Can I use PHP instead of ASP and instead of using tables use CSS

[Spookie71]

Hi All

I want to use a book that I used before when I tried designing a site using ASP. The book is called "Teach yourself E-commerce Programming with ASP in 21 days.

What I would like to do is use this book as a sort of template, but instead of using tables to display my products in the database I would like to use CSS with your help of course. My other question is more related to PHP than CSS so I apoligize if I'm in the wrong forum for this question.

How similar are ASP and PHP too one another, is it just a matter of having the proper tags

<?php ?>

as apposed to having

<% %>

or is there alot more to it than that.

If you believe it to be a waste of time to try to use this book as a template and there is actually a product catalog/Database tutorial using CSS out there that would do the job better please let me know.

[Dark Tranquility]

Hi All

I want to use a book that I used before when I tried designing a site using ASP. The book is called "Teach yourself E-commerce Programming with ASP in 21 days.

What I would like to do is use this book as a sort of template, but instead of using tables to display my products in the database I would like to use CSS with your help of course. My other question is more related to PHP than CSS so I apoligize if I'm in the wrong forum for this question.

How similar are ASP and PHP too one another, is it just a matter of having the proper tags

<?php ?>

as apposed to having

<% %>

or is there alot more to it than that.

If you believe it to be a waste of time to try to use this book as a template and there is actually a product catalog/Database tutorial using CSS out there that would do the job better please let me know.

Hey!
How good are you in HTML and CSS?
of course you can use CSS for that matter despite that displaying products in a table is not bad as it can be considered as a tabular data! what is deprecated is the the use of tables to design a site!
As for the differences between PHP and ASP they are bigger than just having the proper tags!!

There are many books that should interest you here:
http://www.sitepoint.com/books/

for HTML and CSS, and if you're a beginner I would suggest Ian Lloyd's book:
Build Your Own Web Site The Right Way Using HTML & CSS
and for learning PHP/MySQL I would suggest Kevin Yank's book:
Build Your Own Database Driven Website Using PHP & MySQL

The articles and blogs here at SP should also help you a lot:
http://www.sitepoint.com/recentarticles/
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/

I hope my answer helps you...

[limepickle]

Hi Spookie,

I''ve worked with PHP for a few years, and I'm looking after a site at present using ASP classic. I'd say the two are a fair bit different if you're learning. Obviously if you know both languages well its easier to see the similarities between the 2, and one may say that they are 'not so' different?

Also proper semantic HTML is a far cry from table based design. Perhaps you can pick up some programming methodologies from the book....

IMO I'd say get a new book As for other tuts, I don't know of one that really combines CSS with E-Commerce programming, as they tend be be seperate things, but this site has some 1st class tut's as a starter.

EDIT: Dark, you type quicker than me!! ( A much better answer! )