Right, bear with me, this is going to take some time. As the highlight, some would say pinnacle, of my discussions about web technology I am going to talk about server-side scripting. For several reasons: firstly is is generally not much talked about when discussing web design (especially standards-based design and accessibility), secondly it’s much more easy to get to grips with that people assume, thirdly I believe that in server-side scripting lies much of the potential power of web applications.
The fact that server-side scripting, whether classic ASP using VBScript or PHP, is what I do all day may also have something to do with it.
As I’ve hinted through the other articles about this subject, server-side scripting – because it happens on the server, surprise, surprise – can be used to generate each of the three “output” technologies; HTML, CSS and JavaScript. And so that’s what I’d like to demonstrate, through the use of various functions I’ve written which utilise the power of server-side scripting to powerfully create, modify and interact with client-side technologies.
First in the list: Aire – automatic image replacement engine. This function uses PHP to create image(s) based on various parameters requested by the script, and creates the HTML and CSS required to show those images. Take a look at the article and the demo for more details.
Second on the list: some PHP/JavaScript functions I’ve written to simplify the use of AJAX-style DOM scripting techniques. That sounds incredibly complex, and I’m yet to come up with a name for it, but it will very adequately show another way to use the power of server-side scripting. Hopefully that will be available in the next day or so, watch this space…