Have you ever wanted to add fancy bullet points to your unordered lists in your(x)HTML but never knew how? The truth is, it’s actually really easy to achieve. All you need to do is add a CSS class to your unordered list and then use your CSS to add your chosen image as the bullet points. In this post I’ll walk you through this step by step. First lets take a quick look at the list we’re going to be creating:

• This is the first list item
• This is the second list item
• and this is the third list item

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Now I’m not sure about you, but I really do hate websites that are stuck on the left of the screen, and from talking to a few friends, I know I’m not alone with this pet hate. The thing is, that many beginner site designers may also dislike this left alignment, but simply do not know how to make their site appear in the center of the screen, but others may have centered their site absolutely perfect in their favourite browser, but are totally unaware that it may not be centered in others.
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For many web designers and developers, getting a website to look and function the same in different browsers can often be a challenge. This challenge is often made even more difficult when trying to achieve the same appearance across Microsofts hugely different versions of it’s Internet Explorer browser – none of the IE browsers have ever complied to web standards, and each different version comes with it’s own quirks to deal with. So you would think you could just install all the different versions and test your web pages in each of them…wrong, it’s often impossible to get all the different versions (namely IE6, IE7 and IE8) running on the same computer, especially if you are running Windows Vista which will not let you install IE6 at all.

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When I create a new xHTML/HTML page I like to start with a template where I can then fill in the blanks. My basic template will include the doctype for the document, the basic document tags (html, head, body, title etc), a link to my external stylesheet, and finally a ‘wrapper’ div in the body which makes things easier when specifying a width for you page or centering the layout. This is the basic framework for any xHTML document, and is the bare minimum you should start with.
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To kick off my blog I’d like to share with you my IDE (Integrated Development Environment) of choice for writing and editing all of my website code.

Now I have used Dreamweaver in the past and it is a fantastic product, but comes with a very hefty price tag that most beginners simply cant afford. A little over a year ago, I was scanning the internet for a alternative to the industry-standard Dreamweaver, and after a few days of relentless searching and trying out many different programs, I came across Aptana Studio which ticked all the boxes of the features I needed in an IDE and appeared to be a suitable alternative to Dreamweaver, and best of all, it was (and still is) FREE. Read the rest of this entry »