying web applications.

Decentralized hosting on blockchain platforms is an emerging trend in web development.

Web development is a vast field, and professionals often rely on real-time problem-solving and learning.

Transcripts

web development is the best job in the

world you build on a platform with

nearly 5 billion daily active users all

connected together like the neurons of a

global super intelligent brain a system

that can cure disease eliminate poverty

advance science and stuff like that but

mostly it's used to share memes create

parasocial relationships amplify drama

and most importantly make tons and tons

of money if you want to get into it

you're gonna need to know some stuff

like a lot of stuff in web development

101 we'll take a look at a 101 different

concepts that you'll need to know when

building full stack web apps this is the

internet it's a network of billions of

machines connected together what do you

write to it like mail no a lot of people

use it and communicate i guess they can

communicate with nbc writers and

producers alison can you explain what

internet is it was officially born on

january 1 1983 thanks to the

establishment of the internet protocol

suite which standardized the way these

computers communicate the internet

protocol is used to identify different

computers on the network by assigning

each one of them a unique ip address

these computers can then send data back

and forth with the transmission control

protocol it breaks data into a bunch of

small packets kind of like puzzle pieces

then sends them through a bunch of

physical components like fiber optic

cables and modems before they're put

back together by the receiving computer

you can think of the internet as

hardware but the internet is not the

same thing as the web the world wide web

is like software that sits on top of the

internet where people can access web

pages with the hypertext transfer

protocol what's special about it is that

it gives every page of content a uniform

resource locator or url humans typically

use a tool called a web browser to

access a url where it can be rendered

visually on their screen the browser is

called the client because it's consuming

information but on the other end of that

url there's another computer called a

server it received an http request from

the client then sent a response

containing the web page content these

are called http messages but more on

that later what's interesting is that

every web page has a unique domain name

like fireship.io or example.com a domain

name can be registered by anyone via a

registrar who's accredited by icann a

nonprofit responsible for overseeing

namespaces on the internet when you

navigate to a domain in a browser it

gets routed through the domain name

system that maps these names to an

actual ip address on a server somewhere

dns is like the phone book of the

internet now when you look at a webpage

the actual content you see is

represented by hypertext markup language

most browsers have devtools where you

can inspect the structure of the html at

any time to build your own web page

you'll want a text editor like vs code

an html document is just a collection of

elements where an element is an opening

and closing tag with some content in the

middle like a paragraph and heading it

also has elements that handle user input

like the select and input elements which

are used to build forms in addition

elements can have one or more attributes

to change their behavior for example an

input can have a type like text or

number which the browser will render

differently to collect the appropriate

value but the element that puts the

hypertext in html is the a tag or anchor

it's a link that allows one page to

navigate to a different page based on

its url these elements are nested

together in a hierarchy to form the

document object model or dom from the

root element a web page is split into

two parts the head contains invisible

content like metadata and a title then

we have the body for the main content

that the end user actually sees the

reason we wrap everything in tags is to

give browsers and bots hints about the

semantic meaning of the web page this

allows search engines to display results

properly and also helps with

accessibility for devices like screen

readers that allow anybody regardless of

disability to enjoy the content my

computer reads me the text bro smash

that like button and subscribe one of

the most common elements you'll come

across is div or division to define a

section of the webpage on its own a div

might not seem to do anything and

currently produces this plain black and

white website that begs the question how

do we make this website look cool the

second language you'll need to learn as

a web developer is cascading stylesheets

or css which allows you to change the

appearance of the html elements one way

to accomplish that is with an inline

style using the style attribute on an

element the style itself contains a

collection of properties and values that

change the appearance of the element

like we might make the background color

black and the text color red what we've

created here is an inline style that

will only be applied to this one element

however css cascades which means it can

be applied to multiple elements at the

same time providing better code

reusability another option is to move

our code into a style tag but to make

the code work we'll first need to define

a selector so it knows which elements to

target a selector for example can target

all of the paragraph elements on the

page but that's too broad we can be more

granular by defining a class that style

can then be applied to one or more

elements with the class attribute what's

interesting though is that we now have

classes that apply different styles to

the same element css contains a bunch of

specificity rules that determine which

styles are relevant to an element in a

way that's self-evident and elegant like

a benevolent elephant most often though

we don't use style tags but instead use

an external style sheet which is linked

to the webpage and the head of the

document when it comes to css by far the

most difficult thing to learn is layout

and positioning think of every element

like a box the outside of that box is

wrapped with padding border and margin

the boxes then take up space on the page

from top to bottom some elements like

heading have a display of block by

default which means they take up all

available horizontal space other

elements like image are displayed inline

which means they can line up

horizontally side by side the problem is

that the default position is usually not

desirable it can be changed by

customizing the position property on an

element relative positioning allows an

element to move a certain number of

pixels from its normal position absolute

positioning is similar but the position

values are relative to its nearest

ancestor and then we have fixed

positioning which will keep an element

on the screen even as the user scrolls

away from it because it's fixed to the

entire viewport changing the position of

an element is one thing but one of the

biggest challenges web developers face

is creating responsive layouts users can

access your web page from all kinds of

different screens and it should look

good on all of them css provides a bunch

of different tools to help make this

happen one of which is media queries a

media query allows you to get

information about the device that's

rendering the web page and apply

different styles accordingly but more

importantly it provides layout tools

like flexbox applying display flex

allows the parent to control the flow of

the children to easily create rows and

columns for more complex layouts display

grid can be used to control multiple

rows and columns at the same time now

css is usually not considered a turing

complete programming language on its own

however it does have mechanisms like

calc to perform mathematical operations

and custom properties which are like

variables that you can reuse in multiple

