The Curse of IE

There is no question in my mind that Firefox is a vastly superior web browser to Internet Explorer. That may sound like a conceited fan-boy statement, but it really isn't. I'm not saying Firefox is the best (I'm waiting for a Linux version of Google Chrome). Its just that, as a web developer, I can't stand the way IE continually ignores internet standards when displaying web pages. My pages will look amazing in every other browser - but alas! I will go to check them in IE and inevitably something is not displaying properly. I realize, however, that the majority of internet surfers use IE and so, much to my chagrin, I must make it look pretty in IE as well. What's more annoying is the fact that, since IE is so closely connected to the Windows OS, I can only have one version of IE installed at a time. Yet, my statistics tell me that there are still as many people using IE 6 as there are using IE 7 or 8. And pages display vastly different in each version. This is why I wrote this post. Today I discovered the Internet Explorer Collection. Someone has put together stand-alone builds of every version of IE from 1.0 to 8.0. Now I can test my pages in every version of IE that I need to! Oh, this is a bitter-sweet day. As a result, today I used IE 8 for the first time. And guess what? My page displayed properly! I was shocked. And amazed. And thrilled. Unfortunately I also got an illegal opperation as soon as I tried to open a new tab. Oh well, nothing is perfect :p. Its hard to tell if this is a problem with the browser itself or if it is just an unfortunate side-effect of making a stand-alone version.

Web Fonts

One of the sites that I am editing right now is very heavily based on fonts. I need to have the right fonts in the right places or my client wont be happy. But I find fonts to be such a pain. Which fonts are 'web safe'? What happens if a user doesn't have the right font installed? As I was coding the site I ran across a great article entitled "The Myth Of ‘Web-Safe’ Fonts". It's worth a read for anyone interested in making sure that fonts display properly on their pages. Most interesting was the discussion of the five 'font family stacks' and the three types of fonts that a browser can fall back to if the proper font isn't installed.

First Steps - Creating Web Sites

Getting started with computer programming can be a challenge. Where is the best place to start? Designing websites is an easy way to see quick results for your efforts. The most basic way to get started with web design is to use a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web editor. Dreamweaver is the champion of this type of software. For the amateur who is just beginning the open source NVU should do fine. However, I highly recommend that you learn to create your own websites using only a text editor and html, javascript, and php. The most difficult part of learning to design web pages will be finding the right sites to learn from.

Learn HTML - DaveSite.com

I highly recommend using DaveSite.com for an HTML tutorial because it assumes no prior knowledge and emphasizes practical application.

Learn CSS - DaveSite.com

CSS is an important part of defining the layout of your web page. To find out more about CSS and how to use it use Dave's tutorial. Visit the W3Schools website for more tutorial and a handy reference guide.

Learn Javascript - Thau's Javascript Tutorial

Thau's Javascript Tutorial on Webmonkey.com was by far the best Javascript tutorial I could find. Once you've completed it you can move on to the Advanced Javascript Tutorial.

Learn PHP - PHP From the Ground Up

By now we are getting into designing more advanced websites. Many websites will not require PHP or another server side language. If you feel limited by the capabilities of html and javascript then it's time to check out this tutorial.