CSS Lesson 4 general

I really battled with this. It's mainly about browser differences: when to use relative, when to use absolute and when to bounce it off the margin. I'm currently looking back having done some work on my portfolio and of course with application it becomes more real and more frustrating. I can spend hours setting up a page to my satisfaction in Netscape, switch to IE and everything has to be re-aligned. I seem to have finally found a compromise which is working in all my browsers but am worried about those browsers that I don't have downloaded. In the end CSS positioning techniques for me are both magical and frustrating. The magic for me is in the precision factor: getting it placed exactly where I want it. The frustration is always switching to another browser and having to start again and rethink it. It also bothers me that when we use a technique there doesn't seem to be a way to know whether all browsers will support what is being done. This seems to make a mockery of the concept of standardisation.

I experienced the same issues. I had to restart my portfolio a couple of times because the more I tried to fix the problem, the more I struggled and messed up my code to such an extent that it was best to just start from scratch again.

I finally realised I had to check everything I do, as I do it, in all the browsers I use to check compatibility. There are still some minor differences between the browsers that frustrate me as I like things to be perfect, but I've come to grips with the fact that I am still too much of a novice to sort these things out faster and I can't keep starting from scratch all the time.

That said, I'm not sure whether it's at all possible to have your website display exactly the same in all browsers.

One thing I have learnt (the hard way) is the importance of backing up before starting to make changes. A lot of good work can get lost in the process of making changes and it is useful to be able to go back and see what was done before.