There are a few ways to add in CSS support for unsupported browsers using JavaScript but nothing that really offers a one stop simple solution for achieving decent CSS 3 support cross browser, and one service which was recently announced was eCSStender, which promised that by downloading and including a couple of JavaScript files that a wide range of CSS 3 techniques could be implemented cross-browser, crucially without any vendor prefixes required.

Recently, I was working on a project which would have benefited from this library as development time would have been drastically reduced with the benefit of cross browser compatibility for techniques such as border-radius, box-shadow etc and I began coding with this in mind.

There was initial success with Firefox recognising the standard border-radius without the need for the -moz- prefix, and this appeared to work cross-browser. Except for Internet Explorer, any version. After many attempts at trying to get this to work, I gave up.I recently heard that border-radius was not supported in IE with eCSStender, and I’m wondering what all the hype was in the A List Apart article. It was billed as a simple solution to easily achieve CSS 3 compatibility, but if something as simple as border-radius doesn’t work in IE then what’s the point? There are other ways of achieving compatibility and eCSStender was not all it was made out to be in the article.

It was billed as the saviour to vendor prefixes and greater flexibility, whereas in reality it is none of these.

As my first year of university comes to an end, I was reading the latest issue of .net magazine and came across the article written by Jack Osborne about what to do after leaving university in order to gain employment within the industry. Although I’ve not yet reached that stage yet, there is a few tips that anyone at any stage of education can implement now in order to increase chances.

Portfolio:

Jack states that the portfolio of any work should be in the right order and as good as it can be as that is where potential employers will look first. Students are often encouraged to leave out university work from their portfolio but often that is all students have, and goes back to the old adage that they can’t get a job due to lack of experience but no-one’s willing to offer that experience. In my portfolio, two thirds of it is university based as that is all I have at the moment but another useful tip which I will implement over the summer is to “fake it”. By creating websites for imaginary clients it will give me a chance to improve both my design and coding skills as well as boosting my portfolio.

About:

The About Me section of any website is important as it is the individual’s chance to sell themselves to potential clients and employers. It is important to talk yourself up and is the perfect opportunity to highlight any achievements and explain your strengths. The About section of this site isn’t great and I will take some of Jack’s advice on board and re-write that section over the next few weeks. I’ve never been comfortable talking about myself but is something I will have to improve on and re-write that section completely.

Social Networks:

The use of social networks can also boost a designer’s profile by becoming known by others within the industry and increase interest in their work. The latest trend appears to be Twitter, with a high number of designers being active on the site. Follow famous faces within the industry in order to gauge what they’re working on as well as people within your local area in order to connect with like-minded people within your industry who may be interested in collaboration or referring work. Sites should link to these profiles from order to highlight to visitors that you are on these sites and networks and this is something I have not done yet apart from the twitter widget on the homepage of this site, but will be incorporated into a new about page.

Conclusion:

Although the article was aimed at university graduates I think it contains a lot of tips that could be implemented by anybody currently in education, as a way of increasing their chances of gaining employment. Personally, I’ll be taking on board some of these tips such as re-writing my about page and providing links to my social network profiles to build up connections from those as well as increasing my portfolio through real-world examples as well as “faking it” to practice as well as experimenting with some new techniques.

I’m also quite lucky in that I have employment during my holidays from University which give me some experience of working in the real world as well as my univeresity education which should stand me in good stead.

Are there any other ideas I should be working on to increase employment chances, what did you do to gain your first job within the industry?

Photo: Yersinia from Flickr, used under Creative Commons

Welcome to the newly re-designed site (or version 3.0 if you prefer!)

The reason for changing the design was that I didn’t like the look of it after a while and also the code was riddled with errors which I was not happy with. This was mainly due to site being built in Summer 2008 when I had a lot less knowledge and skills in comparison to what I have now.

Through a combination of learning at University, reading blog posts and listening to podcasts I feel that my skills have improved considerably over the past few months and that a re-design was a natural progression of these new found skills. The aim of the blog was always to be a kind of personal playground if you like where I could put into practice skills and techniques that I pick up as my learning continues.

As with any new launch, the likelihood is that there will be a few bugs somewhere along the line so if you find any please either leave a comment here or drop me an email.

Well I’m now into my fourth week here in Dundee, and I suppose now would be a good time to document the experience and my thoughts so far on University life.

I’ve now almost had three weeks of teaching and overall things are going well so far I think with all four of my modules this term. The four modules are:

Programming
Personal Web Pages
Web Fundamentals
Personal Study Skills

The programming module uses C# which is a language I’ve had no previous experience with so far and as such is taking a bit of getting used to. It takes me a bit of time and effort in order to get my head round the concepts and syntax of the language, but I’m getting there with almost all the assessed exercises completed so far.

Personal Web Pages is the module that I’m enjoying the most, where we have to create a seven page website based around the topic of “My Top 5…..”, where I have the chosen the topic of my Top 5 Football grounds. My site is almost complete, and so far complies with the current XHTML and CSS standards which is good. I’ll post a link to the site when it is completed.

Web Fundamentals is a “funny” subject at the moment, with the tutor having been off ill for every class so far which has resulted in an awkward situation so far. The first lecture we had to go and find a tutor to fill in, and then for the first lab session no tutor turned up at all!

So far we’ve had two lectures and one lab session for this module, with the lectures being a mixture of vague points read from the module descriptor combined with anecdotal evidence and the one lecture we’ve had so far involved following through a booklet which taught us how to use Dreamweaver to insert tables and images etc into a webpage. Now even I can manage that without Dreamweaver! Hopefully it will improve before too long.

The Personal Study Skills module is a combination of students from the Computing school and the Health school and involves group work on a hybrid topic between the two subject areas. So far it is going well and it will be interesting to see how it develops.

Well that’s it so far here in Dundee and overall things are going well I feel, although I do need to install some decent broadband in the flat because this mobile broadband malarkey is far too temperamental for my liking. I think Virgin Media will be getting a phone call shortly to bail me out, although I am open to recommendations!

Oh, and any C# tips and advice is gratefully received!

As any web developer will know, trying to create aesthetically pleasing sites which fit into all these browsers is a challenge, with Internet Explorer 6 being the worst of the lot due to the way that it handles code and styles. As a beginner, I’ve had little experience of altering a site specifically in order to suit Internet Explorer 6 (lucky me!). Large organisations are often the last to change software due to perceived security issues but I feel that the time has come for us to help them along by refusing to cater for IE 6 users anymore, and if the majority of developers do likewise then slowly but surely Internet Explorer 6′s market share will begin to drop completely.

Do you support Internet Explorer 6?

I still like the concept of this current design as being a “working desk” but I just feel that it’s not quite working as well as I had hoped and that I just feel that instead of tweaking the original concept I will try a change of design. It will take a few weeks in order to complete but should be completed and live by the end of August.

Watch this space!

It will be a topic that is covered when I go to University in Dundee this summer, but I’d be interested in using some PHP in a personal project this summer before I go. Nothing fancy, but just so I’m able to understand the principles. I already have this book which I’m slowly working through, and I’ve recently discovered this tutorial site which I will take a look at, but wondered if there were any other recommendations that people have?