Hello everyone,

Let me begin this topic by explaining my background experience with web design. I have always been more of a back end programmer, with PHP and SQL and things. However I do have a shallow background with HTML and CSS. The problem is, I don't know it all. What I do know is, when it comes to designing (not back end dirty work) I understand basic CSS properties and I also understand HTML and I can usually throw together a sloppy web page with the two and a couple bazillion DIV tags.

Anyways..

The problem I always have encountered is that when I design a website in a browser such as IE7 (and then it looks perfect on IE7), and then look at it on IE8 or IE6 or Mozilla (etc.) it gets all spacey and ugly and looks totally different than the way it should look on IE7.

Question one:

Basically, what I am asking everyone is what route should I take to learn how to properly build the website? Build as in put it togehter with CSS standards and HTML standards that will make my site look the same on every brwoser. (Not only learning standards but where can I learn to properly write my code?) Where is a strong free resource I can use to learn how to these things?

Question two:

How do I properly code my website? Do I use all external style sheets to make dynamic page design simplistic or do I hard code some things into the DIV tags on each page? What is proper?

Oh, and if anyone has any tutorials on how to properly design a complete layout feel free to throw it in a response somewhere.

Thank you for taking the time to read my questions, and hopefully you will understand what I am trying to get out to everyone. I need to get on the right route of the designing side of web programming so that I will know how to create successful websites in the future.

Thank you, Sam Pardee