PHP vs HTML

Hi, there. I don't even have enough technical background to know how to phrase my question, but let's give it a try, anyway...

Is there something about PHP that would allow one to produce a more attractive webpage than one using only HTML? I've noticed the webpages that I've seen that seem to exhude "high quality", and rich, bold, crisp, colours and graphics, etc., have the "php" extension. On the other hand, I never seem to see any webpages of similar quality that show the "html" extension.

So I'm wondering if there is some inherent disadvangtage to hmtl, and inherent AD-vantage to PHP, that would explain my observation?

When it comes to "high quality" and rich, bold, crisp colours and graphics, PHP has absolutely nothing to do with it.

PHP allows additional functionality to a web page--like displaying the latest news headlines on a web page. That's all it does, it has nothing to do with how a web page looks.

It's the overall graphic design of the web page that makes a site look professional, not the PHP programming part.

You may like how the current batch of php driven cms products look. They tend to have a very unified interface, with some decent thought put into the look and feel of the output.As bhartzer says, php has zero to do with the html and design of the site, my guess is you like how say mambo, or whatever, look.

There are certain things however that tend to make scripted sites in general look a bit more pro, if they're done well, such as the fact that they usually tend to be built using blocks of data, like nav bars, headers, footers, etc, not randomly coded html. But you can run php as html too, most of my sites have that clean look and the pages are all with .html extensions, although they are all php generated.

Or maybe it's just because php coders are better... ;-), just kidding... open source does tend to attract a type that likes hacking at code, might also have something to do with it.

I'm not so sure. After programming in PHP for, oh, a billion years or so I think Lane99 might have something here.

For instance, I've noticed that photos of balding people seem to have more hair on their head in PHP than HTML. The sentence spelling even seems better and the lines are somehow straighter. And colors look like a backdrop from Fantasia.

On the other hand, I should probably just check the diopter strength of my glasses more often.

I noticed that thing with photos of balding people too, it's weird, must be the image processing or something. I like how the HTML comes out all color coded, I don't even need to use a text editor to read it.

I've got to tell you - I laughed aloud at the last post, which is something I haven't had the chance to do since I stopped talking to screens.

No offense to the original poster but I'm just tickled that those of us who are so seriously involved in programming - constantly - can actually take a break and lighten up once in awhile.

On a more somber note, it reminds me of Jim Wilson - the founder of these forums - who would sometimes insert something completely absurd into an otherwise dry and calculated discussion just to break up the tunnel vision and intensity.

So blessings to Jim and hat's off to you lizardz. You've both improved my outlook today from different eras, wild as it seems.

Glad to know that you all are soooo professional! I learn so much from thses forums and I think I have gotten the most from this thread!

Kudos to you all!

Thanks for the info, bhartzer and lizardz. The suggestion that PHP allows more unified and cohesive presentations and this is probably what I was perceiving and was impressed by makes sense to me.

As a viewer/reader of websites you never see any PHP at all.

The PHP script runs on the webserver, and processes information, sometimes that information is in a database hidden on the webserver. The output of that script is a page of HTML. That page of HTML is what you see, not the script that produced it.

Where php might have an advantage is often it lets you group things together - for instance, with php you can have a header and footer for your whole site in one place, which makes changes (and tinkering, and improving) much easier, since you only have one or two files to change to change the site's look.

Also, if someone is using php, they quite likely are comfortable with CSS (cascading styles sheets), which can make a real difference in how a site looks.

You cant compare PHP with HTML. They arnt the same thing.

PHP is dynamic and outputs HTML, while HTML is static.

<i>Also, if someone is using php, they quite likely are comfortable with CSS (cascading styles sheets), which can make a real difference in how a site looks.</i>

Just because you know PHP doesnt mean you know CSS. CSS Should be learnt before PHP.

CSS is good. Banish all the <font> tags from your pages. Replace them with just a few lines of CSS in an external CSS file.

To fully take advantage of CSS then you need to build your pages from headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, and forms and then style those blocks.

I don't know of any WYSIWYG's that support the creation of PHP scripts... perhaps the people who spend who-knows-how-many hours coding in plaintext want their site to look like they put some thought into it..? (and, then again, you might be witnessing cross-browser incompatabilities owing to WYSIWYGs)

Just a little quirk that might be worthy of totally ignoring - if I were you I would - the php extension on a page does not necessarily mean that it had anything to do with php at all! I have some pages on my site that have the php ending, and they have about as much in common with php as Donald Duck has with the Yugoslavian Formation Tap Dancing Team!

On a more serious note I too have noticed this strange phenomena and would suggest that it probably has something to do with the fact that those people who can code in php probably have a better understanding of things such as CSS and JavaScript. At the end of the day though, a good designer can put together a darn good page using nothing more than good old HTML. No matter now good a coder, if they have no design style then the page is going to look it whether it's php, HTML or some currently unheard of language.

Ah the joys of talking MySQL to my children ... I'm sure they think their old man has lost his marbles! And, they're probably right