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CSS From the Ground Up

Posted by michael on from the for-dummies dept.

jsin writes "Web Page Design for Designers is a great source for anyone who is looking for a non-programmer-centric view on web page design and development. Starting in his most recent issue, Joe Gillespie describes CSS from an absolute beginners perspective. Even though I've been building commercial sites for years, the article is an excellent way to review the basics in the context of endless changes in standards and practices."

7 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. I have the opposite problem. by Dr.+Bent · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm a Java developer with no artistic talent whatsoever. I tried to draw something once....the result caused dizziness, blindness, and violent nausea in all who saw it. It was eventually banned by the FDA and shot into space. Whenever I'm forced to make choices about color, font, and layout in web pages I inevitably choose a combination that looks like an elephant came along and crapped on a computer screen.

    What sources are out there for people like me? Technical people who need a little help making artistic choices. I'm not expecting a website to turn me into Rembrant or anything, but just a few simple rules and some examples that demonstrate those rules would go a long way.

    1. Re:I have the opposite problem. by aWalrus · · Score: 5, Informative

      Regarding color: Try a little Color Theory and when you want to make a color scheme that works, go to the Color scheme generator.

      Apart from that, anything on the "Resources" section of my links page will help you out.

      --
      Overcaffeinated. Angry geeks.
    2. Re:I have the opposite problem. by christopherfinke · · Score: 5, Informative

      What sources are out there for people like me? Technical people who need a little help making artistic choices.
      I had always been horrible at picking out color schemes for sites until I discovered this site. That's right, a fabric/thread/crafts site.

      What I have found works quite well is to find a color you want to theme your site around (pine green, for example) and go to that thread's color family page. Voila! A group of colors that complement your color, and the hex codes for the colors are in the source code.

      Also, another great tool is the color schemer. There used to be an online version, but I can't find it anymore.
  2. Re:I've found by dwoolridge · · Score: 4, Informative

    Have you seen this?

  3. Example of CSS design by fredrikj · · Score: 4, Informative

    For an example of how powerful CSS can be when used correctly, check out CSS Zen Garden.

  4. And once you are done with that.... by Anonytroll · · Score: 5, Interesting

    At http://www.alistapart.com/ you can find more detailed, praxis-oriented tutorials/examples using CSS and XHTML if you like this way of doing sites. It's especially interesting, because they have quite a lot of things about pure CSS layouts without tables.

  5. Beware of web designers... by InsaneCreator · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Designers and web don't always mix well. I once got called "a vandal" by a web designer who has just heard about possibility of using your own stylesheets in Mozilla. Apparently, doing so would be defacing his artistic work and he wanted such features banned.

    Explaining how that feature worked didn't help a bit. For some reason he was sure random visitors would be setting their styles to green text on purple background with large blinking headlines & then post screenshots all over the net - just to mock his "masterpieces".

    Well, at least I learned one thing from that event: don't argue with retards over the internet. :)