|
 |
|
|
Teach yourself CSS the easy way |
By:
Erich Bihlman |
|
|
I taught myself HTML back in the mid-nineties and was proud of
the fact that I was able to accomplish the design of fairly
complex web pages with nothing more than a starter HTML book, an
HTML reference book, and the knowledge I had stored in my head.
But back in those days, we web designers had what looking back
was a fairly limited amount of tools with which to work, and the
quality (or lack thereof) of sites on the web was lackluster at
best.
Fast-forward to today: The hand-coder has more powerful and
intuitive software packages available that will still allow us
"to get our hands dirty", which brings us to the purpose of this
article. With the standardization of the much anticipated
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in the late-nineties, the web
design community has become familiar with a much more powerful
and precise method of web page layout.
"But how is an old-time web coder supposed to learn CSS the easy
way?!" Well, I say you should learn it the way I, and countless
others, have:
1. Download the Firefox browser 2. Install the Html Validator
(based on Tidy) 0.5.9 extension 3. Open one of your "old" HTML
files 4. View the source, click the "Cleanup the page" button 5.
Check the "replace FONT.....tags by CSS" box, then Refresh
Now you have a very neat and tidy piece of code, with all the
CSS dirty work done for you! At this point you can copy & paste
the resulting code and use it in your project and start figuring
out what it's doing. I was amazed at how easily I was able to
pick it up and start making changes on my own. When I wanted
more information on a certain style it was a just a Google
search away to many excellent CSS resources on the web. I find
it much easier to learn CSS if I get to apply the modifications
to the existing code that I've been working on, and I think you
will too.
I hope you find this article helpful and if you follow these
steps you should be able to add CSS to your web site design
toolbox in no time!
|
|
Article Source: http://www.powerdirectory.net/articles/article53002.html |
|
|
|
|
|
|
