Introduction

This tutorial is for Web designers who want fast progress in DIML concepts, whatever experienced in Web content producing. It has been constructed has a stepped path from very basic concepts to severe discussion about how Web contents can be organized. The first chapters discusses about some organization concepts that may have some influence on how we developped the DIML core itself. May experienced webmaster also have a short look to these chapters.

Do a reader need prerequisites ? Absolutely. Progessing in Web design and enhancing production rates assumes HTML concepts are known and some experiences in Web design have (what's natural !) risen some of the themes we are discussing in.

Whom the DIML is dedicated to ?

You are severe Web programmers and are daily involved in heavy development in PHP, ASP, C !!

DIML will not be revolutionnary, but will provide an accurate method to organize code, so reading and maintaining huge portions of content will be 3 times faster than for a standard PHP page. Or did you already design personal methods, libraries and standards to factorize code and rationalize Web content production?

DIML actually works both with Perl and Php. Perl is still the main version. When we started this project, Perl was (and still is) a much more powerful language than PHP. The original (latest) processor developments are available on the Perl engine. The present tutorial is thus rather perl oriented, but this should not be too uncongruous to Php users considering the very small distance between such languages.

You perform Web content but do not have many programming experiences

DIML can be a good idea to improve your productivity. This tutorial will show you how design and process can be completely separated. This lets you perform many designs including complex and dynamic ones, without having to wait for programmers being available.

Moreover, many of the standard dynamic mechanisms can be performed in pure DIML, without any scripting. Using Web Components, designers will have access to highly versatile and adaptable pre-programmed objects, using standard process programming to avoid having to develop over and over.

Take a while and watch the "designer tutorial".

You are rather a programmer and have no particular feeling for graphics and all these futile things

DIML can be a nice solution to interface your processes to screen outputs. Just program your application with trivial input/outputs (rough forms, and data printings), and let the designers give some look to all of this. They will be suprised how easy they will integrate the application !!

Take a breath and watch the "programmer tutorial".

The four courses

This tutorial contains four courses. The first course is a "basic course", that anyone wanting to work with DIML should read. The second course explains the "site designer" point of view, and how DIML can be used as API-endind boundary of the design process. Conversely, the third course will discuss about "programming and overscripting point of view", and will explain how programmers should provide data to screens.

The last course, the most abstrazct one, will tell you about the Web Component strategy that is based on the three previously knowledges.

For users who would like to sample some specific subjects The general tutorial index. Nice trip...