places vanilla css is rarely enough

though and many developers choose to

extend it with tools like sas that add

additional programmatic features on top

of it and that brings us to the third

language you'll need to know as a web

developer javascript technically you

don't need javascript to build a website

however most developers choose to use it

to make the user interface more

interactive to run javascript code on a

web page open up a script tag then write

some javascript code inside of it the

browser interprets the html from top to

bottom and runs this code when it

encounters it in the dom in most cases

javascript is written in a separate file

then referenced as the source on the

script tag usually it's preferred that

this code runs after the dom content has

loaded which can be accomplished with

the defer attribute js is a big

complicated programming language which

is more formally known as ecmascript and

is standardized in all major browsers

there are several different ways to

declare a variable a variable that might

be reassigned in the future uses the let

keyword while a variable that can't be

reassigned uses const it's a dynamically

typed language which means no type

annotations are necessary that's not

always ideal so many developers choose

typescript as an alternative to add

static typing on top of javascript now

one of the most common reasons you would

use javascript in the first place is to

handle events whenever the user does

something on a web page the browser

emits an event that you can listen to

like a click mouse move form input

change and so on we can tap into these

events using browser apis like document

which in this case provides a method

called query selector that allows us to

grab an element with a css selector once

we have that element set as a variable

we can then assign an event listener to

it an event listener is a function that

will be called or re-executed anytime

the button is clicked the language has a

variety of built-in data structures like

an array to represent a collection of

values but the most fundamental data

structure is the object also commonly

called a dictionary or hashmap anything

that's not a primitive type like a

string or number inherits its base

functionality from the object class it

relies on a technique called prototypal

inheritance where an object can be

cloned multiple times to create a chain

of ancestors where the child inherits

the properties and methods of its

ancestors this is different from

class-based inheritance which is kind of

confusing because javascript also

supports classes however these classes

are just syntactic sugar for prototypal

inheritance but now we're getting a

little too low level most developers

don't ever want to have to touch the

word prototype so what we do instead is

use a front-end framework like react

view spelt angular and so on all of

these frameworks do the same thing in a

slightly different way which is

represent the ui as a tree of components

a component can encapsulate html css and

javascript into a format that looks like

its own custom html element most

importantly they produce declarative

code that describes exactly what the ui

does and that's much easier to work with

than imperative code that you would

normally get with just plain vanilla

javascript at this point we've taken a

look at the frontend stack but now we

need to switch gears to the back end

starting with nodejs which is a

server-side runtime based on javascript

you can run server-side code for web

applications in all kinds of different

languages but node is the most popular

because it relies on the same language

as the browser it's also based on the

same v8 engine that powers the chromium

browser to run code in a single threaded

non-blocking event loop this allows node

to handle many simultaneous connections

quickly and efficiently in addition it

allows developers to share work remotely

thanks to the node package manager a

package is also called a module which is

just a file that contains some code with

an export statement so it can be used in

another file the file can consume a

module with an import statement but now

we need to think about how to deliver

the actual website from the server to

the client the classic option is server

side rendering in this approach the

client will make a get request for a

certain url every request has an http

method and git means you want to

retrieve data from a server as opposed

to methods like post and patch where the

intent is to modify data the server

receives the request and then generates

all the html on the server and sends it

back to the client as a response the

response contains a status code like 200

for success or levels 4 and 500 for

errors for example if the web page

doesn't exist the server will return a

404 status code which you've likely seen

before as a web user ssr is extremely

popular but in some cases it may not be

fast enough another approach is the

single page application with this

approach the server only renders a shell

for the root url then javascript handles

the rendering for all other pages on the

website the html is generated almost

entirely client-side in the browser

making the website feel more like a

native ios or android app when the app

needs more data it still makes an http

request but only requests a minimal

amount of data as json which is called a

data interchange format that can be

understood by any programming language

this can result in a great user

experience however it can be very

difficult for bots like search engines

and social media link previews to

understand content on the page this led

to another rendering strategy called

static site generation in this case

every webpage on the site is uploaded to

a server in advance allowing bots to get

the information they need a front-end

javascript framework usually takes over

to hydrate the html to make it fully

interactive and behave like a single

page application performance is

extremely important and you'll want to

use tools like lighthouse to optimize

metrics like first contentful paint and

time to interactive now to implement one

of these patterns most developers will

use a full stack framework like next js

ruby on rails laravel and so on they

abstract away many of the more tedious

things developers don't want to deal

with one of which is module bundlers

which are tools like webpack and veed

that take all of your javascript css and

html and package it in a way that can

actually work in a browser they might

also provide a linter like eslint to

warn you when your code doesn't follow

the proper style guidelines oh and i

almost forgot you are definitely going

to need a database to build a full stack

web application because you need

somewhere to store your data like data

about your users but in order to get

that data you'll need to give users a

way to log in via a process called user

authentication now before you deploy

your code you'll need to test it with a

web server there are tools like nginx

and apache you create an http server but

your framework will likely do this for

you by serving the files on localhost

which makes your own ip address behave

like a remote web server when it comes

time to deploy you'll likely use a big

cloud provider like aws most apps are

containerized with docker making them

easy to scale up and down based on the

amount of traffic that they receive

there are many tools out there that

function as a platform as a service to

manage this infrastructure for you in

exchange for your money or if you don't

want to get locked in with a giant tech

corporation you might host your app on a

decentralized blockchain with web3 and

that's about one percent of what you'll

need to know to call yourself a full

stack web developer if that seems

overwhelming don't worry too much almost

nobody knows what the hell they're doing

and we all just use google to figure

things out on the fly congratulations

you just passed web development 101

thanks for watching and i will see you

in the next one