The Cross Browser Hell, Don't Give Up!

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

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.

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!