What are the right materials for a desktop developer to become web developer ?

Question

Hi,

I'm a .NET guy desktop developer, and I love that. I don't really love web development because we lost precious time to debug CSS, javascript, and compatibility stuff instead of creating value.

But I think it's because I had not taken time to learn about good web development practices, so now because I want to become the best developer that I can, I'd like to learn about my weakness.

Can you give me some advices/links/patterns/frameworks to become a good web developer ? (I am a .NET guy so I accept everything that will permit me to develop better websites in .NET).

Thanks !

Precision

I have done a lot of ASP.NET webform in the past, but this is not enough to create great web site without loosing time on compatibility/css/javascript issue.

Answer 1

You could take a shortcut and use ASP.NET, which provides a number of controls to make web development easier - and you'll be familiar using them.

Unfortunately, they aren't really that great (imo) and do not teach you good practices with the web.

I suggest you look into ASP MVC, which is now in beta. This will teach you how to write websites whilst allowing you to use libraries you are familiar with .NET

With general web development, look into websites like W3schools which will teach you the basics.

Remember to seperate presentation from markup with CSS and make sure you are using javascript to add value to a page, but make sure your page is still usable without it.

You will always lose time with CSS compatability issues, all I can say is with practice you learn what pitfalls to avoid so it gets a little easier.

As for javascript development, it has improved considerably in the past few years with frameworks which in theory are cross-browser. Maybe try looking into JQuery which syncs well with ASP MVC and has intellisense in visual studio

Answer 2

Make sure you learn about the client/browser side as well.

Current best practice with all the different browsers around is to use a javascript library to make your web-application cross platform and cross-browser. An AJAX library like jQuery or Prototype to perform the interactive actions you wouldn't be able to do with standard HTML and CSS in the pre-AJAX era.

Answer 3

Advices:

Best advice I can give to you: Just don`t get angry when you done something correct but it wont show as you wanted. Patience! :)

Links:

www.w3schools.com

Nettuts.com

Webappers.com

Digital Point - webmasters forum

Patterns:

My advice is to get more into MVC pattern and any enterprise pattern.

Frameworks:

Just see this link :) Framework Guide

For Javascript: JQuery,Prototype,Mootools,EXTJs

For CSS: 960 grid system is pretty good