Technologies for Freelance Web-Development

Web-Development projects are one of the most widely available freelancing projects. The entry barrier for this segment of the market is also pretty low. The income generation possibilities are moderate to pretty decent. Remuneration would range anywhere from 1$ per hour to 15$ per hour depending on the type of job, complexity of the job and the nature of commitment. A vast majority of these projects use a small set of widely popular technologies. The following list gives some of the more popular technologies you need to learn to start with freelance web-development work

Primary Technologies

HTML/XHTML

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. Knowledge of HTML is a prerequisite for any kind of web application development. HTML is a markup language that uses text tags to convey layout and presentation information about the content. It is very easy to learn and once learned, one can use a plain text editor to create web pages on the fly. XHTML is an extension to HTML in that it specifies that the document must be valid XML. Useful Links http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Html http://www.tizag.com/htmlT/ http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_intro.asp http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/ http://validator.w3.org/

CSS

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. It is used to describe the presentation of a document written in a markup languageges like HTML or XHTML. All visual aspects of the content in an HTML/XHTML page should be described using CSS. This would lead to a clean separation of the content from its presentation. This gives the power to the developer to design highly flexible and reusable web designs. Useful Links http://www.w3schools/css/css_intro.asp http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Css http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/ http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Javascript

A scripting language based on the concept of prototype-based programming. Best known for its use in websites Useful Links http://www.w3schools.com/js/js_intro.asp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript http://www.quirksmode.org/ http://www.breakingpar.com http://www.w3.org/DOM/ http://devedge-temp.mozilla.org/central/javascript/index_en.html PHP PHP (PHP:Hypertext Preprocessor) is a reflective programming language designed for producing dynamic Web pages. Is perfectly suited for Web development and can be embedded directly into the HTML code. It is very similar to Perl and C. It is one of the most widely-used, free, and efficient alternative to competitors such as Microsoft's ASP. Useful Links http://www.w3schools.com/php http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Php http://www.php.net/manual/en/ http://www.tizag.com/phpT/index.php

MySQL

Is a multi threaded, multi-user database management system. The server runs on both windows and linux. MySQL is one of the most popular database system available in the market. MySQL is embraced by most of the FLOSS community and is the preferred database for most of the FLOSS solutions out there. Useful links http://www.mysql.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySQL. http://www.tizag.com/mysqlTutorial/ http://www.w3schools.com/sql/sql_intro.asp http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_mysql_intro.asp

Secondary Technologies

POSTGRESQL

PostgreSQL is a free software object-relational database management system (ORDBMS). It is a commercial grade open source database system that can match head on head with any other leading commercial database systems in the market. Along with MySQL it is one of the most used database system in FLOSS applications. Useful Links http://www.postgresql.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostgreSQL

Ruby On Rails

Ruby on Rails is a web application framework used for Rapid Application Development (RAD). The primary objective is to increase the speed and ease of web development. Is an open source project written in the Ruby language. Useful Links http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby http://www.rubyonrails.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_on_rails

JSP

JSP is a Java technology that allows software developers to dynamically create web pages. The JSP syntax adds additional XML-like tags, called JSP actions. The technology allows for the creation of JSP tag libraries. They are compiled into Java Servlets by a JSP compiler. JSP compiler may generate a servlet in Java code that is then compiled by the Java compiler. Useful Links http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/ http://java.sun.com/j2ee/1.4/docs/tutorial/doc/index.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaServer_Pages

AJAX

AJAX - Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. It uses javascript to communicate with a webserver. One of the key aspects is that this would result in updating information on a webpage without refreshing the browser. This would result in a desktop application feel for the web application. Although been in existence for quite some time this was popularized by Google through its web applications Useful Links http://www.w3schools.com/ajax/ajax_intro.asp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax

ASP/ASP.Net

ASP is Microsoft's Server-side scripting engine for dynamically-generated web pages. It is an object based programming language. Most ASP pages are written in VBScript. ASP.Net uses the .Net framework for creating web applications. Any of the languages VB.Net, C#.Net or J++.Net can be used within the .Net framework. Very few FLOSS solutions use .Net technologies. Useful Links http://www.w3schools.com/asp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Server_Page http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa286483.aspx http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms644563.aspx

VBScript

VBScript(Visual Basic Scripting Edition) is an Active Scripting language. It is widely used in ASP as the scripting language. It is also used in creating automation scripts in windows. Useful Links http://www.w3schools.com/vbscript http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VBScript http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms950396.aspx