Learning web development as I go

Question

Hey everybody,

I've been seriously preparing to take the entrepreneurship leap. I've got a great partner, and we're going to take on some minor funding, and do the thing.

Our product is web-based- I'll deem it YAWA (Yet Another Web Application). Both my partner and I have database and web development experience, and I've had a front-end developer in mind for a while.

Except, well- he just bowed out.

I know a fair amount about the associated technologies (XHTML, CSS, Javascript and some JQuery) interface-side, but I've never had to deal with real-world scenarios, eg cross-browser design. Am I going to be able to survive without this guy? Is it realistic to believe that I can learn the details as I go?

Answer 1

In your case I'd recommend purchasing a pre-built site template from someplace like Themeforest.com. Most of the templates have the cross-browser thing licked, so all you'd have to do is modify it for your app.

Answer 2

Yes, you definitely can.

The main thing I would keep in mind is:

There always is a solution.

You will have to look in many places for solutions and so on. Keep asking questions on SO, read what w3schools have to offer, etc. They are not hard, the main difficulties come in specific scenarios where there are little hacks to get around things.

For cross-browser differences, make sure you have a CSS reset: http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/reset/

Make your pages HTML/XHTML valid -- every page

As you come to each problem, don't just skim through it, REALLY find the solution so you understand it. This will save you enormous amounts of time in the future.

Use jQuery -- it would save you many hours of normal Javascript coding.

In the end -- keep going. Don't stop.

Answer 3

Experience comes from mistakes... so anyway if you are developing it and deploying it.. you will get bugs... while fixing those you will get more an more experience.

My word is dont worry about the development details... only your design should be perfect.

You can learn while doing the development.