Taking Your Talent to the Web

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Disadvantages of SSI

Being a server-side technology, SSI eats up processing power from the server. Every time a visitor hits a page containing a replaced SSI element, the markup describing that element must be fetched from the server—like a stick in the jaws of a panting mastiff.

If you’re building a professionally hosted site with plenty of server power in reserve, such demands on the server are no problem. If you’re hosting the site on your home computer and connected to your home cable modem, there could be a problem. Given sufficient traffic, the toll on your PC might be noticeable, and the site might “slow down” for your visitors during times of peak traffic. On the other hand, if you’re hosting an extremely popular site on your home computer, maybe it’s time to upgrade your server.

If you are interested in server-side technologies, Jeff Veen’s The Art & Science of Web Design (New Riders: 2001) discusses the subject in more detail—and using better words and stuff. If you are uninterested in serverside technologies to the point of anxiety, you’ll be happy to know that we’ve finished discussing them.

Now let’s look at a technology you will frequently encounter in your career but will never even contemplate programming yourself. Let’s talk about Java. First of all, what the heck is it?

COOKIN’ WITH JAVA

Java is an object-oriented programming language developed by Sun Microsystems (http://www.sun.com/) primarily for the Web. And just what, you ask, is an object-oriented programming language? An object-oriented language is one that reuses software objects the same way you might reuse custom shapes you’d created in Adobe Illustrator or a sales executive might reuse chunks of boilerplate text about “tremendous synergies, should our two companies work together.”