This question has been asked before somewhat, but I hope mine differs. My situation is I have been a desktop developer for 8 years (winforms and silverlight, also ios). More and more web contracts have been coming up for me but I have passed on most because they cause me more headache than what they are worth. I have just completed a dating website for a client in asp.net mvc. My problem I really have is with the development of the actual webpage layouts. Something that would take me minutes on the desktop equivalent would take me hours in the web, trying to align everything correctly so that it would look correct.
If I could streamline page development my web development would be 100% better and quicker. Can anyone give me any tips/advice? Coming from desktop development where you would drag and drop items on and anchor them accordingly.
I dont know if Im missing something or whether my heads web layout space, its in the desktop layout space. HELPPP!!!
Thanks in advance
Well, one BIG difference from desktop to web is that you are at the mercy of (so-called) standards.
That’s why it takes more effort and a mixed bag of tools to get to some parity across possible clients to your application.
So that’s why really knowing code (instead of “design view”) matters a lot – and it means a lot of effort as well. As time goes by though, you’ll come up with your “trusted toolkit” and create your own (or use readily available) code and/or design libraries/templates (JQuery, 960 grid and similar, and a whole lot more).
And that’s just talking about the front end.
You’ll have to understand the “stateless nature” of the web/http and have to figure out how to persist data – you do this too in desktop dev, but its a little more fragile when it comes to web.
On the back end though, if you have a mature framework (i.e. .Net) you can have a lot of code reuse.
The “open” nature of the web has its pros and cons, and while the web has gone quite a long way to “mimic” the desktop, that term (mimic) says it all as well.
You’ll also find “religion” on the web, and its rarely a good thing. I’m sure you’ve heard of this very mature technology called Flash and well, it seems that its suddenly out of favor – all because of something called iPxx 🙂 A mature technology that has had more than a
decade of growth. Apparently “plug-in” is evil now (hint, Silverlight is…)
The replacement? HTML5 and Javascript and CSS which is graduating from mere styling to include things like transforms and transitions – not sure if that’s a good thing – seems separation of concerns (MVC) goes out the door (but who am I to judge) …which is in its infancy – don’t get me wrong I’ve seen amazing things by the bleeding edge gurus – but bleeding edge it is and to avoid rambling, going back to my first point, subject to, yes, so-called standards of different clients (browsers, devices, etc.).
So yes, it’s an exciting time to be sure. So as the saying goes, “stay young, stay foolish”…and never stop learning.