Some definitions

There are two terms bandied about that often times cause confusion. So I thought I would define them as I see them:

Designer:
The person that designs good looking and suitable graphics and layouts for web pages. Some technical knowledge is needed but nowhere near that of the developer.

Developer:
Different from a designer in that a developer writes programs and designs data access structures. A developer needs to have some of the knowledge a designer has but can get away with not knowing how to design good looking graphic designs as the developer can work with a designer to do this.

In certain organizations even the development tasks are split. For instance, the web application developer and the database developer. But often, these tasks are combined. The size of the development usually determines the how tasks are split. Large developments usually require an additional post which is that of the Project Manager.


Hope this clarifies things for you (if you needed this to be clarified).

[TIP] CSS: How to center an element

CSS can be strange at times. Most of CSS makes logical sense, but some CSS techniques defy any logic.

Where this got highlighted for me was trying to teach one of staff CSS. She often gets confused when I demand more advanced CSS. So I concluded that some CSS just needs to be remembered and cannot logically be figured out like one does in a computer program. Ah Well!

Here is one such example:

Centering an element in CSS.

The HTML:

<div id="main">
<!-- content goes here -->
</div>

The CSS:

body {
text-align: center; /* Center main in IE */
}
#main {
width: 768px; height: 768px;
margin: 0px auto -1px auto;
/* Center main in other browsers */
}

Firstly there is a difference between IE and other browsers. The IE one is kinda obvious but seems not to be standards compliant. The use of the margin property is interesting. In case you didn't pick up on it it is the "auto" value that does the centering.

Hope this helps someone.