Out-of-date CSS person needs up-to-date CSS advice!!

[Alan Silver]

Hello,

I shamefully admit to be an old web designer, from before the days of
CSS. In those heady days, tables were king and were used for every
possible kind of alignment. When CSS came along, it was useful for
specifying colours and fonts for a site in one central location, but
useless for any real kind of design work due to the poor browser
support. I got well in to using CSS for colours and fonts, but carried
on using tables for layout.

I recently came across www.csszengarden.com and was totally amazed that
you could do such things with CSS alone. I am completely rethinking my
approach to page layout, but need some help. I have looked at the CSS
there, and at a fair few other sites I have found since, but haven't yet
got the picture completely clear.

So, any suggestions for some background material that will bring me up
to date? I have trawled around Amazon and found three books that look
interesting, the CSS Zen Garden one, "More Eric Meyer on CSS" and
"Cascading Style Sheets the Definitive Guide" (also by Eric Meyer).

Any comments on this choice of books? Remember, I do have a good
understanding of basic CSS, so I don't need anything for a complete
beginner, but I am obviously missing quite a lot of the picture, so I
need something for, erm, a complete beginner!!

Also, are there any on-line resources that I can use? I prefer books as
it's easier to read on paper, but I would also like to see some on-line
material.

Finally, how good is modern browser support for CSS? I only looked at
those sites in IE6, I don't bother in other browsers (although I'm sure
they were fine). Is CSS still a major challenge of working your way
around browser deficiencies?

Thanks for any comments.

--
Alan Silver
(anything added below this line is nothing to do with me)

[Alan Silver]

At last - someone who has answered my question!!

Don't get too down on CSS based on the responses you've received. Yes,
it's an imperfect solution that could use a lot of help, but we're stuck
with what we have and have to make the best of it.

So, any suggestions for some background material that will bring me up
to date? I have trawled around Amazon and found three books that look
interesting, the CSS Zen Garden one, "More Eric Meyer on CSS" and
"Cascading Style Sheets the Definitive Guide" (also by Eric Meyer).
I highly recommend Erik Meye on CSS as well as the followup book More Eric
Meye on CSS. They're both good, but you should read the first one first.

Thanks. I was wondering about whether or not I needed to read the first
one, or if I could just go straight to the second (which got better
reviews in Amazon). Maybe I should read both.

<snip>

Also, are there any on-line resources that I can use? I prefer books as
it's easier to read on paper, but I would also like to see some on-line
material.

Plenty.

Try:

A list apart
The Web Standards Project
BlueRobot
Position is Everything

Thanks for those.
Google is your friend.

Yeah, but it's also your enemy sometimes. If you are looking for sites
on Mongolian Weaver Bashing, then it's great (I imagine!!) as it's a
specialist subject and Google helps you find stuff quickly. Type "css"
in Google and you get 91 million pages!! Hard to know what's worth
reading out of that lot.

Finally, how good is modern browser support for CSS? I only looked at
those sites in IE6, I don't bother in other browsers (although I'm sure
they were fine). Is CSS still a major challenge of working your way
around browser deficiencies?

Yes.

Thought so. Oh well.

Thanks very much for the helpful reply.

--
Alan Silver
(anything added below this line is nothing to do with me)

[Barbara de Zoete]

On Tue, 9 Aug 2005 09:53:42 +0100, Alan Silver <al*********@no spam.thanx> wrote:

At last - someone who has answered my question!!

[ Please attribute the quotes, so one is to know who has answered your question ]

Google is your friend.

Yeah, but it's also your enemy sometimes. If you are looking for sites on
Mongolian Weaver Bashing, then it's great (I imagine!!) as it's a specialist
subject and Google helps you find stuff quickly. Type "css" in Google and you
get 91 million pages!! Hard to know what's worth reading out of that lot.

That's true (althoug I 'only' get 80 million). Try Ixquick. Sometimes that
engine gives very good results. <http://eu.ixquick.com/>
--
,-- --<--@ -- PretLetters: 'woest wyf', met vele interesses: ----------.
| weblog | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/_private/weblog.html |
| webontwerp | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/webontwerp.html |
|zweefvliegen | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/vliegen.html |
`-------------------------------------------------- --<--@ ------------'

[Alan Silver]

>>> Google is your friend.

Yeah, but it's also your enemy sometimes. If you are looking for
sites on Mongolian Weaver Bashing, then it's great (I imagine!!) as
it's a specialist subject and Google helps you find stuff quickly.
Type "css" in Google and you get 91 million pages!! Hard to know
what's worth reading out of that lot.

That's true (althoug I 'only' get 80 million). Try Ixquick. Sometimes
that engine gives very good results. <http://eu.ixquick.com/>

That's better, I only got 21 million results using that search engine. I
should have read through those by bedtime!!

