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Domain: westciv.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to westciv.com.

Comments · 9

  1. Re:Cost savings? by icebraining · · Score: 1 · on Denmark Chooses OpenDocument Format

    Well, that's why CSS2 has specific support for paged media, using the @page rule.

  2. Re:Good Article by tobiasly · · Score: 1 · on 10 Best Resources for CSS

    One of the best CSS articles I've found is at Westciv... they take the uncommon yet intuitive approach of fully describing selectors first -- what they are, how to use them, etc. -- before they go into properties at all.

    For me, the most frustrating aspect of designing CSS-based sites isn't applying the properties I want, it's figuring out how to select the elements I want. This site explains it all very clearly.

    http://www.westciv.com/style_master/academy/css_tu torial/

  3. Re:PSP by jcuervo · · Score: 2, Informative · on Web Browsing on Your PSP

    Isn't this covered by CSS?

  4. Re:CSS is annoying by protagon · · Score: 1 · on The CSS Anthology
    wouldn't
    a.blue, span.blue, div#back {color: blue}
    do the trick? I started learning CSS 3 days ago... wish I could afford that book. I've found westciv's site a good place for beginners. http://www.westciv.com/style_master/house/tutorial s/index.html/
  5. Learn design & CSS. by oneiros27 · · Score: 4, Informative · on Courses on Making Professional, Usable Websites?
    If you're going to take a web design class, make sure it's actually focusing on current technology, and not 4+ year old 'use a table to format your pages' crap.

    For most browsers, CSS works. But it's not just about formatting the page with CSS, it's about designing your pages so that when the CSS fails, it doesn't look like a load of crap.

    [I did a lot of coding in the days when <TABLE> was new, and you'd have to do some extra tricks to make sure that Mosaic and Lynx wouldn't display a bunch of run-on text.]

    CSS also works rather well with

    A few starting points --
    • Design Graphics Magazine I'm not sure if it's still in print, but it's Australian, so they might give pointers to some user groups of interest in your area
    • CSS Tutorial by W3Schools Something to get you started on CSS
    • A List Apart, articles on doing tricky things with CSS
    • Eric Meyer's writings. Links to articles and such by the author of ORA's CSS: The Definitive Guide. [read the Web Review articles from 2000 for some of the real power of CSS]
    • Learning CSS a list of books and online resources
    • Westciv courses on-line courses on CSS, CSS2 and some free resources.
    Of course, knowing how to make things look good is completely different from actually doing it -- Lots of people know how to use a paint brush, but not all of our work makes it past our parent's fridges.

    With a bit of reading, the average programmer should be able to at the very least, keep their pages from looking like complete crap. As always, if you see a cool website out there, look at the source, and see if you can figure out how they did it. [but just because it worked, doesn't mean that it's not a complete hack, and that it won't break in every other browser out there].

    Try things. Make mistakes. Learn from them. That's the best way that I've found to improve over the years.

    oh -- and don't forget -- design is design. For the most part, design concepts work in both print and on the screen. There are people who think HTML should be able to do everything they can do in a PDF, and make pages that are nothing but one big picture when they're too lazy to learn good HTML, but the design concepts are still there, even if they fail on implementation.
  6. Re:Verdana by Assaulted_Peanut · · Score: 1, Informative · on US Govt Makes Times New Roman 14 Official Font

    A few folks have a contrary opinion on the use of Verdana and fixed font sizes when applied to the web:

    A popular article on the differences in designing for printed media and the web at Web Pages aren't Printed on Paper. Check out the global comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets for further resources.

  7. Re:Back it up with facts by Patik · · Score: 1 · on Cell Phone Is The Most Hated Invention
    I am aware of nonconformities to the latest CSS standards.
    You've gotta be kidding me. You do know we're talking about IE here, right?

    Look at this chart. Just scroll down and skim the list. See all that purple in the first and second columns? Those are all things that IE doesn't do properly. Check out the third column from the right, Mozilla. Not much purple there at all.

    Or try here. Scroll down and look at all of the non-green in the first column (IE 6). Compare it to Gecko (Mozilla).

    Even better, try this one. Be sure to use the blue arrows at the bottom right to go through all of the pages. Compare IE6 to Netscape 7 (Mozilla).

    I'm going to have stop here because I just can't stop laughing. Try and code a webpage sometime, you'll see how bad IE is. I think a better question to ask is "What CSS standards does IE comply to?"

    However, as a browser, it is one of the browsers that will render even partially received information (or broken HTML) correctly.
    That's bad. IE is the reason web coding has drifted from the standards in recent years. You only have to make a half-assed page and it looks 'okay' in IE. Not good at all.

    Really, I hope you were joking...

  8. Re:Harder and harder? by Chelloveck · · Score: 2 · on Web Designers Ignoring Standards and Support IE Only
    Actually, IE blew it. Width and min-width cannot be applied to non-replaced inline elements. Take a look at the spec [w3.org], then go visit the validator [w3.org].

    Huh. Mea culpa. Serves me right for reading a CSS tutorial instead of the actual spec. The tutorial didn't mention this.

    Now if I could only figure out what the W3 means by "inline, non-replaced elements" as opposed to "inline, replaced elements"...

  9. About time, isn't it? by jonbrewer · · Score: 2 · on Mozilla now supports all CSS1 properties
    CSS Level 1 became a W3C Recommendation on 17 December, 1996. CSS Level 2 was finalized a year ago this May. Why does it take this long?

    On a side note, StyleMaster 1.3 shipped this week from an Australian Company, Western Civilisation, and includes fantastic help for determining which CSS features are implemented correctly in various browsers. I was so impressed I went to kagi and paid for it after an hour of use.