Where to start (CSS) - An Expert Beginner

I have been working on websites since long time now, but never used css and always ignored it because of irritations. I was wrong because now i feel CSS is really important.

If any CSS Experienced person can guide me where to start. i have seen some people use CSS in between head tags and some people use style.css for this.

I want to learn the latest Web 2.0 Css so it can work on all browsers. Please give me all the good resources for that.

Thanks

 

w3schools.com is the best place to start of from scratch.
But you gotta learn it fast , as CSS 2.1 is the current one and CSS 3.0 is already on the door.

 

I learned by experimenting and changing templates.
Tip: Google "Open source templates" and try working with (modifying) some of them.
Modern CSS is really confusing at first, but gets much easier after about 10 to 100 hours.

 

Get familiar with css frameworks such as blueprint css and 960 grid. - Eric Myer's books are good as well. And start reading this blog for css guidelines and tips. http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/01/19/53-css-techniques-you-couldnt-live-without/ The transition your about to face is a pain in the ass because of all the new browers that you need to consider. BUT.... on the plus side your so freakin late in the game that you pretty much bi-passed IE6 which is a bitch to overcome if your a css noob. Good luck

 

style.css is generally used when you want the same colour coding and structure is to be folllowed across the website. Style is used in the header section when you want to apply the css only to that particular page. I'd suggest use dreamweaver, create different designs, and experiment a lot. That's only sure shot way of teaching well.

 

I have been following a couple of websites to learn css for few months. Hope this helps you as well

http://csscreator.com/css-forum/

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/style/

cheers
nirav

 

I will suggest you buy a book if you want to learn more details about CSS. If you want to learn the basic then you can find it online

 

I don't suggest books for css , it's not hard to learn just try to look for some free css templates and use w3schools.com to know how it work and use software like Macromedia Dreamweaver it will make it easier to write and attach css to your pages.

 

If you've been making web pages for a while, and not using css, you've got to relearn html. No non-trivial table layout can be well structured and semantic; it can be valid, but that's not at issue.

Go to http://htmldog.com/ and work through their tutorials in order. It may seem like a step backward, but you've got a lot to unlearn. CSS depend on having semantic, well structured, and well formed (valid) html. If you try to short cut the process, you'll be frustrated. Aim toward doing it all correctly from the start.

cheers,

gary

 

You really want to master CSS? Try taking some quizzes on CSS over at sitepoint. There are ten in all and I have currently just finished number 9. I am going to work on the other 9 soon (there are 10 in all). They really challenge your CSS knowledge and logical thinking process. Here are a link to all 10. (Note the guy over there who made these challenges, well, for a lack of a better word, he is a guru, and I have been doing CSS for 4 years now and he is double my knowledge.)

www. sitepoint. com/forums/showthread.php?t=594896

There are links for every other quiz in that post. Hope you find them interesting and fun.

 

Just start some basic codings from scratch and you'll develop skills in some weeks. Focus on basic stuff as create a basic template (wrapper/header/menu/content/footer) and put it alive without errors (w3c) and crossbrowser compatible. From then you will learn naturally and you will put more work to some serious coding.

 

Here you have an css generator. I have build this website for beginners.

http://www.webmasterimages.com/CSSGenerator.php

 

He wants to learn css, not have a program generate css for him

~eric

 

Right Eric

Thanks love virus but eric is right, I want to learn CSS, so only notepad can be enough for me

Thanks all of your for your great replies, i will go through each and every reply and its going to help me hopefully.

More answers are expected from other experienced designers

 

Sorry, I just noticed this post and I had to bash it down. Whats wrong with books? "The Ultimate CSS Reference" is one of the best books I have ever read. I know the two people who wrote the book on sitepoint, and they are seriously the smartest people in html and css I know. Their usernames are autisticukoo, and Paul O'B. Also no offense here, but W3schools is just 2 people who found a good domain name. Their site has outdated code, and has no link to the W3C. And dreamweaver won't help him one bit. He needs to code himself to learn. Not to rely on WYSIWYG editors. Once he is more experienced and has to work on multiple sites per day, then it would be all right I guess but notepad is the way to go at this stage of his css knowledge

~eric

 

I made a template (unfinished) which I will be using as the base for my future designs.

It's NOT finished, but it can give you a pretty good idea as to what does what. Suggest you view > source on this page, download the stylesheet and play with it. http://www.farstyle.com/abc/2column-footer/

Also, Open Source Template sites are a great place to download free designs and learn from their code too;

www.opendesigns.org
www.oswd.org
www.openwebdesign.org

 

Ah so thats what your having me fix for you in that one thread lol Thats a template..? Weird design lol. Looks like a darker version of tinyurl.

~eric

 

Like I said, I am using it as a base for future designs, the colours are there merely to show the different div's. It's not a design!

 

I think u should have started some new topic for your template, i thought i started this topic for getting css help

 

Little did you know he already did.. Thats why I siad

~eric