Ta ra

--
Alan Silver
(anything added below this line is nothing to do with me)

[bugbear]

Alan Silver wrote:

Google is your friend.

Yeah, but it's also your enemy sometimes. If you are looking for sites
on Mongolian Weaver Bashing, then it's great (I imagine!!) as it's a
specialist subject and Google helps you find stuff quickly. Type "css"
in Google and you get 91 million pages!! Hard to know what's worth
reading out of that lot.

My favourite magic word in google is "tutorial".

searching on
css tutorial
still gives lots of pages, but google's ranking is
quite helpful.

Still not perfect, obviously, but ya' take what
ya' can get.

If you like more formal treatments, add the word
"specificat ion" to your search :-)

BugBear

[Barbara de Zoete]

On Tue, 9 Aug 2005 11:58:58 +0100, Alan Silver <al*********@no spam.thanx> wrote:

Google and you get 91 million pages!! Hard to know what's worth reading out
of that lot.

That's true (althoug I 'only' get 80 million). Try Ixquick. Sometimes that
engine gives very good results. <http://eu.ixquick.com/>

That's better, I only got 21 million results using that search engine.

Really? For 'css' as the search word, I got only 50 listed sites
<http://eu.ixquick.com/do/metasearch.pl?c at=web&cmd=proc ess_search&lang uage=english&ut f_query=&query= css>

Did you actually try this at all? Did you take a look? The 21 million you refer
to are possible results, from which 50 are selected being 'top ten pages' from
various search engines. I'm sure you'll find something useful in those 50 pages.

--
,-- --<--@ -- PretLetters: 'woest wyf', met vele interesses: ----------.
| weblog | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/_private/weblog.html |
| webontwerp | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/webontwerp.html |
|zweefvliegen | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/vliegen.html |
`-------------------------------------------------- --<--@ ------------'

[Alan Silver]

>>>> Google and you get 91 million pages!! Hard to know what's worth

reading out of that lot.

That's true (althoug I 'only' get 80 million). Try Ixquick.
Sometimes that engine gives very good results.
<http://eu.ixquick.com/>

That's better, I only got 21 million results using that search engine.

Really? For 'css' as the search word, I got only 50 listed sites
<http://eu.ixquick.com/do/metasearch....s_search&langu
age=english&ut f_query=&query= css>

Did you actually try this at all? Did you take a look? The 21 million
you refer to are possible results, from which 50 are selected being
'top ten pages' from various search engines. I'm sure you'll find
something useful in those 50 pages.

I did try it, but I misread the line that reported the numbers. I am so
used to seeing Google's line that says it's showing you the first 20 (or
whatever) out of 21 million that I assumed this was doing the same.
Rereading it, it seems it's showing me 44 pages that it thinks are
useful, out of 21 million that might have been useful.

Thanks for the clarification. Obviously the usefulness depends on how
good the choice of 44 is, but I'll have to have a look and see for
that!!

Ta ra

--
Alan Silver
(anything added below this line is nothing to do with me)

[Roedy Green]

On Mon, 8 Aug 2005 16:40:11 +0100, Alan Silver
<al*********@no spam.thanx> wrote or quoted :

Any comments on this choice of books?

see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/css.html

[Roedy Green]

On Mon, 8 Aug 2005 16:40:11 +0100, Alan Silver
<al*********@no spam.thanx> wrote or quoted :

Finally, how good is modern browser support for CSS?

see Topstyle. It will tell you which features you use will work on
which browsers.

http://mindprod.com/jgloss/topstyle.html

[Darin McGrew]

Alan Silver <[e-mail] x> wrote:

I recently came across www.csszengarden.com and was totally amazed
that you could do such things with CSS alone.

Alan J. Flavell <fl*****@ph.gla .ac.uk> wrote: Yes, it's a spectacular demonstration of what can be achieved, indeed;
but under no circumstances to be used as an actual model of how to
design normal web pages.

Alan Silver <[e-mail] x> wrote: Why not?

For one thing, many of the designs are brittle, and fail in browsing
environments that differ from what the CSS author expected. For example,
try enforcing a minimum font size, using a narrow browser window, enforcing
a narrow browser window, or turning off image-loading when CSS is enabled.

For another, many of the techniques common to the CSS Zen Garden designs
(e.g., replacing text with images of text) are used not because they are
good techniques for real-world projects, but because the CSS Zen Garden
imposes artificial constraints.
--
Darin McGrew, mc****@stanford alumni.org, http://www.rahul.net/mcgrew/
Web Design Group, da***@htmlhelp. com, http://www.HTMLHelp.com/

"I've cut this board three times, and it's still too short!"

[Alan Silver]

>>Finally, how good is modern browser support for CSS?

see Topstyle. It will tell you which features you use will work on
which browsers.

http://mindprod.com/jgloss/topstyle.html

Ta

--
Alan Silver
(anything added below this line is nothing to do with me)