Creating a website in pure CSS can be a very demanding task. If you have ever tried, chances are it drove you crazy. Assuming you have tried to create a high quality web presentation tier of course. It's not that the CSS specification is so extremely hard to learn, at least it's not rocket science. The problem with CSS though, is to what extent the web browser adheres to the specification. There are some very good tutorials and guides out there to assist you in learning CSS, but most of them are lacking complete cross browser reference.
You have been reading and learning the CSS specification and got it all figured out, at least you think so. Anyhow you start out creating your first pure CSS web page, probably testing it out in Internet Explorer along the way. And all of the sudden strange things are happening, margins are getting doubled when applied to floats, some CSS properties does not work at all, the box model is totally wrong etc. This is the sad truth of the most used browser in the world, Internet Explorer. A web developers life would be a releif without it, i'm pretty sure most of you developers would agree. As a web developer, there is no way to escape building pages for this browser. At least not if you don't want to miss out on 85% of the people surfing the web. This is internets explorers global user share according to OneStat.com . So unless you are selling "I love Firefox" t-shirts you are not getting away from I.E.
However if you are going to be successful and complete your project, you cant let this bring you down. It will probably be very frustrating from time to time but there are web sites out there to help you. Positioniseverything.net is one of the sites out there with material on cross browser issues. Places like it, will assist you through this hell.
This fact will make you feel very counterproductive at first and because of I.E, in fact you are. But try to view the CSS learning curve as longer instead of feeling like a lousy developer. The learning curve dramatically increases because of the differences across browsers, and it is usually hard to know what information to search for. In general people have the idea of that it is easy to create a web page/site but with specification violations and demands for cross browser compliance to your web app, it rarely is. Upon that you can add accessibility, usability, fast loaded, nice looking GUI etc. Then it is not so easy any more. I have come to realize that the presentation layer area is huge and extremely imnportant. I have never realised that before. It can be a quite a complex area.
I believe there is no point in trying to convert people from I.E users to Firefoxes. I.E will probably always be around and hopefulle it will be standards compliant one day.
/Daniel
Monday, November 27, 2006
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
My Internet Guru Belief!
I have been surfing the web for about 10 years now, the last 4-5 years i have been looking for some way to make money. I guess most of us have been bumping into or looking for how to make the big bucks. Ideally with some incredible system or method. Many of these methods are of course scams or way to optimistic. While there are still alot of these scams left out there, the growth of real professionally produced "marketing packages" has increased. There are alot of so called "Internet Gurus" selling marketing systems. Writing about how to do this and how to do that is very popular right now, especially about marketing and money making. I mean, the work they must put into creating all these amazing marketing packages, do they even have another business? Even marketing packages must be marketed, that is a big effort also. I think that the biggest business they have is selling these marketing e-books, cd's or whatever it is.
These days, making money is one of the most appealing things to man and they know that. That is of course why they put so much time and effort into "revealing" how to make it on the web. I doubt most of them have made very much money on something else besides selling "making money ideas and super duper marketing techniques" on the internet. The idea of freedom and making money at the same time is what most of us want, isn't it? In this world of consumption, this want is getting closer and closer to a basic need just like eating, sleeping or sex. We want to be around our family and have financial freedom at the same time. That along with higher and higher demands on bringing home the cash is making us a very easy target. This is what most of the marketing Gurus know and are making money of.
So what am i trying to say? Marketing is an art and you could sell different strategies about it for as long as you have got new ideas. It is a great way of making money if you're good at it. But i am really sick of all the gurus and there strategies, by reading to much of it will just make one confused.
I'm going to try to make it by doing something completely else, and i'll write about it here so you all can read about it.
These days, making money is one of the most appealing things to man and they know that. That is of course why they put so much time and effort into "revealing" how to make it on the web. I doubt most of them have made very much money on something else besides selling "making money ideas and super duper marketing techniques" on the internet. The idea of freedom and making money at the same time is what most of us want, isn't it? In this world of consumption, this want is getting closer and closer to a basic need just like eating, sleeping or sex. We want to be around our family and have financial freedom at the same time. That along with higher and higher demands on bringing home the cash is making us a very easy target. This is what most of the marketing Gurus know and are making money of.
So what am i trying to say? Marketing is an art and you could sell different strategies about it for as long as you have got new ideas. It is a great way of making money if you're good at it. But i am really sick of all the gurus and there strategies, by reading to much of it will just make one confused.
