Hi everyone. I’m not a programmer by career, I’m a chemist but I have done some programming at work in our Access database using VB. I do get the VB and SQL WTF’s of the website.
I’m now assigned to deliver the contents to a website via an admin account; however, I want to learn some web development basics in order to have a bigger view of the picture, get myself understood better by the web developer and not rely entirely on him. However, it seems that the amount of available web technologies is staggering and I would like to focus on something more widespread to add to my curriculum instead of something useless. Yes, I'm already aware of the "The real WFT is that you are using Access", that's one of the points of bothering learning something Web related. What should I learn?
HTML4, XHTML or HTML5 (is the last one ever going to be completed?)
Since CSS seems to be the part most focused on presentation, I think I should dedicate some effort to it. CSS2 or 3?
Is Javascript or other client-side language worth it?
How much different is MySQL related to the MS Jet Engine?
I know the web developer uses a Symfony Framework and a Mac OS.
In case you’re wondering why I’m looking for counsel here of all places, it’s because I want the complete, cynical truth instead of a language-biased response. It seems to be rather hard to get it in other places.