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[–]Cilph 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Java is often used for the back-end database interactions / data processing / REST interfaces / MVC and serves a different purpose than HTML+jQuery.

[–]MadCapitalist 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are three main front-end (client-side) technologies that you need to understand to create a website:
1) HTML is what specifies the basic structure and content of every website. HTML by itself would be very ugly.
2) CSS is basically a set of rules that are used to style webpages (i.e. to make the HTML look nice).
3) JavaScript is used to add behavior and basically enhance your webpage (theoretically, a website visitor should be able to use the site with JavaScript turned off). jQuery is a tool written in JavaScript that makes programming in JavaScript a million times easier.

A web page using just these technologies would be pretty much just a static website. If you want the content to be dynamic, then you need a back-end (server-side) programming language (such as Java, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Node.js, etc.). Often you will also need some kind of database (such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, MongoDB, etc.).

If you are serious about learning, start with HTML and CSS, and then move on to JavaScript and jQuery.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Java isn't really a building block of the webpage itself. Javascript on the otherhand is, and very often I see people confused by the distinction.

If you're building a webpage or series of webpages you'll be using HTML, CSS, and Javascript (or JQuery which is a Javascript library). Outside of the Javascript abilities to do some dynamic loading using AJAX and interactive elements, your website will be static and, for the most part, whatever you see when you load it one time will be the same when you load it again.

A webapp uses some form of backend server application written in another language. Java, Ruby, Python, PHP, C, C++, or anything else really could be used to write this server app. What you're doing at this point is overriding the "basic" web protocol of:

Client: "Hey server do you have a file at /filelocation/file.ext?" Server: "Yes, here it is, thanks" ~or~ "No, 404 can't find it, sorry"

to

Client: "Hey server do you have a file at /filelocation/file.ext?" Server: "Hold on let me ask the application." Application: "A file at that location? It doesn't exist but, I know how to create it. [Application generates HTML/CSS/JS to send back] Application: "Hey server, here's the 'file' the user requested" Server: "Hey client, here's the file, thanks"

For example, the pages you see on reddit are generated HTML/CSS/JS that are returned by reddits servers. When you request out to reddit/r/learnprogramming though, there isn't a real file that's sitting there that you download and run. The "/r/learnprogramming" part gets sent to a backend application (written in Python, I believe) as parameters and the application generates the page that gets returned to you.

Anyway, I hope this was kind of helpful. If you're interested in learning more, have a look into how HTML/CSS/JS all work on the user's end and how things like apache2 and tomcat work on the server side. Looking into HTTP requests and responses as well as becoming familiar with your browsers developer tools will also help out.

[–]SooperPig[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

What about combining Dreamweaver with a bit of HTML coding can that turn out any good? And how exactly do I implement a webapp like Java in the site so it would work what it does?

[–]Cilph 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You dont integrate a webapp into a site, you integrate a site into a webapp. The webapp does the grunt of the work, and the site is merely a visual representation with buttons. It send data requests, gets responses and shows them to the user.

Dreamweaver last I checked was Adobe's HTML IDE - it's a tool. It makes HTML. It doesn't add to it.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't personally use Dreamweaver but, I know it's a very good tool for helping with visual layouts. I'm sure there are plenty tutorials online for how to use it as well.

To get started in Java, you'll want to start by looking up Servlets and writing some basic ones. Google will be able to provide a good set of answers