CSS Web Design Basics
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CSS Web Design Basics
So, what is CSS? CSS is the acronym for Cascading Style Sheets. CSS is a simple mechanism for adding style and describing the presentation e.g. fonts, colors, spacing and other aspects of web presentation. Cascading Style Sheets were developed as a means for creating a consistent approach to providing style information for web documents.Most Web authoring tools provide some sort of support for CSS style sheets, such as the ever popular Dreamweaver™.
Using CSS design allows your pages to download more quickly, makes your website much easier to manage, and has numerous web usability, accessibility and search engine optimisation benefits, in fact in order to validate your XHTML pages with the w3c, you are required to use css.
Style sheets have been in use for years. They are the technical specifications for layout, whether print or online. Print designers use style sheets to insure that their designs are printed exactly to specifications. A style sheet for a Web page serves the same purpose, but with the added functionality of also telling the viewing engine how to render the document being viewed.
However, the cascading bit for web page design is the special part. A Web style sheet is intended to cascade through a series of style sheets, like a waterfall. Every Web page is affected by at least one style sheet, even if the Web designer doesn’t apply any styles. This style sheet is the user agent style sheet – the default styles that the Web browser will use to display a page if no other instructions are provided. But if the web designer provides other instructions, i.e. specifies a specific link color, the browser needs to know which instructions have priority, the cascade defines the style sheets set by the designers to redefine the color and supersede the web browser’s defaults.
Using CSS you will find your web pages will be smaller; increasing your site download time, something that will appeal to your website visitors and, to boot your mark-up will be cleaner, appealing to the all important search engines. Once a site has been created using CSS maintenance of the site becomes much easier, making life simple for the web designer or persons in charge of web maintenance. How? The presentation of an entire web site or web document, for example the color of links, can be changed by altering just one file, greatly reducing the time and money spent on upkeep.
Using CSS your content will be accessible to all browsing devices, incorporating everything from Lynx based systems to mobile phones and PDA’s
When you’re first learning to build a Web site, you often don’t think much about style sheets, as you’re too busy learning to tell a
from a
. But once you’ve mastered the basics, CSS is a great place to go to make your pages more user friendly and controllable.
The Benefits
- By editing a single CSS file, you can make site wide design changes.
- CSS lets you output to multiple formats quickly.
- CSS lets you use logical names for page elements. You can, for example, give a DIV the name “header”, or a H1 the class “headline”.
- External CSS files are cached by browsers, improving load time.
- CSS eliminates the need for lots of confusing code making the web developers lives easier.
- CSS lets you do things normal HTML doesn’t, for example better font control, absolute positioning.
- Practical use of CSS encourages proper HTML structure, which will improve accessibility and search engine placement.
- If you want valid XHTML Strict you have to use CSS
Summary
CSS design represents a much more powerful way to lay out websites, using CSS design in yor web applications allows your pages to download more quickly, makes your website much easier to manage, and has numerous web usability, accessibility and search engine optimisation benefits.
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Make a Webpage:
Full Web Building Tutorials: http://www.w3schools.com/
Beginner's HTML Tutorial: http://www.htmlbasix.com/
How to Create a Webpage: http://www.make-a-web-site.com/
HTML Tutorial: http://www.hypergurl.com/whatishtml.html
So You Want To Set Up Your First Site, Huh?: http://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutorials/getting_started/article.php/3479561
More info: http://www.hypergurl.com/
Web Site Blog: http://www.instant-web-site-tools.com/blog/
http://www.w3schools.com/site/default.asp
How to Start / Create Your Own Website: The Beginner's A-Z Guide: http://www.thesitewizard.com/gettingstarted/startwebsite.shtml
So, you want to make a Web Page!: http://www.pagetutor.com/html_tutor/index.html
http://www.snappages.com
HTHs,
Ron
You may be technically competent within a year but you will be a million miles from an expert. Be a little realistic. And you'll need more than Flash and CSS to be an expert. Try SQL, PHP, ASP.net just for starters.
To be a good designer takes years (if you're lucky) of practice and experience. Too many self-taught "web designers" think they're awesome because they make EVERYTHING on their web pages stand out. This is very poor practice. A web designer needs to know how to communicate effectively with graphics. A graphic design course will see to that for you. But don't expect to learn it all in a year.
