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Thread: Best way to learn CSS?

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    DRI
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    Best way to learn CSS?

    Bit of a n00b here. Teaching myself via a wad of Sams 'Teach Yourself' books. I have 'Web Publishing with HTML & HTML' and 'PHP, MySQL and Apache' which i'm working thro at the mo. Spare time being very limited for me classroom based learning is not an option. Am I going the right way?
    CSS seems the 'in-thing' so I take it it's good to learn also yes?

    Any help for an old woman would be appreciated

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    Bigger than Jesus Norky's Avatar
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    If you want to learn web development, you must learn CSS, tables are simply not accepted any more for layout purposes.

    I don't really advise learning CSS by book, learning from the real world is the best way to go:

    http://yourhtmlsource.com/stylesheets/ <-- start here
    http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tut...son/boxes.html
    http://www.bobbyvandersluis.com/main/linkLibrary.php#c6

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    Senior Member Kezzer's Avatar
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    CSS is actually very easy. The best resources available for it are blogs funnily enough. It seems many of them add tips. http://www.456bereastreet.com/ That's quite a good resource anyway.

    You can also learn from www.w3schools.org

    It's a straight forward markup language, the only hard part is cross browser functionality

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    DRI
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    http://yourhtmlsource.com/ looks pretty cool

    Thanks guys.

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    CSS cleans up your html code an awful lot, no more formatting tags, just place all formatting, colours, Span, div into the CSS file.

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    Agent of the System ikonia's Avatar
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    Norky - et all
    Not being a web developer by trade, and just playing with sites for fun I'm curious to why you say "tables are no longer acceptable for layout"

    I've used tables in the past as it seemed to be a simple way of forcing a layout in multiple browsers.

    whats the problem with using them for layout ?

    thanks.
    It is Inevitable.....


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    Bigger than Jesus Norky's Avatar
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    From w3schools:

    Styles in HTML 4.0 define how HTML elements are displayed, just like the font tag and the color attribute in HTML 3.2. Styles are normally saved in files external to your HTML documents. External style sheets enable you to change the appearance and layout of all the pages in your Web, just by editing a single CSS document. If you have ever tried to change the font or color of all the headings in all your Web pages, you will understand how CSS can save you a lot of work.

    CSS is a breakthrough in Web design because it allows developers to control the style and layout of multiple Web pages all at once. As a Web developer you can define a style for each HTML element and apply it to as many Web pages as you want. To make a global change, simply change the style, and all elements in the Web are updated automatically.
    The idea of CSS is also to seperate structure and style from content. This makes the site much more accessible, allowing the author to serve up the same content in hundreds of different forms (eg. mobile version, high contrast colours version).

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    Quote Originally Posted by ikonia
    Norky - et all
    Not being a web developer by trade, and just playing with sites for fun I'm curious to why you say "tables are no longer acceptable for layout"

    I've used tables in the past as it seemed to be a simple way of forcing a layout in multiple browsers.

    whats the problem with using them for layout ?

    thanks.
    Tables should only be used for Tabular data, such as in numerical tables, or database queries. The reason its unaccep"table" any more is because it causes several problems on alternative browsers. For example mobile phone browsers, or browsers with built in speech synthesis for deaf users.

    The best way to layout content how you want it is to use DIV and SPAN. Im sure you will be able to find plenty of info on those


    OK... Heres a sample CSS file I made for my coursework last year...

    body { color: #FFFF00; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; float: left; border: 10px ridge #0000FF; padding: 4px; background-color: #003366; font-weight:bold }
    div { border: 3px double #FFFFFF; background-color: #000000 }
    span { border:2px inset #800000; padding:3px; color: #FFFFFF; font-family: cursive; font-size: 10pt; background-color:#800000 }
    Last edited by tommylittleboy@; 03-05-2005 at 09:18 PM.

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    Agent of the System ikonia's Avatar
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    very interesting, and a good reason.

    thank you
    It is Inevitable.....


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    lazy student nvening's Avatar
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    I dont really get css, does it let you define what a tag does?
    (\__/)
    (='.'=)
    (")_(")

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    Bigger than Jesus Norky's Avatar
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    http://www.switch9.net/wordpress/css...age-structure/

    Here is an article I wrote, it shows how a good page structure can make CSS coding very simple.

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    HEXUS.net Webmaster
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    I recommend the Sitepoint book on CSS http://www.sitepoint.net/books/

    In addition for useful articles try www.alistapart.com and for inspiration try www.csszengarden.com

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    Senior Member Kezzer's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by nvening
    I dont really get css, does it let you define what a tag does?
    If you dont use CSS, every single tag you use will have to contain formatting, such as font, size, colour etc. Every single tag would need to have this in order to get the page looking how you want. You'd basically end up repeating yourself copying the same formatting info for each tag. In CSS, you define all the formatting in a single .CSS file. E.g for <h1> you want bold font, size 20 etc, put this formatting into a .CSS and link the html file to the .CSS file in the header, then every h1 tag will contain the formatting as defined in the .CSS file

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    daft ideas inc. scottyman's Avatar
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    word to the wise -
    as css isn't considered part of html (at least by my uni) I was marked down to 60% for not using the "right tags" despite the professional look and feel of my site.

    css is great, very flexible. i use it with php and the smarty templating engine to standardise absolutely everything. headers and footers are generic, and loaded with the layout from a standalone css file, all content has a predefined layout - saves work and maintenance.

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    Tip for starting out with CSS - use other peoples code (as long as you credit them!)

    Take a look at other people's style sheets and toy with them. This gives you a great feel for the ideals of CSS and what real applications look like. It's an extremely easy mark up language to learn and once you've got to grips with it you will appreciate how much easier it makes design.

    I'm by no means a wizard with HTML or CSS! The last site I designed was This One and I used a tutorial from Max Designs and based my stylesheets around it. The bulk of the code is maintained from the tutorial and I edited it according to my needs. I e-mailed the guy who wrote the tutorial and asked if it was ok to utilise his CSS and he was happy enough, just drop in a comment at the start of the style sheet crediting the original author.

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