Mantex

Tutorials, Study Guides & More

  • HOME
  • REVIEWS
  • TUTORIALS
  • HOW-TO
  • CONTACT
>> Home / Archives for Style sheets

CSS Cookbook

July 17, 2009 by Roy Johnson

quick solutions to common style sheet problems

Style sheets take all the slog out of designing the appearance of your web pages. No more fiddling with the code in a multitude of pages: just fix the font size, the line spacing, the page width or the size of headings in one file, the style sheet, and that will apply across your whole site. This is a guide to what is possible using the latest specification (2.1) of style sheets, written by Christopher Schmitt – one of the endless number of expert authors O’Reilly manage to locate.

CSS CookbookIt’s aimed at people who want to make a start with style sheets, or who are grappling with their problems and need quick fix solutions. It assumes you know the basics of web design using standard HTML markup, but he does keep the relationship between the two clearly in mind:

As a design language, CSS is focused on presentation, which includes helping web developers control the layout of their pages. HTML tables and other elements, on the other hand, are tools you use to mark up content. The ideal is to have HTML represent the structure of the content as an intellectual abstract level and CSS say how to present it for a particular device.

The presentation couldn’t be simpler. First a problem is specified (You want to indent the first line of a paragraph) and then he shows the CSS code to achieve it, followed by an illustrative screen shot. There’s an explanation of how and why it works as it does, and there are web links to online tutorials and official specifications directly related to that topic.

Each chapter considers one element of a web page that style sheets can control – the font, the page, links, lists, forms, tables, and how to create print-friendly pages.

He shows some of the new effects possible with the latest CSS version 2.1 – creating collapsible menus and tabbed folders, designing forms without using tables, controlling the appearance of content held within table cells, and creating multi-column pages holding the content in place with the very useful float property.

One of the hardest parts of learning about style sheets so far as I am concerned is the language in which it is expressed. It’s a pity there’s so much abstract terminology. Even at intermediate level it’s difficult to grasp immediately statements such as this:

Because these properties aren’t passed to child block-level elements, you don’t have to write additional rules to counter the visual effects that would occur if they were passed.

He finishes with some nifty tips, tricks, and workarounds. How to create a print-friendly style sheet for instance. This removes all the decoration and navigational graphics from a web page to produce something that is comfortably readable when printed out. All this without changing one bit of the page markup.

There’s also a useful appendix listing discussion groups, web resources, downloadable software, and ready-made CSS templates. Like everything else in this book, these take you quickly to solve problems of design.

The latest edition of this book is a hugely enlarged resource – more than double the size of the first. It’s been expanded to include much more information for CSS learners, explaining topics that range from basic web typography and page layout to techniques for formatting lists, forms, and tables. For more advanced users it has also been updated to take into account the behaviour of CSS in the latest versions of web browsers, including Internet Explorer 7, plus Firefox and Opera. You can’t get much more up to date than this.

© Roy Johnson 2009

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US


Christopher Schmitt, CSS Cookbook, Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, third edition, 2009, pp.736, ISBN: 059615593X


More on technology
More on digital media
More on web design
More on computers


Filed Under: HTML-XML-CSS Tagged With: CSS, HTML-XML-CSS, Style sheets, Web design

CSS The Missing Manual

July 8, 2009 by Roy Johnson

easy guide to styling web pages

We all know that cascading style sheets (CSS) is the way to go for web designers. It helps to separate style from content, and you can change the appearance, font, or layout of an entire website with just one tweak of style sheet code. But how d’you do it, and what’s the best way of controlling the appearance of your web pages? David McFarland’s new book CSS – The Missing Manual starts out by listing all the reasons you should wean yourself away from those old HTML habits and explaining why XHTML and the use of style sheets is more efficient. He explains inline and external stylesheets then very gradually shows you how to create one.

CSS The Missing ManualI still find it difficult to get my head round the abstract language of styles (declaration, selector, property, and value) but he spells it out as clearly as possible. But the best part about his approach is that he is systematic, detailed, and very straightforward. Each stage in the process is illustrated with a screenshot – though I think the use of colour printing would have helped. Then it’s on to class selectors, plus divs and spans for creating special effects

After that he moves on to discuss basic formatting – how to adjust the appearance of text on the screen. And i couldn’t help thinking that this should have come earlier. Almost any beginner I can imagine would first of all want to learn how to affect the appearance of text on the page, beforedealing with more complex issues such as ‘cascade inheritance’. So if you’re just starting out, jump straight to chapter six.

The good thing is that he shows you every step of the way: what to type in as CSS code; how to create the effect you need; refresh the browser – and, hey presto! – there it is on screen.

Another thing I like about this series is that all along the learning route they list software which is available as free download to perform the tasks that you need.

© Roy Johnson 2009

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US


David McFarland, CSS: the Missing Manual, Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 2009, pp. 560, ISBN: 0596802447


More on technology
More on digital media
More on web design
More on computers


Filed Under: HTML-XML-CSS Tagged With: CSS, HTML-XML-CSS, Style sheets, Web design

Free style sheet tutorials

November 17, 2009 by Roy Johnson

style sheet tutorials

XML School

This is a comprehensive introduction to the basic issues of style sheets. The tutorials deal with a single issue on each page, and the site includes interactive examples, a quiz test, plus book reviews. It’s also a model of site design in terms of clarity and usability.
http://www.w3schools.com/css/

 

style sheet tutorials Webmonkey
This is everything you need to know about style sheet basics, written by Steve Mulder for Webmonkey.
http://www.webmonkey.com/tutorial/Mulders_Stylesheets_Tutorial

 

style sheet tutorials www.w3.org
The home of Web standards. This is a collection of resources and technical specifications from the World Wide Web Consortium. This body looks after the protocols and standards, so the site is always up to date. It also has online validators, so you can check your work.
http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/

 

style sheet tutorials Dave Raggett’s Introduction to CSS
A thorough explanation of style sheet basics – written by somebody who is a member of the W3 organisation which defines style sheet protocols. The tutorial includes useful tips on browser-safe colours.
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/Style

 

redbtn Jacob Nielsen’s ‘Effective Use of Style Sheets’
This article is now a little dated – but Nielsen is always worth reading. His emphasis here is on the advantages of style sheets, and how to avoid the most common mistakes.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9707a.html

 

redbtn Page Resource.com
Straightforward explanation of how style sheets work written by John Pollock. A bit dated in appearance now, but suitable for beginners.
http://www.pageresource.com/dhtml/indexcss.htm

 

redbtn Web Design Group
Another text-based primer on CSS basics, written by John Pozadzides and Liam Quinn. This too is bit dated in appearance now, but suitable for beginners.
http://htmlhelp.com/reference/css/

© Roy Johnson 2009


More on technology
More on digital media
More on web design
More on computers


Filed Under: How-to guides, HTML-XML-CSS, Web design Tagged With: CSS, Style sheet tutorial, Style sheets

Get in touch

info@mantex.co.uk

Content © Mantex 2016
  • About Us
  • Advertising
  • Clients
  • Contact
  • FAQ
  • Links
  • Services
  • Reviews
  • Sitemap
  • T & C’s
  • Testimonials
  • Privacy

Copyright © 2025 · Mantex

Copyright © 2025 · News Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in