From http://www.w3schools.com (Copyright Refsnes Data)
Every Web developer has to know the building blocks of the Web:
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HTML is the language of the Web, and every Web developer should have a basic understanding of it.
HTML 4.01 is an important Web standard. and very different from HTML 3.2.
When tags like <font> and color attributes were added to HTML 3.2, it started a developer's nightmare. Development of web sites where font information must be added to every single Web page is a long and expensive pain.
With HTML 4.01 all formatting can be moved out of the HTML document and into a separate style sheet.
HTML 4.01 is also important because XHTML 1.0 (the latest HTML standard) is HTML 4.01 "reformulated" as an XML application. Using HTML 4.01 in your pages makes the future upgrade from HTML to XHTML a very simple process.
Make sure you use the latest HTML 4.01 standard.
Study our Complete HTML 4.01 reference.
Styles define how HTML elements are displayed, just like the font tag in HTML 3.2. Styles are normally saved in files external to HTML documents. External style sheets enable you to change the appearance and layout of all the pages in your Web, just by editing a single CSS document. If you have ever tried changing something like the font or color of all the headings in all your Web pages, you will understand how CSS can save you a lot of work.
Make sure you study our CSS tutorial.
XHTML stands for Extensible HyperText Markup Language.
XHTML 1.0 is now the latest HTML standard from W3C. It became an official Recommendation January 26, 2000. A W3C Recommendation means that the specification is stable and that the specification is now a Web standard.
XHTML is a reformulation of HTML 4.01 in XML and can be put to immediate use with existing browsers by following a few simple guidelines.
To prepare for the future: Read how this site was converted to XHTML.
The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is NOT a replacement for HTML. In future Web development, XML will be used to describe and carry the data, while HTML will be used to display the data.
Our best description of XML is as a cross-platform, software- and hardware-independent tool for storing and transmitting information.
We believe that XML is as important to the Web as HTML was to the foundation of the Web and that XML will be the most common tool for all data manipulation and data transmission.
Make sure you study our XML tutorial.
XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) is a language for transforming XML.
Future Web sites will have to deliver data in different formats, to different browsers, and to other Web servers. To transform XML data into different formats, XSLT is the new W3C standard.
XSLT can transform an XML file into a format that is recognizable to a browser. One such format is HTML. Another format is WML - the mark-up language used in many handheld devices.
XSLT can also add elements, remove, rearrange and sort elements, test and make decisions about which elements to display, and a lot more.
Make sure you study our XSLT tutorial.
Client-side scripting is about "programming" the behavior of an Internet browser. To be able to deliver more dynamic web site content, you should teach yourself JavaScript:
Make sure you study our JavaScript Tutorial.
Server-side scripting is about "programming" an Internet server. To be able to deliver more dynamic web site content, you should teach yourself server-side scripting. With server-side scripting, you can:
At W3Schools we demonstrate server-side scripting by using Active Server Pages (ASP) and PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP).
Make sure you study our ASP tutorial or our PHP tutorial.
The Structured Query Language (SQL) is the common standard for accessing databases such as SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, and Access.
Knowledge of SQL is invaluable for anyone wanting to store or retrieve data from a database.
Any webmaster should know that SQL is the true engine for interacting with databases on the Web.
Make sure you study our SQL tutorial.
One important thing to know is that the functionality of Web Sites will change very drastically. We will see a huge shift from sites displaying "static content" to data driven sites delivering "dynamic content".
We will also see a lot of new browsers, like the browsers found in mobile devices, and we will see a lot more use of XML to communicate data between servers, and between servers and browsers.
From http://www.w3schools.com (Copyright Refsnes Data)