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10 Best Resources for CSS 344
victorialever writes "Since one could have noticed an increasing number of websites that are employing CSS and an increasing number of resources talking about how great CSS is, it seems to become impossible not to jump on the CSS bandwagon as well. The 10 Best Resources for CSS provides an impressive list of the CSS resources which have recently become essential for web-developers. Among them - CSSZenGarden, The Web Developer's Handbook, Stylegala, PositionIsEverything etc."
No CSS on that site. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No CSS on that site. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're a busy designer, sometimes you just have to take the pragmatic route rather that waste hours or days trying to make a pure CSS layout work across all the common browsers (none of which implement CSS 100% correctly anyway).
Either that or (worse) you compromise the design to make it fit the limitations of a pure CSS layout.
I think the latter approach accounts for the huge number of 'identikit', bloggish-looking sites out there (all proudly displaying their little W3c validation logos of course).
It's still perfectly possible to create valid, semantic XHTML/CSS markup that uses the odd table for layout (no, I don't mean a heap of nested ones with spacer gifs!).
While I'm all for standards and separating content from presentation, at this stage of the game, we just need to choose the solution that works best.
I know it's probably heresy to say this, but IMO tables work in an intuitive way that you can easily visualize whereas a mass of floated DIVs often do not!
Re:No CSS on that site. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No CSS on that site. (Score:2)
Re:No CSS on that site. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No CSS on that site. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you really believe all of this, then I don't think theres hope for you... unless you define "major and minor" browsers as "IE". Tables get rendered differently by different browsers, just like CSS gets rendered differently.. the only thing is that it's easier to work around CSS bugs
CSS is *WAY* more intuitive than tables ever were (and there's a reason - because it's designed that way.) You use DIVs to define blocks of code, then use CSS to say how you want them positioned. With tables, you have to screw around with row and column spans *in the HTML itself*.
It's pretty obvious that you prefer tables because you've spent a lot of time learning their quirks - don't slam CSS just because you don't know how to use it properly.
try using the correct tools for the right job
If you really believed this, you'd be using CSS.
Re:No CSS on that site. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been using CSS for many years. I've been using tables for many years, too, but don't mistake the fact that I'm aware of deficencies both in the CSS stndard and in it's imlpementations for a lack of knowledge. And the fact that you're telling me I need to use blocks of DIVs to layout my stuff is telling me that you're just another blind herd following CSS monkey, rather than anyone who can actually evaluate the usefullness and appropriateness of claims like "semantic markup". There's no excuse for telling someone to replace thier tables with divs "just because".
And just because you managed to find some stylesheet on a CSS site that you use blindly to work around certain CSS bugs (no doubt without realizing that the stylesheet itself relies on other bugs to work correctly, and the widespread reliance on these bugs is a major obstacle to the uptake of correct CSS implemetations in IE), doesn't mean that CSS incompatibilities are easier to work around than the practically non-existant table ones.
Re:No CSS on that site. (Score:3, Interesting)
I have yet to see any browser grossly mangle a table layout in they way the commonly do with CSS floats and DIVs.
A question for those who endlessly bang on about 'semantic markup' would be "what semantic value do DIVs and SPANs add"?
Tables do at least have some semantic value when used for actual tabular data - DIVs and SPANs have none at all - they only serve as containers to which styles are applied.
If you want your markup to be purely semantic, it should have no presentational aspect at all (no
And I must say.. (Score:2)
As for semantic HTML, you could achieve quite the same level of semantic information using tables and spans. And so, yes, I agree with you completely.
Re:No CSS on that site. (Score:2, Informative)
Real answer - - Money (Score:2)
As long as you use the 'strict' delcaration on you pages, it's fairly easy to create a good looking page accross browser implementations. The real issue is that news sites don't build pages indivudally and a change to 'real' CSS would take a major change in the system code.
Re:No CSS on that site. (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, vertical positioning, I'll give you. But fluid layouts? That's not hard at all. Websites are fluid by default, they only stop being fluid when you set explicit widths using fixed units. You can do that with CSS or tables.
If you are an experienced designer, then you've already done similar layouts a hundred times before, so you have the code and bug workarounds memorised and making it "work across all the common browsers" is at the very least least as easy as dumping a load of table code into each page.
Er, CSS is far less limited than tables (check out the CSS Zen Garden), and I've seen way, way, way more websites out there using tables that all look alike.
The reason most weblogs look alike is because they come with a set of default templates that people don't tweak very much.
Er, no. Not semantic. Not at all. If you are using tables for anything other than tabular data, it's not semantic.
