NEED A GOOD VISUAL

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NEED A GOOD VISUAL

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All Forums >> Web Development >> Cascading Style Sheets and Accessibility >> NEED A GOOD VISUAL

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boyshanks Posts: 25 Joined: 10/30/2003 Status: offline	NEED A GOOD VISUAL - 12/23/2008 22:07:31 Hey there I am about to sadly make the switch from FrontPage 2003 to Dreamweaver or some other CSS web creation vehicle. With FrontPage it was soooo easy to just jump in, learn and get good results, I'm sorry to see it go. Anyway, I am having trouble comprehending the overall set up/concept of CSS. With FrontPage it was so easy because I could jump to the Navigation view and see how everything was laid out. If I could get a visual for representation of CSS I could better understand it and how it works. Can anyone provide me with a good visual concerning CSS and how it is set up? Thanks in advance.


treetopsranch Posts: 1539 From: Cottage Grove, OR, USA Status: offline	RE: NEED A GOOD VISUAL - 12/23/2008 22:23:07 quote: Can anyone provide me with a good visual concerning CSS and how it is set up? What do you want? A training video? A good CSS book with pictures? Most of us here learned (or are learning) CSS by studying CSS, looking at sites that use CSS, reading CSS books. etc. By the way, Expression Web 2, the followup program to FrontPage is VERY good at CSS. But you need to know how to do it. So get a CSS book that has 'visual pictures and start learning _____________________________ Don from TreeTops Ranch, Oregon "I've got a taste for quality and luxury" (in reply to boyshanks)


Tailslide Posts: 6692 Joined: 5/10/2005 From: Out here on the raggedy edge Status: offline	RE: NEED A GOOD VISUAL - 12/24/2008 3:22:25 Can't think of a visual representation of CSS but I can certainly recommend a couple of good tutorials: 1. http://www.htmldog.com - brilliant 2. http://www.cssbasics.com - good for css only stuff 3. http://css.maxdesign.com.au/index.htm - simply brilliant for lists (which you'll need for navigation menus) and floats 4. http://blog.themeforest.net/general/15-css-tricks-that-must-be-learned/ - very useful to bookmark and come back to 5. http://www.positioniseverything.net/ - get to grips with those nasty css browser bugs! Be wary of W3Schools.com as they tend to have outdated techniques in there among the tutorials and tests and they're NOT the same as the W3C. Also - since you're switching anyway, don't rely on DW to produce the CSS, get into doing it yourself or at least be able to do it yourself as DW like other WYSIWYG editors doesn't always know the best way to do things. _____________________________ Little Blue Plane Web Design \| Land Rover project (in reply to treetopsranch)


caz Posts: 3742 Joined: 10/10/2001 From: Somewhere south of Chester, UK Status: offline	RE: NEED A GOOD VISUAL - 12/24/2008 9:20:57 For visual representation try Stylemaster look around at the site and download the trial version. There are also some good tutorials there. You do need to know your html though. _____________________________ I remember when it took less than 4hrs to fly across the Atlantic. (in reply to Tailslide)


bobby Posts: 11479 Joined: 8/15/1969 From: Seattle WA USA Status: offline	RE: NEED A GOOD VISUAL - 1/7/2009 17:02:13 quote: Anyway, I am having trouble comprehending the overall set up/concept of CSS. With FrontPage it was so easy because I could jump to the Navigation view and see how everything was laid out. If I could get a visual for representation of CSS I could better understand it and how it works. I think you may be confused as to exactly what CSS is... As I recall, Navigation view in FP simply showed you where you pages were in linked relation to each other, the images on them, etc. CSS does nothing of the sort... in fact it has no relation to the layout of your website at all (pages yes, but not each page in relation to another). Rather it controls the style. Colors, fonts, dimension, positioning, etc. for every page in your site is controlled by one page of markup. I don't see how you could visually show this in a flowchart like FP's navigator. I suppose you could draw lines from each element in your CSS to where those elements appear on a page, but the lines would intersect in such a way that you wouldn't see the pages. I would recommend finding a simple tutorial, then play with the elements of the CSS and see how each affects your pages. You may want to start here and work forward slowly. Start by using CSS to control colors and fonts, text variables, etc. Once you have a good handle on that only then would I recommend jumping into positioning or layout using CSS. http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/011/firstcss _____________________________ Talk to your kittens about catnip, or someone else will. (in reply to caz)


womble Posts: 6007 Joined: 3/14/2005 From: Living on the edge Status: offline	RE: NEED A GOOD VISUAL - 1/7/2009 18:52:12 quote: ORIGINAL: bobby quote: Anyway, I am having trouble comprehending the overall set up/concept of CSS. With FrontPage it was so easy because I could jump to the Navigation view and see how everything was laid out. If I could get a visual for representation of CSS I could better understand it and how it works. I think you may be confused as to exactly what CSS is... As I recall, Navigation view in FP simply showed you where you pages were in linked relation to each other, the images on them, etc. CSS does nothing of the sort... in fact it has no relation to the layout of your website at all (pages yes, but not each page in relation to another). Rather it controls the style. Colors, fonts, dimension, positioning, etc. for every page in your site is controlled by one page of markup. I don't see how you could visually show this in a flowchart like FP's navigator. It's not really the same, and even in the days when I used to use FP, I didn't use the FP navigator, but I hand code mine now, and I use PSPad, which has a pane on the left of the screen where you can set up "projects" and see the file hierarchy of folders and pages within your project/website, and there is a preview function in it that let's you view your pages in a browser window. Best of all, it's a free download. I used to use TopStyle Pro, which seems to be similar to the Stylemaster that Caz recommended, though Stylemaster looks to have more in the way of wizards and templates and stuff. Just been looking at the Stylemaster site though, and it looks pretty cool. Most software has a trial version though, so you can give it a try before committing to it. A few sites that are useful for CSS layouts: http://csscreator.com/?q=tools/layout - useful for generating a basic CSS layout http://glish.com/css/home.asp - excellent site that shows you a 'bare bones' layout and the CSS that's used to get the layout - http://blog.html.it/layoutgala/ - excellent site with 40 CSS layouts that all use the same basic HTML, but provide the CSS for each layout - http://leftjustified.net/site-in-an-hour/ - this one's a useful step by step walk-through of how a particular design was created using a CSS layout, and shows screenshots and diagrams of how the page elements fit together and the CSS used to generate them. There's probably no one book or website that will tell you absolutely everything you need to know about CSS - it's a constant learning journey, but I'd highly recommend any book by Dan Cedarholm - he's got an easy to read and entertaining style. If you're completely new to CSS, from experience I'd say it may be easier to try using CSS just for styling at first, and then move onto CSS layouts when you're confident with using it for styling. When I switched to CSS, (or rather started using CSS external CSS rather than inline CSS, because even though it's not differentiated in FP, you are using styles applied to the HTML inline, because the HTML simply controls the content) I jumped in feet first and switched from FP and tables layouts, to learning HTML/CSS and hand coding, and full CSS layouts, and got myself into a complete flap! Just think of CSS as boxes that you put things into - in this case HTML - and you can can control where on the page the boxes go by using CSS positioning to move them around the page and apply styles to them and their contents to control how they look visually. When you first start with CSS, it does seem like a lot of work to start with and a lot to take in, but it's worth it in the long run, because it makes it a lot easier to maintain a site and make site-wide changes once you've got the hang of it and start using it from when you first start a site. _____________________________ ~~ "A cruel god ain't no god at all" ~~ ~~ Erase hate. Practice love. ~~ (in reply to bobby)