I'm going to try to make it by doing something completely else, and i'll write about it here so you all can read about it.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Marketing
The last couple of days i have been reading a lot. Marketing techniques mostly . I am overwhelmed by the amount of articles, ebooks, sites and information in general out there. A lot of people are trying to make it on the web, there are so much more content out there now than for a couple of years ago. This line appears in the header at ezinearticles.com, "36,095 Expert Authors Sharing Their Best Ezine Articles". 36,095 expert authors? Can that be true? I believe there are many self acclaimed experts in that bunch of writers.
So, how is one suppose to choose what to read? I am not sure, i'm really having a hard time doing that. Not only is it hard to choose the right material, but also to know when you have read enough and are ready to take action. I believe , one does'nt need to know everything about everything to take action towards your goal. Start to work and learn what's needed along the way . A well known clothing factoring company says we should, Just do it. I think they've got a point!
The trend seems to mainly be about building content rich sites about small niches. You dont need deep technical server side programming skills to build these kind of sites, generate quality content and market yourself with good SEO(on and off page) and networking. Not quite that easy but it is being done a lot right now. Will this create more room for advanced technincal service oriented sites? Instead of creating niche content, could you provide niche services? It's definetly worth considering, if you are a developer with some server side working skills.
Even though, the marketing effort might be the biggest challenge. Let's face it, no marketing no business!
So, how is one suppose to choose what to read? I am not sure, i'm really having a hard time doing that. Not only is it hard to choose the right material, but also to know when you have read enough and are ready to take action. I believe , one does'nt need to know everything about everything to take action towards your goal. Start to work and learn what's needed along the way . A well known clothing factoring company says we should, Just do it. I think they've got a point!
The trend seems to mainly be about building content rich sites about small niches. You dont need deep technical server side programming skills to build these kind of sites, generate quality content and market yourself with good SEO(on and off page) and networking. Not quite that easy but it is being done a lot right now. Will this create more room for advanced technincal service oriented sites? Instead of creating niche content, could you provide niche services? It's definetly worth considering, if you are a developer with some server side working skills.
Even though, the marketing effort might be the biggest challenge. Let's face it, no marketing no business!
Monday, October 30, 2006
Accessibility; profit, ethic and moral combined?
In my last post i briefly mentioned accessibility on the web. I have long thought of this as a very powerful marketing argument and it's goodwill in the area of disabled people. It is not a very easy task to make a website totally accessible,(not the first time any way) whether it is built from scratch or an existing modified. Of course it depends a lot on what type of site you have and how it is built . If it is a content rich and informative site or more of a service oriented will make some difference. But in general, to build a site conforming to WCAG in full, will make the work more challenging. It will put a lot of focus on the way you build the client tier, i.e the pages with your markup. You will also to some extent, have to imaginatively put yourself in a position of e.g, someone who is blind or deaf. Fortunately there has been guidelines written, for how we shall create our web pages and make the content available to everyone. Even though these guidelines are extremely valueable for a developer, they don’t offer a solution in every situation.
Some of the disabilities a developer could be faced with writing code for.
1. Low Vision or complete blindness.
2. Colorblindness
3. Deafness
4. cognitive disabilities
And how could this be profitable? It could of course give you publicity. If your main target is to make your information and/or services available to the maximum amount of people. Use accessibility as one of your main marketing strategies, and spreading the word of your great site all over the place. You could write an e-book or post an article in some e-zine directory like ezinearticles, to market your site. You should have a much bigger chance to get publicity in articles on the internet, magazines etc and to get inbound links. I cannot recall having seen any website using this argument, besised Accessibilty tutorials etc. That is probably because there are so many poorly written websites out there. The pages written in a website, must be well structured. When writing a page, the creator must have the disabled peoples assistive tools in mind and write the markup thereafter and of course follow the WCAG. According to my experience, they rarely do.
I will continue to write about Web Accessibility and the business around it. I am pretty convinced that it could boost marketing results, if the web site is implemented and marketed in a good way.
/Daniel
Some of the disabilities a developer could be faced with writing code for.
1. Low Vision or complete blindness.
2. Colorblindness
3. Deafness
4. cognitive disabilities
And how could this be profitable? It could of course give you publicity. If your main target is to make your information and/or services available to the maximum amount of people. Use accessibility as one of your main marketing strategies, and spreading the word of your great site all over the place. You could write an e-book or post an article in some e-zine directory like ezinearticles, to market your site. You should have a much bigger chance to get publicity in articles on the internet, magazines etc and to get inbound links. I cannot recall having seen any website using this argument, besised Accessibilty tutorials etc. That is probably because there are so many poorly written websites out there. The pages written in a website, must be well structured. When writing a page, the creator must have the disabled peoples assistive tools in mind and write the markup thereafter and of course follow the WCAG. According to my experience, they rarely do.
