An Animated Introduction to Web Development from Back to Front

Web development combines multiple technologies to create interactive applications that run in web servers and browsers. Modern web apps require understanding both the server-side (back end) and client-side (front end) and how they communicate with ea...

Jun 26, 2025 - 05:00

An Animated Introduction to Web Development from Back to Front

Web development combines multiple technologies to create interactive applications that run in web servers and browsers. Modern web apps require understanding both the server-side (back end) and client-side (front end) and how they communicate with each other. This involves learning languages along with tools and frameworks that streamline development.

Web development has evolved significantly over the past decade. Today's developers work with sophisticated frameworks, build APIs, manage databases, and create responsive user interfaces. The ecosystem continues to grow with new tools emerging regularly.

This tutorial will get you started learning some of the most used tools and technologies of the trade. You'll learn about JavaScript, HTTP, Node, Express, JSON, SQLite, Mongo, HTML, CSS, Web Components, React, and GraphQL.

Even though there are 35 different programs in it, there are a lot of cool technologies that I am not covering. Hopefully, this material sparks your interest and you begin a journey to learn about the wonderful ecosystem built around the web.

An Animated Introduction to Web Development

To make learning web development more accessible, I have created an interactive tutorial called "An Introduction to Web Development from Back to Front." This 'book' uses annotated code playbacks to demonstrate how to build web applications step by step.

Unlike traditional tutorials that mix partial code snippets with partial explanations, code playbacks make all of the code visible with links to it in the explanation. You'll see exactly how I build up each program.

To view a code playback, click on the comments in the left panel. Each comment updates the code in the editor and highlights the change. Read the explanation, study the code, and use the built-in AI tutor if you have questions. For more information about code playbacks, you can watch a short demo here.

You can access the free 'book' of code playbacks here: https://playbackpress.com/books/webdevbook

Note on Prerequisites: This is not an introduction to programming. You should have some programming experience as I won't cover basics like if statements, loops, and functions. If you've programmed before in any language, you should be able to follow along.

If you are looking for an introduction to programming, I do have other books that introduce programming in C++ and Python along with others on the Playback Press site.

1. JavaScript

2. The Back End: Node, Express, SQLite, and Mongo

3. The Front End: HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, and Express Views

4. React

5. GraphQL

Get Started

I hope this animated introduction helps you grasp the fundamental concepts of web development and empowers you to start building your own web applications. Dive in, experiment, and let me know what you think!

If you have any questions or feedback, I'd love to hear it. Comments and thoughts are welcome anytime: mark@playbackpress.com