Alternatives to HTML for website creation?

Question

It seems the most common aproach to web design is to use HTML/XHTML & CSS in conjunction with other technologies or languages like Javascript or PHP.

On a theoretical level, I'm interested to know what other languages or technologies could be used to build an entire site without using a single HTML tag or CSS style for styling/positioning?

Could a website be made only using XML or PHP alone, including actual styling and positioning?

Presumably Flash sites are till embedded in HTML tags?

Thanks

Answer 1

There are actually several solutions that allow you to nearly completely avoid CSS and HTML.

GWT: Google Web Toolkit

Written in Java and will allow you to build both server and client code in Java. Used to build Google Wave.

Cappuccino and Objective-J:

Objective-J is to JavaScript as Objective-C is to C. It extends JavaScript with many near features, including type-checking, classes and types. Cappuccino is like Cacoa (Mac OS X GUI toolkit). Using these two you can build incredibly rich and desktop like webapps. They run mostly on the client side and you can use whatever you want on the server. A good example is 280slides

SproutCore is similar to Cappuccino, but it uses pure JavaScript instead. Apple is using SproutCore to make me.com.

I should also mention that knowledge to HTML, CSS, JavaScript is a good skill to know, just like understanding your compiler is a good skill.

EDIT: As said above Adobe Flash can also be used.

Answer 2

The Wt C++ Web Toolkit.

You can write your web application in C++ using Qt-style widgets (input boxes, buttons, tabs etc) and hook up client-side events to C++ code on your server. All without writing any HTML or CSS.

A sample application from their website (you may also want to look at this excellent tutorial):

HelloApplication::HelloApplication(const WEnvironment& env)
  : WApplication(env)
{
  setTitle("Hello world");                               // application title

  root()->addWidget(new WText("Your name, please ? "));  // show some text
  nameEdit_ = new WLineEdit(root());                     // allow text input
  nameEdit_->setFocus();                                 // give focus

  WPushButton *b = new WPushButton("Greet me.", root()); // create a button
  b->setMargin(5, Left);                                 // add 5 pixels margin

  root()->addWidget(new WBreak());                       // insert a line break

  greeting_ = new WText(root());                         // empty text

  /* when the button is clicked, call the 'greet' method */
  b->clicked().connect(this, &HelloApplication::greet);
}

void HelloApplication::greet()
{
  /* set the empty text object greeting_ to greet the name entered */
  greeting_->setText("Hello there, " + nameEdit_->text());
}

Answer 3

I think you can have an URL pointing directly at a hosted Flash (SWF) file, I've certainly done this though I don't know if all browsers work. Anyhow, I tested this when developing MyDinos.

e.g: http://mydinos.com/home.swf

Answer 4

A website is always viewed through a browser (at least always if you are human :)). Browsers understand HTML. Whatever the technology - you have to basically render HTML. Even in cases with rich technologies like flash, the flash object that is rendered by a browser plugin is embedded inside the HTML.

In theory it is possible to do it without HTML, but the question becomes how much does the product diverge from the definition of a website...

Answer 5

Since browsers view HTML, I'm assuming you mean create a site without ever having to edit/write HTML/CSS. The framework/app environment/whatever taking care of everything for you - yet still allowing you control over the presentation layer.

Seems like that is certainly possible on a theoretical level.

I ran across Noloh (not one line of html) a while back. Was intrigued, but never actually tried it out.

From various places on the Noloh site:

Because NOLOH does not rely on HTML or pages, maintaining complex rich Internet applications is significantly easier than with other methods.

Developing applications with NOLOH only requires using a single, unified language: a superset of PHP that completely maintains all aspects of server-client communication for you!

Answer 6

I think you could build a site entirely in SVG.

The front page of emacsformacosx is almost entirely SVG, for example.

Downsides: It wouldn't be viewable in IE (at least through version 8). And last I looked, text support, like flowing and justification, was weaker in SVG. (You could embed HTML inside an SVG element when you needed sophisticated text features, but that would violate your no-HTML rule.)

You'd probably still want to use CSS with SVG, because it's a good idea there for the same reason it's a good idea with HTML, but it wouldn't be necessary.