I will continue to write about Web Accessibility and the business around it. I am pretty convinced that it could boost marketing results, if the web site is implemented and marketed in a good way.
/Daniel
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Setting up my Development Evironment.
Spent the last couple of days working with my development environment. I am trying to set it up so i will be able to focus primarily on content generation and less on technical issues. I have decided to go with the "niche site" building idea, and try to create multiple streams of income via these sites and Google Adsense. Maybe i will build something else in addtion to the niche sites. Have so many ideas it's hard to pick one.
I am using the Eclipse | IDE and JEE5 as development platform with a MySql back-end. The MVC architecture is implemented with help of Apache Struts. I use Java because my previous experience working with JEE/JAVA has been good. It is quite complex, especially writing all the build scripts and XML witout the help of any tools. But it's a good challenge and i like that :-)
Just read an article with this title JEE5: the beginning of the end?. It is about the complexity of the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition that was suppose to have been to greatly removed with JEE5, but has failed to deliver. Well i hope that JEE5 will continue to live. The drawback with using JEE5 is the lack of cheap hosting. Hopefully that will change.
Accessibility has been alot on my mind lately, i beleive that is a very strong marketing tool and could create attention. Maybe not for a small niche site but something bigger.
/Daniel
I am using the Eclipse | IDE and JEE5 as development platform with a MySql back-end. The MVC architecture is implemented with help of Apache Struts. I use Java because my previous experience working with JEE/JAVA has been good. It is quite complex, especially writing all the build scripts and XML witout the help of any tools. But it's a good challenge and i like that :-)
Just read an article with this title JEE5: the beginning of the end?. It is about the complexity of the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition that was suppose to have been to greatly removed with JEE5, but has failed to deliver. Well i hope that JEE5 will continue to live. The drawback with using JEE5 is the lack of cheap hosting. Hopefully that will change.
Accessibility has been alot on my mind lately, i beleive that is a very strong marketing tool and could create attention. Maybe not for a small niche site but something bigger.
/Daniel
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Had a very giving day, reading blogs :-)
Spent the most of my day reading, found a great blog about Search Engine Optimization(SEO) and other great stuff for a web entrepreneur wannabe. His name is Yaro Starak and seems to know what he is talking about. I had one of those halleluja moments after reading some of his material. Besides SEO and other marketing techniques, he is also talking about niche content sites.
By definition, then, a business that focuses on a niche market is addressing a need for a product or service that is not being addressed by mainstream providers.You can think of a niche market as a narrowly defined group of potential customers.
For example, instead of offering to develop entire web based systems, like a big company would. You might focus and specialize on making web sites accessible. This is just an example of course.
So why would you do that? Because there is not as much competition there.
To capitalize on a niche market, you find or develop a market niche. It should already have some customers and preferably be growing.
So what about Content?
1.Search Engines are Crazy about Content.
The more content you can come up with, the more pages search engines have to index. Which leads to more exposure for your target audience when they search the engines.
2. Your network of Niche Content Sites can grow fast.
Content is what makes "the web go round". People are searching the web for information like crazy. The more quality content published you have, the more growth of business you have.
How can you build it fast? You can buy content from thousands of content publishers over the web. And it does note have to be expensive either. Or you can write it yourself of course, and there is even some free content. The free content is not unique though, Search Enginges like unique content. Just make sure it is high quality!
3.The information is targeted against your niche.
The person who made that search for, lets say dogs. He/her will love your site that has quality content about dogs.
And how can you profit from this?
Well you could profit in several ways. I will briefly explain my favourite, Google Adsense program. I think that this has made it very possible, not easy, for the little guy to make money. You are actually going to make money frome other peoples work, sounds good right :-)
People with commercial websites or affiliates of them, often use Google to advertise. These ad's are often made up of some text, a title and some sales pitch.
They pay Google everytime a user clicks on there ad and hope and pray the visitor will buy there product or service. These advertisers can get there ads displayed on sites with related content to whatever they are selling, if an owner of a site is a part of the Google Adsense program, he/she will get money everytime a visitor of the site clicks on an ad dispayed by Google Adsense. Chanses are big the visitor will because the ad relates to your content and he visited your site for a reason :-)
Time to go to sleep now, getting up early tomorrow, good night /Daniel
By definition, then, a business that focuses on a niche market is addressing a need for a product or service that is not being addressed by mainstream providers.You can think of a niche market as a narrowly defined group of potential customers.