At any stage of the game you need to choose the solution that works best. In my experience, switching to CSS saved me a whole lot of time that was spent dealing with cruddy code. Sure, in the beginning, that extra time was wasted on stuff I didn't know about CSS, but once I got a bit of experience, it was a real time-saver.
I've heard that before. Exclusively from developers that have years of experience with tables and who haven't spent any significant amount of time with CSS. Once they spend a week or two coding CSS every day, they wonder how they did without it. And if they never had much experience with tables in the first place, they don't want to bother with all the crap associated with tables (counting rowspans is never intuitive).
Really, just think about the difference involved in "just move that over to the right a bit" for the two approaches. With tables you have to insert an extra column, count rowspans, if there's any rows spanning across the whole layout you have to break for that, alter its colspan and put another cell below it with rowspans... and with CSS, you open up the stylesheet and change one number.
Re:No CSS on that site. (Score:3, Interesting)
There is no way in CSS to say something like "size this element relative to the size of that other element" without a parent-child relationship between them. That's the biggest flaw in CSS and it's supposed "semantic markup", because the parent-child stuff is determined by your *c
Re:No CSS on that site. (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, there is. You can do it with CSS tables. Internet Explorer doesn't understand them, but we're talking about the capabilities of CSS, not the capabilities of Internet Explorer, right?
In any case, there's very few instances where a parent-child relationship isn't available to be used in this way. That's just the nature of web pages - thin
Re:No CSS on that site. (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe you are. I'm talking about not only the CSS standard, but also the usefullness of CSS layout vs. tables in the real world, where implementations matter. Talking about what CSS3 could do if there was 100% browser support might be interesting over a beer, but it's not very usefull when it actually comes to developin
Re:No CSS on that site. (Score:2)
Re:No CSS on that site. (Score:2)
Okay, vertical positioning, I'll give you. But fluid layouts? That's not hard at all. Websites are fluid by default, they only stop being fluid when you set explicit widths using fixed units. You can do that with CSS or tables.
I once tried to do some of our corporate intranet pages to use pure CSS, but couldn't. The mixture of headers, footers, fixed and flowing columns I just couldn't get to work.
CSS seems nice for simple layouts, or complex ones using fixed positioning. Complex ones with some fixed
Re:No CSS on that site. (Score:2, Insightful)
Well you don't start out with a complicated example when you learn other stuff, do you? Back off on the corporate intranet pages and do a few simple layouts to begin with. Once you're familiar with the basic concepts, it'll be easier to move on and do more complicated things.
Experience with tables doesn't translate to experience with CSS. You aren't experienced, you
Re:No CSS on that site. (Score:2)
Either that or (worse) you compromise the design to make it fit the limitations of a pure CSS layout.
Because everybody knows presentation is more important than content?
Re:No CSS on that site. (Score:2, Insightful)
Those of us who have been dealing with CSS for several years have no problem at all visualizing the layout. The big question here is, how do you visualize YOUR layout when you can't have images loading? How do you visualize your table layout on a cellphone? How do you visualize your layout when you cant visualize anything at all... for example if you have low vision or no vision?
Maybe instead of thinking about getting the job done fast you should consider getting the job
Re:No CSS on that site. (Score:5, Interesting)
Best Resource for CSS? (Score:2, Funny)
Moderators, you didn't get the joke (Score:3, Informative)
Counterstike (Score:4, Funny)
CSS Cheat Sheet (Score:5, Informative)
May I also recommend Dave Child's CSS Cheat Sheet [ilovejackdaniels.com] ?
Print it out & stick it on the wall/partition - it covers almost all the CSS you'll use day-to-day, and (IMHO) it's much quicker than digging through the online documentation or the O'Reilly book.
Similar things for Javascript, PHP, etc. are linked from here [ilovejackdaniels.com] if you're interested.
Re:CSS Cheat Sheet (Score:2, Informative)
(They also make a good JavaScript card from which I learned most of my JavaScript, as well as those nifty color charts.)
Another top 10, hurray! (Score:2, Funny)
can I add one? (Score:5, Informative)
CSS Sidebar for Mozilla/Firefox (Score:5, Informative)
The REAL news ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Is that for real? Not been having much problems which Slashdot recently, but if they're chucking away their mess of tables
Re:The REAL news ... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The REAL news ... (Score:2, Informative)
With multiple stylesheets no less! Time to pre-order Duke Nukum Forever!
