And, if you are the first woman anything, and I’m told I’m the first woman in football, then that’s something to take heart from–because you have opened a door. The trick is to hold that door open as wide as possible, for as long as possible, to allow other women to march through it.

I couldn’t claim to be the first woman in anything, but I know a thing or two about working in male dominated industries, and this idea of “holding open the door” really appeals to me. When we talk about wanting to get more women into tech, that’s exactly what us women who are already here need to do, we need to hold open the door. We need to show that this is a fantastic industry to be involved in, we need to support those who are taking their first steps and we need to be visible so that other women and girls know that they are not alone. That they won’t find themselves without female friendship. That they won’t have to fight battles just to be accepted.

It is important that we point out as inappropriate the examples of sexism that we do see. However we should also take care to reassure those who might want to walk through the door that these examples are actually few and far between. Yes, sexism has been directed at me, but not often. I don’t believe that being a woman has disadvantaged me in my work or career. We need to get a balance between showing that sexism is not welcome here and demonstrating that in general we work in a welcoming and friendly industry. We need to show those looking through the door that most people here are only interested in what you can do, share and contribute, and that there are great opportunities and a whole lot of fun to be had.

I started to teach myself web development before the launch of Internet Explorer 3 – the first commercial browser to have CSS support. I can also remember seeing my first image rollover and wondering what sort of magic was this that could create such an effect! The landscape was much simpler, I learned HTML and built webpages. I learned some (frankly terrible) JavaScript and added image rollovers and pop-up windows. There really wasn’t much to learn, and far fewer decisions to make in terms of how to implement a site.

The industry is growing up. We have new technologies, we can create amazing applications right here in the browser. We also have discussions on process, and best practice. We have created tools that make development faster and more accurate and all of this is good. However it makes for a confusing place to start when researching any subject is likely to give you compelling arguments as to why you should try any one of four or five approaches. It can be hard even as an experienced developer to work out what is best in any situation, never mind for the beginner.

I feel fortunate that I started when I did because there was nothing to distract me from the core technologies that any developer needs to understand. If you are starting out as a front-end developer now then my best advice would be to learn HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Learn how to do things robustly in modern browsers. Anything else is a distraction from that core knowledge. Even worse, I frequently see people who are clinging to some outdated tool or framework simply because they learned that tool as a replacement for this core knowledge. Changing to something else would really mean starting again.

Over the course of my career, accepted best practice has changed many times. JavaScript frameworks have fallen in and out of favour. Our understanding of accessibility and the devices we need to support has changed. However I still write HTML, and the knowledge gained even in the early part of my career still stands me in good stead today.

Don’t let yourself be distracted. Seek out high quality, modern tutorials and learn your core languages. Put yourself in a place where you are able to assess the usefulness and quality of tools, methods, frameworks and libraries. Use those tools lightly, always with an eye for whether they are still the best approach as you begin a new project, and your core knowledge will enable you to keep up to date and fresh in what you recommend and use.

Likewise, if you are good at what you do you might like to write articles and books, speak at conferences, be included in discussions on subjects. To get started all you need to do is start publishing your ideas somewhere, or offer to speak at small events, and other offers will start to come in.

In this industry we don’t have to wait until the “powers that be” recognize our talent, we can put ourselves out there, and we have the skills and tools to do it.

When I have been asked to speak at a conference it is usually because the organizer has read an article of mine somewhere and feels the subject would be a useful inclusion. If I am asked to write on a subject it is frequently the result of posting something on my blog. That chain of events goes back over ten years to the articles I used to write on my personal site. Each article, book or slide deck leading to other offers, leading to new opportunities. You have to start promoting yourself, by producing good quality content, before people will automatically think of you as associated with a subject.

My husband and company co-Director Drew McLellan publishes the 24 Ways website in December each year. Many of the authors this year were new to the site and most of those new authors wrote for the site because they approached Drew with a great idea. So don’t sit around and wait to be asked if you have great ideas to get out there. Publishers and conference organizers are usually more than happy to hear from people with ideas.

Get writing, get speaking, contact sites that publish articles and tell them your ideas. Contact the organizers of events and tell them what your talk will bring to the event. Don’t wait for someone to do it for you, as that really isn’t the way things are done around here.

Different is not wrong, this is the web, a dynamic medium where we have no control over our user nor should we want to have. By building sites that separate style from content we are free to display the same pages in as many ways as our imagination will allow. We can have bells and whistles for the new browsers, we can have attractive and readable designs for the version 4 browsers, we can display the content legibly for older browsers, devices that do not support CSS.

I was writing about Version 4 browsers – the versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer released in 1997/98. In particular I was speaking about Netscape 4. A browser with such a crazy implementation of CSS that absolutely positioned elements would lose their position on resize, form elements would become unusable with CSS applied, and in which CSS didn’t work at all if JavaScript was turned off. I was explaining to my clients why serving this browser a simpler layout was a good thing, as it was technically incapable of displaying a modern CSS layout, and for the most part they agreed. I was frustrated when I wrote that post because the excuse many people were using for ignoring web standards was, “but it won’t look the same in Netscape 4.”

It is now 2012, and still I hear the same argument for not using CSS3, for not taking advantage of all that has been developed over the past ten years. Yet I think there might be a light at the end of the tunnel. A way to squash the idea that websites need to look the same to everyone once and for all.
Old browsers will always be with us, there will always be people who don’t upgrade, won’t upgrade or have computers so old they can’t upgrade. However, the increase in “responsive design”, websites that adjust themselves according to the capabilities of the device they are viewed in, means that the average person will become used to the fact that websites don’t look the same on all devices. It will become obvious to them that their phone has different capabilities to their desktop at work, and that the site responds to that. It’s then far easier to explain that when they view the site on that ancient PC in the library, that runs IE6, and it looks plainer than on their top of the range laptop – that’s just the site once again responding to what it is being viewed in.

Even our most non-technical of clients is likely to have experience of seeing a website on a phone or tablet, and we can use that to explain a one web approach to development. An approach that serves a good experience to everyone, no matter what the capabilities of their browser or device. Yet doesn’t attempt to provide an identical experience, as that simply isn’t possible.

Critiquing something on Twitter is likely to end up with hurt feelings. As a commenter on Sarah Parmenter’s post on the subject pointed out, it is similar to being with a group in a pub, and hearing something you disagree with so standing on your chair and shouting, “THIS PERSON HERE, IS AN IDIOT!”, sitting back down and continuing your chat. Most of us would agree that is not a constructive way to behave – even if the person attracting this treatment was wrong.

I want to encourage a culture of argument and debate, that takes the web and technologies forward. A culture that takes everyone’s view as important. A person who has only been in the industry for a year may well have insights that those of us who have been around a very long time do not have. I can remember CSS being introduced, and debating the merits of using it instead of font tags, how much of my thinking is clouded by our history? That said, those of us who have 10+ years of web development experience, by way of that, have insights into a wider range of projects and problems that newer folk do not have. We can seem stuck in our ways when we point out potential issues – but our advice is tempered with experience.

We move things forward by listening to each other, and arguing our various viewpoints to bring new methods and ideas into being. When we argue however we need to remember that there is a real person behind each email, behind each Twitter message, behind each keyboard. That person may have strong ideas and opinions, but might also be having a tough day and wording their thoughts badly. Or have little experience in arguing a point of view and so come across aggressively. By being kind, we prevent people becoming entrenched in their positions, and constructive debate can occur.