Learning That I Know CSS Pretty Well

Over the last few weeks I have been applying all over for Web Developer positions here in the Boston area. I have been telling everyone that I am a beginner with CSS / JavaScript however I think I have been selling myself short. I decided to take the W3Schools CSS Quiz just to see how much I know off the top of my head. I found the quiz to be easy but I never figured I would make it through 20 questions in 3 minutes 34 seconds and get them all correct. I know that the W3Schools quiz is just a simple one so that you can see how much you know and is not actually a test of skill. While I still have quite a bit to learn I think I have been stating that I know less than I do and well that is not a good thing when it comes to trying to find a job. I have been trying to be honest however I have been lying to myself. I know more about CSS than I thought. I also did a lot of reading today from a sitepoint book I have and most of the stuff I understood.

I think the most difficult part for me is all of the positioning stuff and pixel perfect alignment and table-less layouts. I have to do some more research into those however I do not think it will take long for me to pick that up. I am in no way a designer of any sort, however that is something I want to learn and it seems that generally it is designers who use CSS not the backend PHP Developers.

I have been trying to learn everything I can about the front end over the last month so that I am a more well rounded developer. I am going to spend a few more days going over the CSS stuff and then move on to JavaScript. Between both technologies I think the most tough part will be all of the cross browser compatibility issues. I know that JavaScript has a lot of cross browser differences and I know that most frameworks like JQuery, Prototype, Dojo, etc elleviate the need for the developer to worry about the different browsers. I know that there is also BluePrint which is a CSS Framework that deals with the cross browser differences as well. I do think it is a good idea for developers to learn the cross browser issues without the need of frameworks and that is what I plan to do.