In web application development, that is just one thing. You need to know about lot more things before you can consider yourself successful.

So, if you know them already that’s good, you don’t need to read any further otherwise continue reading to know why each of these skills are important for you(the web developer).

Here are the skills

1. the structure : HTML
2. the presentation: CSS
3. the behavior: JavaScript

With these three skill you have ability to become the super cool static website developer or a front end developer

1. the database: SQL
2. the server-side language : PHP( other options are JSP/ASP/PERL/RUBY choice is yours, as all the fight for best happens here)

These two skill will make you a web developer.

All five of these skills will make you a most prized web developer, in your organization.

HTML

You think you know HTML, think again. I have been interviewing lot of people, they have all rated themselves nearing 7-8 out of 10, whenever I asked them to rate their knowledge of html. Every time I tried to verify their claim, they came down to 2-3, reason is simple, HTML is very simple and everyone thinks they can bluff their way through, After all what is HTML, just tables and forms isn’t?

Well you are wrong, HTML is the one of the most important skill that you should have, you should know HTML better then you know your server side language, why?

Simply because your server side language is optional, but HTML is must, even when you dream about a web page. It gives your website a structure and layout. This is what an end user see’s and care about. You don’t know HTML, you can’t fix the strange behaviors that you see in you website.

Without proper layout, you site/application is nothing. With proper use of HTML you can not only create most accessible websites, you can also create a website which will look good in absence of css and will work without javascript.

So go and revise you HTML again, and remember just know is not enough, you have to understand where to use what.

CSS

CSS is used to give the look and feel to your website. You as a web developer need to know and understand how it works, and how you can simplify the html layout’s so that it becomes manageable. Design is what your users/client sees.

On the basis of your sites design, your ability is judged initially.

CSS is easy to learn, but it’s application is another story, all thanks to browser incompatibilities. So to make your website look good in all the browser you need CSS. Just knowing CSS is not enough, you have to understand it’s application also.

JavaScript

JavaScript is not just for validations as many of you think, it is what gives you ability to do some nifty things with your webpage(like lightbox, rating’s , ajax).

It adds behavior to your website, makes it interesting and improves the users experience. If you have still not chosen any framework, do it now. jQuery, prototype, YUI, Dojo are some of the interesting frameworks that make developers life easier.

If have master all the three skills above you can already consider your self above average web developer even if that person has 10 years of experience. Remember we are in IT industry. IT is Information Technology, where Information aka Knowledge is important.

SQL

The most neglected in the bunch, when this is the second most important skill that a web developer should have.

Why? what a question, we are building web applications that almost always relay on database, If you don’t understand the SQL how do you propose to get the data fast enough from your database? Almost all the websites can be distilled down to simple SELECT,INSERT, UPDATE operations. If you can master them, you can dictate your terms.

When I say SQL I don’t just mean queries but also the database schema and intricacies of database itself.

PHP

Before you get up in arms against me for suggesting PHP and not your favorite language, understand this, I am talking about web applications only, and their is no other scripting language which is so easy to learn and program with. At the same time, it provides functions for everything you can think off that is required in a web application development environment.

Please spare me the talk about java and .net they are platforms and/or programming language. If you understand “you should not use sword to do the job of needle and vice versa” then you know what I mean.

Their are many frameworks that you can use. Also their are many ready to use open source packages that you can use and adapt to your needs, you don’t need to start from scratch all the time.

If you have read till here, then I would love to know your views on these skills and others that you think are important for a successful web development career.

The Problem

#main
{
    width:960px;
    margin:0 auto;
}

This made my div to align itself in the center in firefox and Internet Explorer 7 but, it failed to do the trick for IE6.

After some googling i found following solution on Webcredible.co.uk website. I added my “simple css hack” to make sure it was available only in Internet Explorer.

The Solution

body
{
     _text-align:center;
}
#main
{
     width:960px;
     margin:0 auto;
     _text-align:left;

}

That’s it, we are done this will center align the container in the center of the browser window

Well… my response is simple, you don’t need to use this it’s just for your knowledge.

I have been using this trick for two years now, as most of the other magical css hack were above my head.

I discovered this accidentally, and it might not be an hack also, but i use it a lot in my work.

So what is this hack?

Simple, just put ‘//’ in front of any valid css declaration, most of the other browser will treat this as comment and ignore it, while our friend Internet Explorer will not treat this as comment and render the property.

<style>

.test{
     color:red;
     //color:green;
}

</style>

<p class='test'>I will be green in Internet Explorer, red in all other browsers</p>

The only thing that you must note is the sequence of statements. The declaration that you want to override in IE should come after the declaration for other browsers. What it means is that if you put the //color:green first in above example then even IE will show the color of text as red.

Example:

I will be green in Internet Explorer, red in all other browsers.

How it works?

The idea is very simple as second line is treated as comment by other browsers like firefox, they simply ignore it. Internet Explorer on the other hand does not treat second statement as comment, so it simply overrides the first statement. The only know limitation is that it does not provide you with any means to differentiate IE6 and IE7

This is kind of interesting, for once i think IE followed the right path while others deviated to make writing comments easier for us developers.

I had googled to check if some one has already written about it, but i was surprised to see that no one had written anything about it, while they have listed all the big and complex hacks.

I thought it must be because this is so simple… or may be nobody ever tried it? who knows?

While writing this post i was even tempted to name this hack as ‘akHack’, and thought better off it.

Any ways I just want to satisfy my curiosity, did you knew about this?

update [10 may]: finally i know the name for this hack it is called Underscore hack, thanks to neil and chris. So what i am using is basically a variation of or extended underscore hack.