Changing to web development!

jester77

I've worked in software development for over 8 years. Most of my experience would be in Javascript, JSP/Servets, XML/XSLT, Java/J2EE, Struts, Hibernate, SQL. In the last 4 years most of my work has been mainly applet based and I'm really not enjoying it any more. I've looked back and the projects that I enjoyed most were the web development projects, these were mainly B2B projects. I'd like to change careers a little from what I'm currently doing and get more into the web development side of things.

What would be the best way for me to approach this? Most of my experience is in the business logic and DB side of things and where I'm lacking is on the presentation side. JSP is no longer really used and I'm not sure if XML/XSLT is common for client side development. I played round with PHP and this seemed straightforward. Which other areas should I be looking into? I'm not a big fan of Flash, but maybe it's because of the way it's mis-used. Perhaps I can be convinced!

CMS is another area I'm not very familiar with, any tips on where to start looking into for this? I presume MySQL is fairly standard and I'm OK with this side of things.

Anything else I should be aware of?

Any good websites out there, is there a website along the lines of the ServerSide for client side development?

cousin_borat

All I can say is I'm very surprised that you would want to change to Web Development from working in B2B type application development. Anyways, it would probably be more worth your while looking at Web 2.0 technologies especially Ajax.

jester77

cousin_borat wrote:

All I can say is I'm very surprised that you would want to change to Web Development from working in B2B type application development. Anyways, it would probably be more worth your while looking at Web 2.0 technologies especially Ajax.

I guess the last 2 companies I've worked for have drained the little bit of passion I had for working in this area plus I've always found web development more exciting. Thanks for the tip on Ajax, it's something I haven't given much attention to!

Laslo

The first thing I would say is forget about all the Web 2.0 bulls**t buzzword bingo. AJAX is a nice, quirky technology but it's not entirely suited to commercial Web development where indexable content and accessibility are key. Learn a scripting language like PHP for starts and then move on to some more agile development - .NET or Ruby on Rails. Whatever floats your boat. I would also become au fait with XHTML, CSS and Web standards. Too many 'professional' Web Developers butcher front-end code these days.

As for not learning Flash or actionscript. Well whether you like Flash or not, and many don't, a strong knowledge of actionscript will vastly increase your employability and your salary. Most large Web agencies and the people controlling the purse strings don't get embroiled in the 'I hate Flash - accessibility rules' bulls**t arguments with the rest of the industry. You seem to know when it should and shouldn't be used. That's a good start. Now learn it!

destraynor

When implemented correctly AJAX has no effect on indexing or accessibility.

Do not ignore flash, it's still widely used and sought after.

If you choose PHP, be sure to learn it properly. The vast majority of PHP scripts on the net for download etc are written really badly and are littered with bugs and security concerns.

Other good languages are Python and Ruby, although PHP is the quickest path to a job (other than JSP/ASP etc)

Laslo

destraynor wrote:

When implemented correctly AJAX has no effect on indexing or accessibility.

Yeah, but then it's being used either very sparingly or to the extent where workarounds have doubled your workload.

destraynor

Well yeah, AJAX is sugar for a web application.

You write a web app that works first, then enhance it with AJAX. If you write the JS in an unobtrusive manner you should have a site that functions perfectly without JS, but provides a better experience when JS is working.

You probably know all this, but for the benefits of others it's worth stating.

For those interested, Jeremy Keith is an excellent source for info, and his book "Bullet Proof AJAX" is very good.
[1] http://domscripting.com/presentations/xtech2006/
is a good explanation of progressive enhancement using AJAX

jester77

Thanks for the tips! I'll look in PHP, Flash, Ruby and Ajax.
How about CMS? Any good open source CMS system that is fairly standard among web developers? I see Joomla mentioned a bit here in the forums.

Laslo

jester77 wrote:

How about CMS? Any good open source CMS system that is fairly standard among web developers? I see Joomla mentioned a bit here in the forums.

Joomla is fairly good as is Expression Engine.