Back to the basics.
I would like to take the next few posts and go back to the basics. I know some of this may be remedial for most, but knowledge is power, and I want you to be informed. Especially if you are looking for a web designer/developer, its good to know a little behind what we do.
What is a browser?
A browser is a piece of software that resides on your computer. It reads files from folders stored remotely on other machines, and forms a representation of those files we see as a web page. Think of a word processing software, let’s say, Microsoft Word for instance. It takes a file and formulates a word document. It may include images and text formatting. This is the same principal behind a web browser, it takes html and css files, reads them, and creates the web page. Google has some great information on understanding browsers on their blog- People say “I know which Car i drive but when asked about which browser you use they are confused about web browsers — even though the browser is one of the most-used programs on computers.
What is HTML?
Hyper Text Markup Language. This is the coding, the inner workings of a web page. This delineates what text is a header, a title, a paragraph, a link… HTML is made up of boxes called divs that allow the developer to box text together in the correct groups. There is a whole lot more to HTML, but I’m trying to keep it simple, so we’ll leave it at that. Want more info check out the w3c.
What is CSS?
Alright, CSS or Cascading Style Sheets is where we get into the fun stuff. CSS allows you to format those blocks of text in the html code. CSS can reside imbedded in the html document, or in most cases, is referenced from a .css file on the server. Look at the difference between these two contact us pages.
Both of these contact forms are built from simple input text tags in html, the difference is CSS styling. Background color, background images, borders, shadows, font color, font size, and general layout. These are all handled by CSS, and it’s changing every day. New and exciting CSS features are adding to user experience and allowing designers to create beautiful and stunning pieces of online art. But…..
This is also where the most issues occur. Just like the many word processing software, there are many different browsers. Each of them handles CSS a little different. Mostly its about when the browser version was deployed, and when each adopted it’s CSS standards. There are still a few folks out there who use IE6. This is the bane of any developers existence. IE6 does not support the most current version of CSS or HTML. You can’t leave these people out, so we have workarounds designed to overcome the expired browser limitations. People don’t really think about their browser or about updating it, but if they thought of it as a car, the dealer is giving you an upgrade for free, to a faster, more sleek, and more colorful version of what you have been using since 1998. OK, enough ranting about old browsers. For more info on CSS check out wikipedia.
Well, there is your glimpse into a developer’s world, and a very simple introduction into what happens when you type “facebook” into the bar on the top of that web thingy.
