Site Commentary on Webmaster of Africa
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Posted: January 11, 2008, by Itoro Akpan-Iquot
The benefits of using Mozilla Firefox
First and foremost, happy new year. May 2008 bring you and yours nothing but prosperity and more business than 2007 did.
Ever since Mozilla came out with Firefox, my web development life has been made much easier and less stressful. I can't remember the last time I launched IE by default. Nowadays, I develop in Firefox and then verify my work in IE. Why? Read on:
- Availability of numerous developer plug-ins (web developer toolkit, color checker, html/css validator, ability to turn on/off CSS, etc.)
- Other useful tools: These aren't specific to developers but they sure are of immense benefit:
- Built-in spell-checker
- Anti-phishing filter: Alerts users to sites that may be scams by comparing them with a blacklist of phishing sites
- Session restore feature: This allows you to recover your tabs and pages after a crash (be it browser or operating system)
- Faster page load times (Firefox 2.0), compared to IE 7
- Improved tabbed browsing and search engine management (Firefox 2.0), compared to IE 7
Bottomline, if are just browsing websites, checking emails, doing online shopping etc, by all means keep on using IE. However if you are a web developer, and a serious one at that and you aren't using Firefox, in my opinion, you need a reality check :)
Posted: August 6, 2007, by Itoro Akpan-Iquot
CSS "Problems"
A lot people I have encountered claim to have problems coding in CSS. They often end up resorting to using tables in frustration. Immediately I hear that, I ask to see their code. What it usually boils down to is that the web developer doesn't understand either of the following CSS principles: The box model and What it usually boils down to is that the web developer doesn't understand either of the following CSS principles.
Both concepts have been discussed at length on various articles online so I won't bore you with yet another defintion. Suffice it to say that these 2 principles are pretty powerful once understood. CSS was developed to separate presentation from content. Granted there are times when you will need to use tables, tables should just be used as its name implies - for tabular data.
It is my belief that once a developer thoroughly understands the aforementioned concepts, the sky is the limit as far as their creativity with CSS goes.
Posted: June 21, 2007, by Itoro Akpan-Iquot
All Nigerian Web Designers are Amateur
First and foremost, sorry for not reporting any commentary for a while - I have been, and still am, involved in a project for my employers which launched July 31, 2007. I should be freer in the next 2 weeks, so pray for me :)
Now before you jump on me for the title of this commentary, please hear me out. This was a post someone put on a webmasters forum by no less, a Nigerian living in South Africa. I and the others took him to task for the statement and hopefully he has learned from it. My opinion is that he was just trying to kick up a storm on purpose.
I basically told him he can't make generalizations. He needs to take it one a 1-on-1 basis. Until he has seen the works of every single designer/developer in Nigeria, he can not make that statement. That to me is just like saying all Nigerians are con artists. It just doesn't fly in my books. There are some pretty bad sites made by people in South Africa and the good old U. S. of A (which unforunately, is the standard most of those at home go by).
Do some of us back home still have a few things to learn? Sure. I personally have seen some very good sites. In all, we should actually be commended as we have used what we've got (in some cases, basically nothing) to get what we need. This is where those of us in the diaspora come in. Rather than complaining from afar, we need to step up the game by a combination of organizing seminars and workshops as well as of setting up Web firms back at home. Then and only then, after we have imparted our knowledge, can we get better and compete with others.
As someone on the forum best put it - it is like going about telling a kid that he has his shoes on wrong. You could either say, "You are so dumb! Why wear your left shoe on your right foot" or you could say, "See, you have your shoes on wrong. You need to put the right shoe on the right foot (and actually show him how to do it).
It's all in the attitude folks. Nigeria has a lot of talent, mostly hidden. It is up to us with exposure to find it and develop it.
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