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen, projection" href="//www.slashcode.com/base.css" >
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen, projection" href="//www.slashcode.com/ostgnavbar.css" >
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen, projection" href="//www.slashcode.com/slashcode.css" title="Slashcode" >
<link rel="Alternate stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen, projectio
Re:The REAL news ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The REAL news ... (Score:2)
I hope this is for real since it will mean that I can stop supporting AvantSlash [fourteenminutes.com] which tries to make Slashdot as PDA and WAP friendly as possible.
Of course, all the parsing of HTML that my code did meant that any little change that occurred on the main Slashdot site completely broke AvantSlash . If you have a look at the change l [fourteenminutes.com]
Re:The REAL news ... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The REAL news ... (Score:5, Informative)
See CmdrTaco's journal [slashdot.org]
pwnd. (Score:2, Informative)
also here's a few interesting links bookmarks [alvit.de] layouts [thenoodleincident.com] more layouts [bluerobot.com]
My 2 pence (Score:2)
Best - NCDesign.org (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Best - NCDesign.org (Score:2)
At the bottom of the page, a lot of their examples didn't look right. I checked it in IE and they looked fine. Does anyone know if there's a Firefox bug with overflow:visible or overflow-x:scroll; overflow-y:hidden;? They look like I'd expect in IE but the overflowing isn't working in Firefox.
The IE only style text-overflow:ellipsis; which I'd never heard of before would really be handy. I wonder why it wa
CSS tables (Score:5, Insightful)
Structural markup is the essential differentiating factor, not just that you have found out how to replace tables with divs ...
</rant> over.
Rich.
Re:CSS tables (Score:2)
Is csszengarden not doing exactly that to superb effect?
Re:CSS tables (Score:3, Interesting)
CSS Zen Garden is a wonderful resource and has a lot of pretty pictures in it, but really it is taking two steps back to the start of the web, where every site was a poster with little interaction. All of those fixed layout designs and shiny objects are good to display artistic talent, but try putting dynamic content in there, and you are in for a world of hurt.
Re:CSS tables (Score:2)
Admittedly not a great example of web design [merjis.com], but structurally it does the right thing. If you have firefox, view that web page and go to View -> Page Style -> No Style to see the structural markup (or just use View Source if you're comfortable with that). Of course we do use <div>, but only where it's essential. I would prefer to use it less, or even not at all.
Compare to this [independent.co.uk] or this [yahoo.com] or this [visitcopenhagen.com] to see the ove
Re:CSS tables (Score:5, Informative)
Why? I really don't understand this, what's wrong with divs?
So that your site works in older browsers. - If it's just a bunch of nested divs, it'll collapse into short lines of text on an older browser.So that your site works in text-only browsers. Not just some Unix reprobates using Lynx, but people using mobile or otherwise "reduced" devices.
So that a speech reader (an accessibility device used by the millions of partially sighted and blind people in the world) can stress the structure of the page when reading it, which helps the visitor to understand how it is laid out even when they can't see it.
So that you can easily retarget content just by changing the stylesheet or (better) providing device-specific alternate stylesheets.
So that search engine spiders can understand the structure of your page - eg. they can identify the important headings.
So that you don't forget what elements in your site mean.
That's just off the top of my head.
Rich.
Re:CSS tables (Score:2)
"reprobates", ha. You just taught me a new word :).
I think the web design on your site is excellent, actually. No genius there but a very clean, pleasant look. I would get rid of the Firefox banner or make it much smaller, though; it distracts too much attention from your main message.
Re:CSS tables (Score:4, Informative)
Nothing is inherently wrong with divs, as long as you keep in mind that divs don't mean anything, and that a meaningful tag is always preferable when one is available.
To illustrate this, let's look at some common page-design tasks. Suppose that you want your page's title (which you'll type in text) and an image to appear at the top of your page. Many people would tell you to use a div with an id of 'head' to wrap everything, but there's a better way: simply use an h1 tag and give it a background and background-image. By using a meaningful tag for your page header, you've cut out excess HTML code, and the result is more elegant.
Let's say, however, that you want more than just text and an image in your header. Suppose, for example,that you want to do something like Slashdot, using text, an image, and more images representing the last several categories that have been updated. There is no one tag that can encompass all of this, and so here we have a case where a div is appropriate. Give it a meaningful ID -'header' is a common choice- and put your header elements inside it.
The rule for elegant code is to use the most meaningful tags which will do what you want. DIV tags are suitable when nothing else is available, and there are times when that happens. However, they should not be used when better tags exist.
Re:CSS tables (Score:2)
You're a developer. Thinking is your job, so that the end user (be it the actual person or their user-agent) doesn't have to. You can reset the default h1-values to whatever you want. In most browsers, that means simply resetting font-family, font-size, and the margins, which odds are you would be doing anyway.
