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Web Programming

Web programming is an essential part of any website design if you require a truly dynamic and interactive browsing experience.

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) tells the browser what to display and how to display it, but by itself it results in static pages with little or no interactivity. In order to provide some functionality to your website, there must be some kind of computer program or "script" running behind the scenes to dynamically generate the HTML and/or process the information entered by the surfer. In the example below, the information entered on the form is sent to a PHP script that retrieves the current currency exchange rates and displays the result.

Currency Exchange Calculator

To add this handy tool to your own website, copy and paste the following HTML code into your web page.

<div style="width: 490px; margin: 0 auto;"><iframe style="border-color: black;" src="http://www.paulnewson.co.uk/currency/convert.php" width="484" height="236" frameborder="1" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no"> Your browser does not appear to support i-frames. <a href="http://www.paulnewson.co.uk/currency/convert.php">Click here to see Paul Newson's Currency Conversion Tool in action</a>. </iframe><div style="text-align: center; width: 490px;" ><a href="http://www.paulnewson.co.uk/currency/" target="_top">Click here to add this handy tool to your own site</a>.</div></div>

For websites such as MySpace and LiveVideo that don't allow iframes, you need to copy and paste the following code to embed the Flash version of the currency converter into your page.

<div style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><div style="width: 484px; margin: 0 auto; border: solid 1px black;"><embed style="display: inline; width: 484px; height: 236px;" src="http://www.paulnewson.co.uk/currency/currencyconverter.swf" loop="false" quality="high" width="484" height="236" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="never" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.paulnewson.co.uk/currency/" target="_top">Click here to add this handy tool to your own site</a></div></div>

Currency Exchange Calculator (Flash Version)

Why PHP and MySQL?

Paul Newson started programming computers in 1981 and has written programs in many, many programming languages during that time, so why favour PHP?

PHP is a widely used open source programming language. This means that there are no license fees to pay and that it is constantly being developed. Most website hosting services offer PHP as standard, so even if you choose not to use the website hosting provided here, it will almost certainly be available. Couple this with the power of MySQL databases to store information and the possibilities are limitless.

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