For example, instead of offering to develop entire web based systems, like a big company would. You might focus and specialize on making web sites accessible. This is just an example of course.
So why would you do that? Because there is not as much competition there.
To capitalize on a niche market, you find or develop a market niche. It should already have some customers and preferably be growing.
So what about Content?
1.Search Engines are Crazy about Content.
The more content you can come up with, the more pages search engines have to index. Which leads to more exposure for your target audience when they search the engines.
2. Your network of Niche Content Sites can grow fast.
Content is what makes "the web go round". People are searching the web for information like crazy. The more quality content published you have, the more growth of business you have.
How can you build it fast? You can buy content from thousands of content publishers over the web. And it does note have to be expensive either. Or you can write it yourself of course, and there is even some free content. The free content is not unique though, Search Enginges like unique content. Just make sure it is high quality!
3.The information is targeted against your niche.
The person who made that search for, lets say dogs. He/her will love your site that has quality content about dogs.
And how can you profit from this?
Well you could profit in several ways. I will briefly explain my favourite, Google Adsense program. I think that this has made it very possible, not easy, for the little guy to make money. You are actually going to make money frome other peoples work, sounds good right :-)
People with commercial websites or affiliates of them, often use Google to advertise. These ad's are often made up of some text, a title and some sales pitch.
They pay Google everytime a user clicks on there ad and hope and pray the visitor will buy there product or service. These advertisers can get there ads displayed on sites with related content to whatever they are selling, if an owner of a site is a part of the Google Adsense program, he/she will get money everytime a visitor of the site clicks on an ad dispayed by Google Adsense. Chanses are big the visitor will because the ad relates to your content and he visited your site for a reason :-)
Time to go to sleep now, getting up early tomorrow, good night /Daniel
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
All that glitters is not gold.
Ever felt like you never going to make financial freedom and get that great life you see the celebreties on tv have? Maybe you feel like you never will get that car or house in the nicer part of town or never will be able to give your kids what you think they deserve. Well i do, every day!!! I know that there are many more of my kind out there that was not born into a rich family with a big house, who can afford expensive vacations and nice summer places.
It makes you fel like a loser, doesnt it? If it doesn't , congratulations and more power to you. I am one of those dreamers that just can't let go of the thought of gaining financial freedom. This world is totally driven by money in my opinion, without the dough one is missing out on so much experiences that would enrichen life.
My goal is to create a network of people that can contribute to my and your success, and for me it starts with this Blog. Think of it like a forum where we could share our knowledge, experience, idea's and and help each other to make it.
So who am i: a 29 year old male/father/boyfriend from Sweden, been working as a Systems Developer/Programmer for about 5 years but i am now unemployed. I like to workout a few days a week and take every chance to sit in front of my computer to look for business ideas.
For several years i have been planning on becoming a web entrepreneur and try to make a living out of it, but i have failed. Why? because most of the time there has been som kind of distraction like a "get rich scheme", playing poker or something else. This time i am determined to not get distracted by the overwhelming amount of bad business idea's or some other fast money temptation.
I will share my thoughts, experiences etc here, while i am working my *** off to get where i want to be. I hope to get intouch with other people with similar dreams.
Now it is time to go to bed, good night.
/Daniel
It makes you fel like a loser, doesnt it? If it doesn't , congratulations and more power to you. I am one of those dreamers that just can't let go of the thought of gaining financial freedom. This world is totally driven by money in my opinion, without the dough one is missing out on so much experiences that would enrichen life.
My goal is to create a network of people that can contribute to my and your success, and for me it starts with this Blog. Think of it like a forum where we could share our knowledge, experience, idea's and and help each other to make it.
So who am i: a 29 year old male/father/boyfriend from Sweden, been working as a Systems Developer/Programmer for about 5 years but i am now unemployed. I like to workout a few days a week and take every chance to sit in front of my computer to look for business ideas.
For several years i have been planning on becoming a web entrepreneur and try to make a living out of it, but i have failed. Why? because most of the time there has been som kind of distraction like a "get rich scheme", playing poker or something else. This time i am determined to not get distracted by the overwhelming amount of bad business idea's or some other fast money temptation.
I will share my thoughts, experiences etc here, while i am working my *** off to get where i want to be. I hope to get intouch with other people with similar dreams.
Now it is time to go to bed, good night.
/Daniel
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