Re: Web Design

[Kendall Shaw <kshaw@kendallshaw.com>]

On 12/29/2017 05:47 PM, M. R.P. wrote:
> what gnu tools are their for web design?
>
>
One more post then I'm done. So, I will take "gnu tools" to mean 
something like open source tools... If you are like trying to settle a 
bet about what is available with GNU and FSF, then essentially Linux and 
emacs.

For web design:

If design is like graphics design and a program you move images around 
and put text together, that was something that existed in the 90s when 
more people had personal web sites (before facebook).

Back then, graphic artists would use tools like that for "cool" websites 
while programmers using perl etc. would make website for corporations 
where it was less important how the website looks. That has largely 
changed.

If that is what you are after, I suggesting looking at wordpress as has 
been mentioned. With that you get essentially the same thing but on the 
web with all sorts of thorny issues taken care of for you, like security.

Also, that way you could start at the personal web site stage and if you 
wanted to, you could grow into being a developer say for other people's 
sites, gradually.

For graphics GIMP and Inkscape come to mind. Inkscape for making vector 
graphics can be important.

For web development (programming):

Because emacs has new life with scala and clojure coming into broader 
public awareness, if you are not aware of it there is incredibly good 
support for web development in scala and clojure.

For example, here is someone demonstrating interactive web site 
development using emacs and a web browser's debugging api:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-kj2qwJa_E&t=947s

The demonstration is something like a game, but the same idea applies to 
other sorts of web development.

All of the major browsers have debugging protocols that allow tools to 
interface with the browser.

Similar phenomena where emacs is being taken seriously: Typescript, 
microsoft's language, has emacs support promoted by that language group. 
Tide  is the typescript development environment in emacs.

Generally, "modern web development' is heavily based on command line 
tools. In other words, command-line tools and unixish text editors are 
the mainstream tools.

The reason why that work is because people develop using "frameworks" 
which are not a program but an extensible set of tools independent of a 
vendor. So, the person using vim and the command line for everything 
uses the same tools as the person doing everything in Visual Studio. If 
this is new to you, you might want to look at the angular tutorial here:

https://angular.io/tutorial

That demonstrates how modular pieces of web applications are in common use.

Usually, everything is free and in github.

Visual Studio., not gnu but freeish and available on linux.

You could also look at Foundation which is an example of a framework 
that can fit within other frameworks and it's mostly about styles:

https://foundation.zurb.com/learn/tutorials.html

Also, ruby on rails: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html 
That is one of the major developments that changed the way most web 
development is done

Jekyyl which is based on using Markdown as the source for web pages:

https://jekyllrb.com/

Python and pyramid:

https://www.fullstackpython.com/pyramid.html

The phrase "full stack" alludes to the trend toward modular software 
fitting into frameworks is common.

Kendall