Write plain HTML, then just add divs (Score:3, Insightful)
The result is a page that separates content from layout and works well both with and without CSS. It will also be easy to replace the CSS when you need to. This is also useful when you have different style sheets for different media. Have a "print" style sheet that excludes the sidebar and uses different colours.
Re:CSS tables (Score:2, Interesting)
And divs are ment to mark divisions, not be a universal styling element.
The point of CSS is to seperate the design from the underlying HTML, not just replace tables with a mess of nested divs.
Divs are ofcause usefull to seperate different parts of the site like menues and content, but to many use several nested divs to make borders, backgrounds and position elements "just right" ending up with code like this for menues:
Re:CSS tables (Score:2)
Re:CSS tables (Score:2)
The biggest problem is that you can't reference other elements in CSS - so, for example, when your designer comes to you and tells you that he wants the picture of
WebCore vs. Gecko, CSS Rendering (Score:2)
Re:-moz-stylings (Score:2)
What's more, Safari has implemented multiple background images for single elements. That means divs with custom corners and drop shadows no longer require messy code with extra divs.
It's funny how IE never comes up in a discussion of advanced web technologies.
Re:-moz-stylings (Score:4, Informative)
I believe that -moz-border-radius is already mapped to it's CSS3 name, but if not they will be as CSS3 support is implemented.
The reason for the -moz syntax... (Score:2)
Using the -moz prefix avoids this prob
CSS Zen Garden styles (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:CSS Zen Garden styles (Score:2, Insightful)
There are exception like Patrick Griffith's "Elastic Lawn" http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/063/063.css& page=0 [csszengarden.com].
Scales rather nicely when you adjust the font-size.
Re:CSS Zen Garden styles (Score:2)
Of course, having all these features in some avante-garde fancy art designers wet dream is hard using *any* technology - and thats another fundamental
Re:CSS Zen Garden styles (Score:2, Insightful)
The majority of the CSS Zen Garden designs have cross-browser support.
Table layouts have no support for user-defined styles.
Whether a layout works with overridden text size or has a fluid layout is not something that is different between table layouts and CSS layouts. Both can break, both can work. It's whether you assume a cer
How great CSS is (Score:2, Interesting)
Take a step back and re-evaluate CSS (Score:5, Interesting)
I had concluded that CSS was "programmer-friendly" in the same way that a rusty jigsaw was "penis-friendly".
I recently picked up a book entitled _Designing with Web Standards_ by Jeffrey Zeldman. It's a good an honest resource, and he even claims to avoid zealotry. But, in the book, he examines a particular website, one with a plain-jane two-column appearance, which he said took "three CSS experts" to re-code from tables to CSS layout. Not three CSS advocates, three CSS *experts*. On top of that, their "solution" turned out to be a hack.
Honestly, what success am I supposed to expect in using CSS when recoding common layouts in CSS is a struggle for even CSS experts? I am forced to conclude that it is folly trying to adhere to any kind of CSS standards with any kind of rigor until CSS itself becomes more mature.
Now this is where I get flamed. I'm sorry, but I have to call it like I see it.
The problem is browsers, not CSS (Score:4, Informative)
It's not CSS' fault; it's the noncompliant browsers. Zeldman's book is basically about using CSS to build a standards-compliant web site that renders properly on a variety of non-compliant browsers.
Given the differing level of support among the browsers out there, it's no wonder that one has to jump through some hoops to get a consistent display.
Re:Take a step back and re-evaluate CSS (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Take a step back and re-evaluate CSS (Score:3, Interesting)
Think about using XML + XSLT + CSS to generate scalable presentation layers that meet the needs of multiple PLATFORMS using the same business logic and content layers.
Think about Accessibilty and the ability to define stylesheets for web browsers, text readers for the blind, PDF, printed versions, etc. without having to use multiple html layouts.
I f
Re:Take a step back and re-evaluate CSS (Score:2, Informative)
body{background:url(tilingstripe.png) center repeat-y;}
#leftcol{width:49%;float:left} #rightcol{width:49%;float:left}
Pshaw. And I'm a *girl*.
-Dody
Re:Take a step back and re-evaluate CSS (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Take a step back and re-evaluate CSS (Score:2)
How about this:
And then I get flamed because I'm using tables for layout instead of CSS. But it takes 3 CSS experts to code such a thing
Your solution is illustrative of my gripe (Score:2)
Result: P.I.T.A.
