One headache of web development is that there are tons of browsers which behave differently from each other. So, for a better quality we should always test sites in different browsers as much as possible. There is a well known fact : among all the browsers, most annoying browser is IE 6.0. But no matter how annoying there are still people who are using it. So, we should always test it in IE. There is a project to get IE running under wine, but I couldn’t get it working for some reason.

So, I tried VirtualBox which is obviously not as fast as wine, but more accurate. VirtualBox seems to show more performance than VMWare(No guarantees - I have only used VMWare once). It’s worth checking that out.

If you are a web developer/designer you should have surely checked your site in popular browsers. Specially if you are using css. I always used to use only firefox for the development stages and then later test the sites in IE. But after that i came to aware about the mozilla plugin “IE tab”, it became easier. I started to test the site with IE in the development stages. But recently Nayana have found out that IE doesn’t emulate the Internet Explorer exactly. I dont know what is happening there even when it is using same ActiveX control. However, if you are using IE tab, be careful - just a small warning.

I have been working in web development for last few years, and HTML for lots of years. When I was learning HTML, one of the most powerful hacks used was Tables. Yes, using tables for layout is the most widely used hack in the Web. So do I. I was living happily with the tables. And also when it comes to development, the usage of tables made the life much easier; the repetition of the rows and columns; wow! That’s wonderful; err.. I mean easy

That’s the era of tables; and of course I used CSS here and there.. but not widely. I never thought of a pure CSS design. However, things have changed a lot since then. I started to redesign the whole web. I mean my webs. I started from my unpublished homepage (still it’s in my hard drive ) and did much more. (Take a look at the ihub - it’s the final outcome of our internet programming coursework; the objective was to create a simple site; so, we used CSS to keep it simple ;-))

Many of my friends started to ask; why CSS?? What’s the advantage? hmmm.. well! There are some, and of course some disadvantages are well. You have much more power in CSS than tables. You can do whatever you want; play with layers, transparency, absolute positioning for drag n drop. And if you are doing an AJAX application, you have more control in a CSS based design. After you designed everything, what if you are not happy with the font sizes? Simple, just change the style sheet :-). However, there is a big disadvantage; you have to worry about the browser compatibility. Difference between the views from the different browsers cannot be ignored. As you know for almost every (I don’t just say every - almost every) question there is an answer; here comes another question - how do I find the answer? refer to the internet :-). You can always use CSS hacks to keep compatibility.