Thursday, December 02, 2004

Understanding CSS - a beginners guide

I am the best qualified person to write a beginner's guide; I am one!

In my basic understanding CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is simply using HTML elements to structure a web page. I like to compare it to (probably erroneously) to the format styles in a word document.

Most of what I have learned and used to create these websites and several others I have developed for numerous other people and clients I have learnt by looking how someone else did something cool and then tweaking it. One of the great things about the web is nothing is secret. All the code is visible.
So you can right click a page and view source. Then as you start reading through the code you can identify what different parts of the code do.
HTML works on a hierarchy. The closest tags to an item on the web page will control its behaviour and appearance.

When I get stuck there are some pretty cool resources and tools to turn to. I have listed a few here.
CSS & Webdesign Workshop
w3schools
Brian Wilsons CSS Syntax
WebRef (resource site)

Doug has also posted some great articles on specific HTML and CSS examples. He learns a lot from Terreus.


Posted by: Jethro | 9:54 PM |