Web Development

First created by Tim Berners-Lee and others in 1989, Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) is the language in which most websites are written. It is a key building block of a website. Hypertext suggests that there are links within the document that allows users to move to other documents. By learning HTML, you begin your journey in web development.

If you have come across a website and thought to yourself, “wow, what a beautiful website!”, chances are you are impressed by the styling of the website. A web developer would have taken the effort to customise the site using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and templates. CSS is considered one of the easiest languages to learn, and you can easily see the changes that you make to your code. Don’t wait, start your journey to make your websites more elegant! This module provides you with the necessary CSS knowledge before you move on to other CSS frameworks.

If you are surfing the web, you will most likely encounter JavaScript. JavaScript is what makes your page interactive, and is extremely versatile. It is a popular language for building entire web applications, for both frontend and backend. While JavaScript was first created in 1995, it is still relevant to learn today and it is now the most commonly used programming language (StackOverflow 2022). This skill path provides you with the basic knowledge of JavaScript before you move on to JavaScript-based frameworks and libraries.

React is a JavaScript-based library built by Meta, and is also one of the most popular tools used by frontend developers. React is component-based. You could create a component and then reuse it multiple times as and when you need, which helps to save time on development. Below is an image from opspl.com which illustrates the various aspects of React that are advantageous to developers.

Are you ready to dive into the world of Back-End Development and create robust and scalable web applications? Look no further than ExpressJS – a powerful framework for building dynamic web servers with ease. With ExpressJS, you'll be able to craft the backbone of your applications, handling routes, requests, and data manipulation efficiently.

NodeJS is a runtime environment that executes JavaScript code outside of a web browser. ExpressJS is a web framework that is built on top of NodeJS, and is often used in conjunction with NodeJS.

Gone are the days of wondering how to manage the server side of your web projects. ExpressJS simplifies the process, empowering you to focus on creating feature-rich applications that deliver seamless user experiences. Whether you're building APIs, content management systems, or interactive web apps, ExpressJS will be your trusted companion throughout the journey.

As a web developer, other than being familiar with HTML, CSS and JavaScript frameworks and libraries, it is important that you are familiar with other tools that make web development more efficient. Web development tools allow web developers to test and debug code of a website.

In this skill path, we look at several web development tools which allow us to make our workflows more efficient. Do note that you do not have to use all of them. Instead, pick and choose the ones that integrate well with your working style. We will cover Firebase, a free and good platform for web hosting.

Mobile Application Development has changed so much since the popularity of the smartphone era. Now developers have access to tools and frameworks that allow them to create mobile applications in just one codebase. Learn various ways to create a mobile app in this skill.