Web Design/JavaScript/Web Programming Intro

Introduction
You've been sitting in class for three hours now and have had an earful of theory about “computer programming”. It seems that your teacher hasn't yet realised that he could have just left a tape of his voice droning through the room and done something more useful with his time. Just one analogy to compare programming to the real world! As your teacher answers another of his own questions in his monotone drone, you begin dozing off...

Waking up slowly – a situation that is familiar enough for you to wipe the drool from your desk before you even open your eyes – you look around to see if anyone noticed...phew, there's no one here to notice.

Wondering what exciting transmissions of information you missed, you open a browser and go to http://www.w3schools.com to find out what kind of introduction to programming they have on their site. Hey, this is quite useful, I wonder what other introductions to programming are around on the Internet...

Task
Being the nice person that you are, and knowing that there's a 99% chance that no-one else learned any more than you did during the lesson, you decide to create your own "introduction to programming – a student perspective", with links to useful sites on the net where your study-buddies can find further information.

Using your newly found HTML/CSS skills, create a small site that can serve as a tutorial to others wanting to learn about Web Programming. Feel free to make digress and make your site as interesting and/or interactive as you can, but make sure that you touch-base with the following points (remember, always include links to your resources):

General programming principles

 * Why might we want to learn computer programming to design webpages... isn't HTML and CSS enough?
 * How can you describe a "variable" to someone who hasn't done programming before?
 * What are control structures and what are they good for?

Object-Oriented programming principles

 * What is Object Oriented programming in every-day terms?
 * Describe the difference between an object's properties and an object's methods, using an visual example (a drawing, photo or diagram)!
 * Referring back to your diagram, describe how the 'dot syntax' works (eg. window.alert ) with examples from your own drawing of setting properties and using methods.
 * Provide examples of 3 objects used in Javascript Web programming, describing some corresponding properties and methods for each object.

Web Programming languages
Investigate 3 of the following languages, describing a bit about their history, popularity and what they're used for. Feel free to choose other web-programming languages if you know of any others!
 * php
 * asp
 * aspx
 * ruby on rails
 * jsp

Remember to keep your post fun and easy to read - other people might learn a lot from your site too!

Examples of other student sites
None of these links are currently active


 * Adam's Introduction to Programming - Created June 2006 as a series of blog posts (which is why the sections are in reverse order).
 * Brigitte's Introduction to programming - Created May 2006
 * Rob's Introduction to Programming - Created May 2006
 * Addye's Introduction to Programming - Created May 2006