I have always designed my websites with frontpage using the normal html and tables. One time I had a electronics store online and adding product pages and deleting product pages were very difficult and took tons of my time. Then someone told me If I used CSS it would make my job alot quicker. Is this true? Can someone tell me what exactly is CSS and what does it do or what is it used for. THanks
CSS basically allows you to define styles for html elements such as width, height, colors, etc. You include a css sheet in all of your pages and the page will inherit the styles that you define. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_Style_Sheets
For adding and deleting pages and stuff, CSS will make your job no easier (though it will for other stuff). You'll want a CMS made in PHP or some other server side language to do that. You can't compare HTML and CSS - they complement each other well. You write the HTML layout first, then the CSS, then finally the images when designing. Avoid tables for things that aren't meant to be. Avoid Frontpage - period.
Avoid FrontPage-- seconded. PHP can be used for dynamic web pages and database-generated code, but don't rule out the other languages out there-- like Python or Perl : ) If you decide to spend your time learning a programming language, you might as well pick one that lets you do all sorts of stuff, not just database/web stuff. You'll need MySQL or something similar on the database side. Although writing things in nested tables likely is harder to edit than clean HTML (which you can have when you use CSS).
CSS or cascading style sheet are used for styling your page and content layouts. Using CSS as a separate file mean that you can use it for all the pages. so it becomes easier to style them if you have many pages. Think of the basic HTML webpage as the naked body and CSS as dressing the website. And yes avoid frontpage. they are things of past. use dreamweaver if you can, or use other editors such as notepad++ and learn some CSS from www.w3schools.com.
^ As said above, you might want to consider a CMS. Here's a list of plenty of great CMS's http://opensourcecms.com/
You should learn css. It will make your site more manageable there are countless resources out there just do a search for CSS
You can use CSS for tabels. Also the no tabels thing is for the layout itself. Not the content. However I avoid both uses.
Yes it is right CSS will make the job quicker. BUT that is not the way to go if your site need frequent updates. For that you need to use a CMS (content management system) like Joomla. Updating is very easy and is done through a word-processor like interface. If it is a retail website you need an eCommerce CMS like Magento or osCommerce. Joomla is like an all purpose CMS while Magento & osCommerce are ecommerce specific. All of these are free but to make them look unique costs money. Basic site modifications(look & feel) will start at around $200.00
If you are using multiple pages or long websites! then CSS plays virtual role because it can ease to modify each column or row because it can all be control from one file! which is called CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) .css normally it can be attached with any HTML file you like to do so! However HTML websites need modification on each time you do editing unless CSS can reduce also can maintain better outputs with Custom Designs & further modification
I like you, used to design all of my sites on Dreamweaver until about 4 years ago. Then, switched to pure coding mode with 'live preview'. Can't vouch for PC software, but Taco HTML edit is all I needed for the Mac. Really, once you've learnt CSS thoroughly and the hand coding approach, you'll never go back. For some good examples, go to www.oswd.org and download some example webpages. Analyse the code and have a play..... jump in at the deep end! Then if it looks like it's viable, look for books / sites to assist.
I'm used to using frontpage because of the simplicity of it. What is second best and second easiest one to quickly learn 2.
Ditto. And about the same time-frame for me. For the PC, I recommend Html-kit from Chamis. It is free, has code-completion, preview, contextual keyword help, plugins, and a lot more. It also has Bradbury's Top-Style Lite built into it, which is the only CSS editor I have ever needed to use. Now for some simple truths. CSS is NOT quicker. It is easier to maintain in the long run, but I doubt that it is any quicker to code the original template and lay everything out. If anybody worth their salt in CSS who has never pained over horizontal lists that developed extra padding-itis where it shouldn't be, or absolute positioned divs with negative margins that disappeared completely, or floats that wouldn't behave and showed up on the bottom of the page, then you have not really taken CSS to its limits. CSS, like Chess, is easy to learn ... but takes a lifetime to master. Then again, there are a select few individuals where this crap comes very easy to them. If Frontpage is simple for you to use, then use it. It is not the best way to create a webpage, but if that is what works for you ... then stick with it. But you will catch flak from all the CSS purists out there. If you want to learn CSS, start small and simple. Use text editing software like Notepad on steroids (Html-kit for the PC or the Taco whatever for that apple machine). Read up on the subject from places like A List Apart and others out there. I think once you get to playing around with it, you will quite like it. Either way, just enjoy what you are doing and don't stress over it too much.
I used to use tables to make websites but since my job I will only use css to style the pages and a few small tables just to display bits of text. Css seems to be easier to control once you learn it properly and it reduces the code in the hmtl file.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS): A stylesheet language used to describe the presentation of a document written in a markup language. It’s most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the language can be applied to any kind of XML document. Types of CSS • external stylesheets, i.e. a separate CSS-file referenced from the document • embedded style, blocks of CSS information inside the HTML document itself • inline styles, inside the HTML document, style information on a single element, specified using the "style" attribute. for more information visit infysolutions.com
the best way (but the hardest way) is using external css files to create template. Lare you can change the appearance of your website (not the content) only by change the css files.