I'd like to try using css in my web site development. I'm not sure what the big deal is, but it seems to be a trend. I would like to build a simple page with a layout like this: Could someone point me in the right direction? I would appreciate your advice. Thank you. John
You may also want to check out W3 Schools for info on CSS in general: http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_intro.asp The reason people are using CSS is for accessibility, efficiency, and separation of content and presentation. Accessibility: people who are blind should still have access to your webpage through text-readers; more devices are now able to access the net, many don't have the processing power of a computer so they need clean/clear pages without all the errors and excessive markup that was common just a few years ago. Efficiency: Layouts can now be done once in a single CSS file and used by all pages on the site. No longer do users have to download a 20K table on every single page. Separation: Your markup can be classed and all classes can be modified by a single CSS file, allowing the information to be presented in any way you choose. For instance, you can have a class for the title of a story on your site (rather than the old way of doing it with the font tag on every single title).
Newbie too..... 2 semesters ago I took intro to web design & it was basically an intro to dreamweaver & I ended up so frustrated that I dropped the class... I don't think web design is for me, @ least when it comes to coding. I can do graphic work & put everything together but can't code it so I use editors & whatnot. Hate it though, feel like a fraud when I do even if I created everything myself (except for the code to make it all show up lol)
A lot of schools are till teaching students the lazy way out: using word or frontpage to "publish to web" which isn't right. Classes should teach hand coding, the backend of websites. That way you actually can understand what you're doing.
I agree with you, hand coding is only the solution for better understanding html and css. Using WYSIWYG methods not going to help when it comes to trouble shooting. Almost all Multimedia Institute at my place teaching html classes using Dreamweaver which is not right.
Depending on how much of a newbie you are or if you are just getting started with CSS, I found quite a bit of resources for CSS so I thought I'd share. http://weblogs.about.com/od/htmlandcsstutorials/index.htm?terms=CSS+tutorial http://cssvault.com/resources.php http://www.pacificwebeffects.com/webtoolsdirectory/css.html#cssgenerators http://www.hostm.com/css/