I have a crazy idea.
Creating web pages could be as easy as copy/pasting the things you want from a catalogue of known-to-work parts. Then they would be to standards and work in all browsers.
When you cook something, you look up a recipe. You follow it, and out comes a decent cake. Next time you might vary the ingredients, or add something extra.
Creating a web page should be as easy as following a recipe.
But it isn’t.
Lets just look as some of the problems a novice web developer faces.
Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer is the most common web browser your visitors will be using. It is also an old, buggy and creaking pile of code, that deliberately implements many things wrongly!
So this first thing to realise when you come to write a web page, is not to test it in IE until after you have it correct and working in a decent browser.
Three languages - at least!
The novice needs to know HTML, and CSS, and JavaScript for sure. And don’t forget FTP to get the files to the server, and DNS (delegation, and name servers) so others can find the site.
To this alphabet soup, you can add he or she needs to know of Flash, Java, Mod-Rewrite, perhaps some scripting language (PHP, ASP), your favourite?) .
That is some steep learning curve!
Search Engine Optimisation
Our novice may think this is important, because many people say it is.
SEO is not important. Getting traffic to the web site is important, but SEO tricks are a minor part of that.
The best SEO “trick” I know is to create great, relevant content, tell people about it, and let them come!
Best of all, great relevant content will never be kicked out of the search engines. Great relevant content will be easy to get people to link to - they will even book-mark your site because they WANT to come back. Great, relevant content is what people are looking for, so your visitors will be pleased they arrived (and disposed to buy something, not click away).
Do you spot a theme here?
That is what I want this site to become. Great relevant content for people who need to create web pages that work today, work in all browsers, and will continue to work in new browsers as they come out.
So watch this space!
If you haven’t already, you can download firefox for free! Try it out yourself and see why it’s the best browser on the planet.