Everything else you mention can be learned, to a reasonable level, in a year with the right attitude. The O'Reilly books are your best bet for that. Set yourself pretend projects and when you get stuck, refer to the books.
I don't know of any video tutorials. I prefer books – easier to quickly refer to a particular subject with a book.
http://www.w3schools.com is free, but only skims the surface of each language it teaches.
Front side of the business:
Flash
Dreamweaver (frontpage is a breeze)
.net and whatever implementation you're looking for (ASP, VB, C#)
HTML, XML, PHP
ASP is a big riser now, since it can do a whole lot.
Security Techniques! (ftps, https, VHTML etc)
IF you're a aspiring web dev and know good security procedures, then you're golden
Stay as open minded as you can and learn CONCEPTS. Don't get bogged down in specifics, because then you'll get pidgeon-holed and become obsolete. However, if you know basic web design principals its just a matter of symantics and syntax to become a brain-child with a new toy or program.
Also make sure you know scripting (JavaScript, php scripting, CSS…) so you can make stuff look nicer
Backside of the Business:
Database TEchniques.
SQL, MySQL, Oracle, Access, ColdFusionMX
DataMining techniques are a biggie. Server administration; know your way around a MS Exchange server. Know about IIS controls on Servers. Learn about Linux (and why people use linux boxes).. again; its concepts and not details…
You specifically said web *design*, so:
1. General design and layout – that means knowing how to use a pencil and paper to draw up a design, indeed.
2. HTML/XHTML
3. CSS/XML/XLST
4. JavaScript
And maybe
5. Server-side scripting (PHP, ASP, Perl – in order of popularity)
6. Database Management (MySQL, SQL, PostGres)
If you're talking about web *development*, then it's a slightly different list:
1. HTML/XHTML
2. XML
3. Server side scripting (PHP, ASP, Perl)
4. Database Management (MySQL, SQL, PostGres)
5. Client side Scripting (JavaScript, or VBScript in a controlled, Internet Explorer-only environment)
6. XSS/XLST
7. Basic layout and design
The difference between a web *designer* and a web *developer* is that – ideally – a web designer should need no knowledge of the intricacies of scripting and programming (or even CSS, for that matter, other than realizing what is and isn't possible).
It's the web *developer's* job to make a design work.
For CSS check out the website: http://www.csszengarden.com/
Also, get the associated book, "The Zen of CSS Design": http://www.amazon.com/Zen-CSS-Design-Visual-Enlightenment/dp/0321303474/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230916174&sr=1-1
I would not spend time learning PHP and ASP.NET pick one technology and stick with one. Server-sde programming depends on your host. If you are doing your own hosting, then you know what you can support.
I would only focus on learning what you need to know for server-side programming. Dataase access, forms authentication, form validation are the most common across any website.
HTML is the basic formatting language, which is used in every website, so you must learn this first. Then, you can learn CSS to learn how to spice up your site and make it look a lot better.
These languages are just for websites and are inputed directly into the code, but then you can learn some real programming languages and start with maybe JavaScript or PHP. JavaScript is a client scripting language and PHP is a server side scripting language. These can be used for different situations and are really helpful in any kind of website.
Hope this helped you =]
P.S. check w3schools.com for more info
Knowing XHTML and CSS without the fancy editors is a very good thing. Go to W3 online schools to take you to the next level. Yes, Dreamweaver and Front Page do a lot of the dirty work for you, but your knowledge of the code CAN take you to a whole new level beyond that.
Flash is also a cool application that can produce wonderful pages…but it costs. If you are a student (or know one), you can get Studio 8 from Adobe for a couple hundred – which is a heck of a deal.
Remember – content in HTML and presentation in CSS. If you haven't learned that yet, keep going!
The best Hands down would be
http://www.w3schools.com/
I learned my basic skills there before going on to school to get a degree, my first year was so easy because I knew everything from them!!
There is no substitute for a good book. If you are serious about being a good web designer, get this book – it is amazing, it got me up and running in no time. It shows you how to build web sites the way the professionals do it. Can't recommend it enough!
Head First XHTML and CSS (link below)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/059610197X?ie=UTF8&tag=theseccamtut-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=059610197X