Which is the best scripting language for web design?

It's hard to say there really is a best language. Let's just say there's a huge variety to choose from and you have to pick the best one for the job. For server-side scripting, some of the more popular ones currently floating around are Ruby (running on the Rails framework, for the most part), PHP (running on any assortment of frameworks--my personal choice would be CakePHP), Python (running on...Django?), and Java. PHP would probably score high in terms of scaling whereas Ruby would score higher in terms of code maintainability. (OTOH, PHP can also score very high in terms of maintainability if PHP programmers would choose the right frameworks...) Ruby is well-known to have some deployment issues, so if you are working for a client who intends to host their site on a shared server, it might not be a good language choice. Python has been known to solve certain complications that Perl has, and might be a good choice considering the outlooks of Django. Now, for client-side scripting there pretty much is only Javascript. But Javascript is a versatile language...my only advice would be to not overuse it, since flashy effects with it are not always appealing for a site based on functionality.

In my opinion there're only two different ones to chose from and that's ASP.net or PHP. Perl is to hard to learn and dosent' really work very well (very old langauge). ASP is outdated now it's all about ASP.net. Java Script is not a langauge used to design websites. It's used to check if for instance a login is correct or if a form is filled out correctly on a PHP site.

I would have to say PHP. It's easy to learn, dynamic, and fun. Or maybe that is just because I have used it for about since I was 11--11 years ago. I orginally wanted to learn how to do form, like log in forms, and the more I read on PHP, the more I became interested. It blossomed into much more. And I'd have to disagree with the person who said HTML is because in PERL and PHP, you dont need HTML to print or echo something to a displaying screen. However, HTML can be embedded into PHP or vise versa. In PHP, you DONT NEED HTML to open an image from the web servers directory nor do you need HTML to inject data into a database. That's all purely PHP! Go with PHP. PHP can be used with MySql, JavaScript, DHTML, Etc. It can be used to copy, upload, merge, edit, etc images and files on the web server. The possiblities with PHP are almost endless!

uh.. if you say web design what occurs to mind is the interface side of a website, not the process behind it, so I guess html, javascript and css would be proof very useful, as for web development, I only used PHP so I cant really commet on the other languages :D

I think php and java script is better language for web design . but only for web design the java script is best for designer view .

I dont think its possible to purely compare javascript amongst ASP, PHP and Perl. Compared to the work done by those three languages, Javascript functionality is severly limited. I would prefer PHP for server-sided scripting. And Javascript for stuff such as form validation, generally making the surfer's life easy :P. Although I would have to say that Javascript is very useful for implementing browser based features into your website. PHP - Javascript powerful combination!

Well, I mean I think this is the obvious answer, HTML. It's the base of all of my website, and is surrounded by other scripting languages like CSS, JavaScript, and some PHP. PHP can be used to do almost everything that HTML can do, I just like HTML more.