[codywalton]

Slightly off topic. I posted this in the Art & graphic design forum, but got no response as of yet, so thought this might be a better place for it.

So I've been building web sites for almost 10 years now, but I never got into CSS. Recently a friend pointed me to www.csszengarden.com , and some of the designs are uber-impressive, and now I really want to learn CSS. I've done some futzing around with it in dreamweaver, and had limited success. But I still don't understand how it works 100%. So does anyone know of a good book or online guide that explains all the functionality and abilities of CSS, in a way a designer, not a developer, can understand them. Particularly the "float" and "clear" commands, and how they interact with each other, and how you can use them to position your div tags.

Thanks.

[eep]

Originally posted by codywalton:
Slightly off topic. I posted this in the Art & graphic design forum, but got no response as of yet, so thought this might be a better place for it.

So I've been building web sites for almost 10 years now, but I never got into CSS. Recently a friend pointed me to www.csszengarden.com , and some of the designs are uber-impressive, and now I really want to learn CSS. I've done some futzing around with it in dreamweaver, and had limited success. But I still don't understand how it works 100%. So does anyone know of a good book or online guide that explains all the functionality and abilities of CSS, in a way a designer, not a developer, can understand them. Particularly the "float" and "clear" commands, and how they interact with each other, and how you can use them to position your div tags.

Thanks.

I read this book which helped a lot:

Web Standards Solutions By Dan Cederholm
http://www.simplebits.com/publications/solutions/

Great book.

Check out his web site here:

http://www.simplebits.com

Other great sites for CSS are:

http://www.alistapart.com/

http://www.zeldman.com/
Read his book too if you have time!

http://www.stopdesign.com/
Check out his tutorial where he redsigns (for example only) Microsofts web site: http://www.stopdesign.com/articles/throwing_tables/

http://www.molly.com/

http://www.webstandards.org/

I'm also using CSSEdit for CSS and skEdit for xhtml structure.

BTW here is another article at molly.com with her thoughts about Web Design World Boston where she spoke about the marriage of stucture and content. Very interesting POV. If you ever get a chance go to Web Design World, lots of CSS topics.

http://www.molly.com/2004/12/18/web-...rld-cool-down/

Hope this helps.

[ArcticBear]

Joe Gillespie has a wonderful website, Web Page Design for Designers (wpdfd.com).

He retired last month, but his articles are still on line.

[codywalton]

thanks guys, that should hlep quite a bit. I appreciate it.

[strokemouth]

I thoroughly enjoyed both of the Eric Meyer on CSS books. Very helpful and very entertaining.

[bmzollinhofer]

www.mezzoblue.com also has some WONDERFUL links to help with CSS. I learned everything I know from that site and the links from it. The guy who runs mezzoblue is the guy who is in charge of csszengarden.

-Brian