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Easy Styling of CSS – Firefox’s Firebugger or Chrome’s Google Developer Tools

February 23 Development Techniques galin 

People always assume I use Dreamweaver when they hear I do Web Development. I always say “sure” because I don’t want to confuse them. Honestly, I haven’t used licensed software to do web coding for a while. I can accomplish everything I need with a text editor and web browser. This is because of the developer tools built into web browsers.

My go to browser is Google Chrome because the tool is pre-installed on the browser. Also, I believe Google is good at making things useful (crossing my fingers Google bots see this and help my SEO as a consequence). To do styling of a page, I simply right-click on a page element and tell Google Chrome to inspect the element. You can also do this on Firefox with the extension Firebug installed as well.

Once you do this, you will notice that it opens up a sub-panel below the webpage you are on in your site browser. On the right you will see the section for styling. You can alter the styling and watch it change dynamically on the page. If you know nothing about CSS, try doing something basic like adding a style rule of “background-color: red;” to your element. You should see the elements background color turn red.

This was an important find on my way to becoming comfortable with developing. I suggest this as a method for laying out a page because it keeps you in a “coding frame of mind”, which doesn’t ever hurt with web development.



Learning Computer Languages – Where do I go to learn computer languages?

February 14 Development Techniques galin 

My route towards web development is very unusual. I received two Bachelors of Science in Math and Economics at the University of Michigan. I took one computer programming class for my Actuarial Math degree in C++. That and a basic intro to javascript class through my old company are the only formal trainings I have had. Today, I feel comfortable researching and building whatever a customer may want. Why is that?

The internet is why. When I first started at my old job, they needed extra hands to do some HTML/CSS work. I didn’t have enough work to do, so I said to myself “Why not”. A co-worker there showed me a website, w3schools.com. If you want to learn computer languages, go there. Read through a tutorial. Read through it again. Then read through it again. The tutorial I would start with is the CSS and HTML stuff.

I still use this website as a reference point for how to code things I want to code. It has most of the syntax stuff you would ever want in the languages of PHP, Javascript, and HTML/CSS.

I do think my analytical degree background and my extremely analytical brain are other reasons why I am so efficient and comfortable with web development. If you think you have a similar mindset and want to get involved in an excellent industry, read that site and feel free to email me questions at galin@gpmwebsolutions.com.