Server side technology refers to the processing of the technology done by the web server of the website. With server side technology, the technology is sent to the visitor's browser from the web server.

This article will focus on client side technologies, as they are the technologies understood by the average visitor's web browser. These technologies include:

HTML

XHTML

CSS

Though DHTML ? another client side technology ? does exist, allowing programs to be written so that they are executed from within the web browser, it is too intricate for this article and will therefore not be discussed in detail.

HTML ? Hyper Text Markup Language ? labels the text that you enter into your website so that a computer can understand what to do with it. First created in 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee, it is currently looked after by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

To label the text for computer understanding, HTML functions with a series of different types of ?tags?. These tags are what instruct a visitor's web browser what to do with the text in between the tags.

By utilizing HTML technology for marking-up an entire document, you can create a web page. There are many different types of HTML tag to allow you to design web sites that have a great deal of potential and possibilities.

XHTML, on the other hand, refers to eXtended Hyper Text Markup Language. This is the direction of the World Wide Web's future. W3C intends to use XHTML, in addition to many other technologies, in a project called ?The Semantic Web?. Its purpose is to allow for web pages to be understood not only by web browsers, but also by people. This permits people to utilize the internet in ways that would have been impossible only a decade ago with only HTML.

CSS, which stands for Cascading Style Sheets, goes beyond HTML and XHTML ? which only tell visual browsers how a page should be displayed only by telling the browsers how to use the text ? and tells browsers how to display the page with regards to its presentation.

CSS enables web designers to control how their documents are visually presented, whether this is only on a computer screen, or also when printed out, on a television screen, or in any other visual media.

Among the primary advantages of CSS is its ability to allow a single file ? that is, a style sheet ? to be utilized for an entire site which therefore needs to be downloaded only once. This allows for much faster downloading times for an entire site. Many sites are taking advantage of this great benefit offered by CSS.

This being said, it is important that as a web designer, you keep up with the latest technologies for creating web sites. Even within the span of a decade, everything that we know about web site creation can easily be altered beyond original recognition. Therefore, web designers must not only continuously improve the technologies that they employ for their web designs, but they must also continuously educate themselves about the up-and-coming, and how to use these new technologies.

By always keeping up with the latest in client side web site technologies, it will ensure your future in web design. Your sites will always be meaningful and competitive in the current market, and you will maintain your desirability as a website designer.