I’ve designed web pages for several years now. I’ve used cascading stylesheets to some extent with every site I’ve created, principally for text formatting. Over the past two weeks I’ve been working on a couple WordPress weblogs. By default WordPress comes with a file called index.php with div tags and styles already inserted. I’m trying, for the first time, to use only css to format the layout of the site and I have to admit, it’s driving me crazy!
Tables seem so much more intuitive to me. I guess it’s because I learned that way and change is hard, but give me a break… why is it so hard just to have all the content centered in the browser with css?
If anyone has a suggestion of a good book that will get me up to par without necessarily starting from the dead beginning of what CSS and HTML are, I’d appreciate it. I’m going to try to stick with this and get on the css bandwagon (late albeit) and do things right from now on.
2 replies on “CSS Woes”
I have a few bookmarks that I’ve found to be helpful when I started a couple months ago. I can say that I had a similar frustration due to my mentally hardwired routine of table based layout. But after a little cranial reprogramming I can say I love it so much more. So much cleaner, so much simpler and efficient. Of course there are some things I think tables for layout did better (such as vertical alignment) but for the most part I dig it.
URL’s:
http://www.stopdesign.com/log/2004/09/03/liquid-bleach.html
http://www.ilovejackdaniels.com/css/
http://glish.com/css/ *some simple and common layouts*
http://www.alistapart.com/topics/html/
http://cssvault.com/cat_tutorials.php
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/
http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic/
http://www.htmldog.com/
http://v2.stopdesign.com/
http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/
http://www.picturequest.com/
Books:
After some extensive searches when I began my transition I ended up with a few books but my fav was:
Web Standards Soutions: The Markup and Style Handbook by Dan Cederholm. simplebits.com
It is probably aimed at a more beginning audience and not too tailored for you but there is a lot of good information throughout the book related to layout. But to tell you the truth you’ll probably find all you need online.
I must say I just found your blog and enjoy reading it.
Well, I hate to suggest something (which to me and mine) so patently obvious, but I’d vote for checking out alistapart.com even above the superexpensive books by the likes of Eric Meyer (credit goes to Eric for having one of the most readable ‘here’s how it works’ books, versus some of the ‘this never works, but here’s what it does’ books). I’m currently working on an enterprise sized project that has necessitated heavy usage of contextual styles, and have found that site (any the many linked to it) very helpful for quick reference.