I suppose I should thank god such a thing has never happened to me. It seems to me that in the eyes of CSS adherents, 100% of web pages are wildly fluid things that change with the winds, and wildly. Maybe that can be said for some development projects, but, in my experience, it's just not that bad. My problem is not that my clients are as fickle as you make them out to be, but rather that CSS is near impossible to do correctly fo
Re:Take a step back and re-evaluate CSS (Score:2)
What if I want both columns to grow vertically depedning on the longest content of either column (like a 2 column table would).
Now that should be piss easy, but is it?
Here is the quote from the book, CSS experts fail (Score:2)
We all know what assuming does. I searched the book for about 20 minutes by hand until I finally found the section, and I quote it here:
"When A List Apart magazine converting from HTML tables to CSS layout in February 2001, it took three designers, including
Java Swing or AWT to HTML and CSS (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.progsoc.uts.edu.au/~sammy/javaGUIConve
Re:Java Swing or AWT to HTML and CSS (Score:2)
Keep it simple stupid... (Score:2)
Some sites have intelligent managers (Amazon and Google come to mind). They don't go overboard on overengineering their pages. They work with legacy browsers, etc.
How about an open-source app which plugs into standard proxy filters (e.g. squid) whic
Re:Keep it simple stupid... (Score:2, Informative)
Disable CSS in your web browser. You'll get "just the facts" from the websites that use HTML + CSS, and you'll get "the facts dressed up with lots of style" from the websites that use HTML + tables. It sounds to me like HTML + CSS does what you want, not HTML + tables.
Re:Keep it simple stupid... (Score:2)
One of the ideas of CSS is it does strip out all the presentation stuff, and puts it into the CSS file. Since most browsers allow you to overide the sites CSS file with a local one, you could make a "plain" CSS file and you get what you want.
Unfortantely CSS as implimented is up to doing serous layout stuff, so sites still use nested tables and things that replacing the CSS won't remove.
Of course web sites did that in HTML3.2 as well.
Re:Keep it simple stupid... (Score:2)
all they need to do is go view source.
Trying to understand CSS... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Trying to understand CSS... (Score:2, Informative)
2. Accessibility - your site will be readable by screen-readers and PDAs.
3. You can use standalone CSS to control the overall dosplay, and in-line CSS to control page-specific elements.
I wouldn't call myself a CSS "expert", but I am a recent convert.
Re:Trying to understand CSS... (Score:2)
Bandwagon? (Score:2)
Welcome to the intarnetz, we use CSS here.
CSS showcase (Score:2)
CSS Beauty [cssbeauty.com]
The Weekly Standards [weeklystandards.com]
Also this site [intensivstation.ch] has some nice templates
One more (Score:2, Interesting)
One more, a good resource not only for CSS but many different web technologies, mostly for beginners:
W3 schools [w3schools.com] (Warning: Has a popup, but it's worth it)
Essential Bookmarks For Web Developers (Score:2, Informative)
quirksmode (Score:3, Informative)
css attributes reference (Score:3, Informative)
Frustrating (Score:2)
Really?! Like wow!!! (Score:2)
From the slashdot-is-moving-to-css-in-just-a-few-weeks dept.
oh I do hope commander taco isn't just putting me on...
Recoding a web site in CSS (Score:3, Informative)
Advantages CSS over tables:
* the nested tables were fixed width, too complicated to convert to proportional, and if you resized the windows to anything larger than 1024x768 then you had to pan around using the scroll bars. The CSS degrades wonderfully. Even if the display breaks and doesn't look as pretty, it's still usable at any window size
* pages are a fraction of their original size, and the actual content is clearly visible and editable
Advantages tables over CSS:
* cross-browser compatibility. Everything always works in Firefox but IE is a nightmare. Grey bars appearing randomly for no apparent reason, margins having unpredictable behaviour, and things breaking for no reason when pixels are exactly aligned (as proved by basic arithmetic)
From painful experience I can recommend that you get the designer to mock up in photoshop, and then you design the site directly in CSS and ask for the images to be chopped into the way you need as you go along. Don't get the designer to provide you the HTML in table form which you then convert afterwards.
Hope this helps,
Phillip.
Re:A list of the site links? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A list of the site links? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:But they forgot.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:But they forgot.. (Score:2, Informative)
Poor CSS2 browser support (Score:2)
Re:But they forgot.. (Score:2)
Well, actually [w3.org]...
Re:Wishful thinking. (Score:2)
Besides, it would be nice if all browser writers aimed to support W3C standards so the writing of webpages themselves would become so much simpler.
Re:But they forgot.. (Score:2)
Just another day on Slashdot
Bookmark this page (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bookmark this page (Score:2)
Re:Bookmark this page (Score:2)