WebDev Masters

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation (that is, the look and formatting) of a document written in a markup language. Itâ??s most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the language can be applied to any kind of XML document, including SVG and XUL.

CSS is designed primarily to enable the separation of document content (written in HTML or a similar markup language) from document presentation, including elements such as the colors, fonts, and layout. This separation can improve content accessibility, provide more flexibility and control in the specification of presentation characteristics, enable multiple pages to share formatting, and reduce complexity and repetition in the structural content (such as by allowing for table less web design). CSS can also allow the same markup page to be presented in different styles for different rendering methods, such as on-screen, in print, by voice (when read out by a speech-based browser or screen reader) and on Braille-based, tactile devices. While the author of a document typically links that document to a CSS style sheet, readers can use a different style sheet, perhaps one on their own computer, to override the one the author has specified.

CSS specifies a priority scheme to determine which style rules apply if more than one rule matches against a particular element. In this so-called cascade, priorities or weights are calculated and assigned to rules, so that the results are predictable.

Syntax

CSS has a simple syntax, and uses a number of English keywords to specify the names of various style properties.

A style sheet consists of a list of rules. Each rule or rule-set consists of one or more selectors and a declaration block. A declaration-block consists of a list of semicolon-separated declarations in braces. Each declaration itself consists of a property, a colon (:), a value, then a semi-colon (;)

In CSS, selectors are used to declare which elements a style applies to, a kind of match expression. Selectors may apply to all elements of a specific type, or only those elements which match a certain attribute; elements may be matched depending on how they are placed relative to each other in the markup code, or on how they are nested within the document object model.

In addition to these, a set of pseudo-classes can be used to define further behavior. Probably the best-known of these is: hover, which applies a style only when the user ‘points to’ the visible element, usually by holding the mouse cursor over it. It is appended to a selector as in a:hover or#elementid:hover. Other pseudo-classes and pseudo-elements are, for example: first-line, visited or: before. A special pseudo-class is: lang(c), “c”.

A pseudo-class selects entire elements, such as: link or: visited, whereas a pseudo-element makes a selection that may consist of partial elements, such as: first-line or: first-letter.

Uses of CSS

Prior to CSS, nearly all of the presentational attributes of HTML documents were contained within the HTML markup; all font colors, background styles, element alignments, borders and sizes had to be explicitly described, often repeatedly, within the HTML. CSS allows authors to move much of that information to a separate style sheet resulting in considerably simpler HTML markup.

Headings (h1 elements), sub-headings (h2), sub-sub-headings (h3), etc., are defined structurally using HTML. In print and on the screen, choice offont, size, color and emphasis for these elements are presentational.

Prior to CSS, document authors who wanted to assign such typographic characteristics to, say, all h2 headings had to use the HTML font and other presentational elements for each occurrence of that heading type. The additional presentational markup in the HTML made documents more complex, and generally more difficult to maintain. In CSS, presentation is separated from structure. In print, CSS can define color, font, text alignment, size, borders, spacing, layout and many other typographic characteristics. It can do so independently for on-screen and printed views. CSS also defines non-visual styles such as the speed and emphasis with which text is read out by aural text readers. The W3C now considers the advantages of CSS for defining all aspects of the presentation of HTML pages to be superior to other methods. It has therefore deprecated the use of the entire original presentational HTML markup.

The CSS design Suite is a pack of advanced Dreamweaver plug-ins from Web assist to generate standards conforming cross browser compatible CSS web sites with no coding by hand involved.

If you’ve been making internet sites for any duration of time you will understand that the small distinctions between the main web browsers like Mozilla and Chrome can really be a nuisance repeatedly taking time to execute tweaks to force the browsers present your site how you like, by way of this set of Dreamweaver plug-ins that is no more the situation.

The extensions included in this combination are:

SiteAssist Professional – Easily produce an complete CSS based internet site complete with menu navigation.
CSS Sculptor – this is a real treasure and can save you several hours in the building of your web site layout.
CSS Menu Writer – Make vertical and horizontal Cascading style sheet based menu navigation without coding by hand.
Surveyor – Make XML as well as HTML sitemaps for any static or dynamic Dreamweaver website.
Theme-It – Alter, correct, or update your web site’s color scheme and images without touching CSS or coding.

The CSS design Suite of Dreamweaver plug-ins from Web assist was made for both pros and beginners in the Website design and development field to eliminate hand coding whilst building standards conforming cross browser compatible internet sites with simplicity.

Each add-on has a step-by-step approach for creating them very straightforward to make use of. At each step you choose from a variety of options and the web pages you selected are produced at the conclusion of the procedure.

Site assist professional is a site builder with a difference, it let’s you easily construct a entire internet site without hand coding whatsoever, decide each page you fancy to create and this add-on will do all of the serious lifting for you creating your internet pages and website structure for you.

CSS sculptor is really a exceptional timesaver while making Dreamweaver templates the whole thing is operated by means of the step by step like interface include each feature on your site design using your mouse, modify the size and positioning via selecting through the selections available. Insert background pictures, colors and change font attributes used for any given part of your layout.

CSS menu writer is the perfect companion to the other add-ons inside this package allowing you to create customized CSS based menus in no time.

Surveyor produces sitemaps whether or not it’s a an XML or HTML with easiness by using a point-and-click step by step like method to the whole procedure add internet pages inside your sitemap with the push of a key or if you have a dynamic site surveyor will create a site map to be used with that to that to.

Theme-it actually roots around inside your css stylesheet so you won’t have to making it effortless to change any part of your layout like pictures or background colors. You are able to additionally test different color schemes to attain one that completely matches the appearance and feel that you are looking for.

Regardless of whether you are new to webdesign or even a seasoned practiced CSS design Suite from WebAssist has something for you. If you’re searching for a method to easily increase your efficiency whilst making standards conforming CSS based websites then this is the combo for you.

There is no restriction to the quantity of sites you can construct with CSS design Suite.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics (that is, the look and formatting) of a document written in a markup language. Its most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the language can be applied to any kind of XML document

CSS, is a powerful method of organizing the way information is displayed on a web page. It has become one of the most popular languages in web designing and layouting, because of its features that made web designing a lot easier to learn and talking about convenience. Many websites have been made containing tutorials to impart people who wanted to learn CSS, how it works and its styles. This is some of the most popular websites created to provide the essential knowledge, information, and the step by step CSS learning procedure.

CSSBasics.com

css-basics

This website provides a step by step learning process about CSS. Containing from the introduction of CSS to learning its syntax, subtopics and other elements to advanced CSS styles. It is like having a teacher which is always at your disposal.

CSSDog.com

cssdog

CSS Tutorials for beginners to advanced developers. One of the most popular website mainly to those who wanted to learn from the basic in terms of CSS, HTML, as well as XHTML. Learning CSS in simple and easy steps also having examples for better understanding of the viewers.

HTMLDog.com

HTML-Dog

HTMLDog.com provides tutorial for both CSS and HTML. It provides informations from the basics of the basics. So if the viewer doesn’t have any knowledge about CSS or HTML learning from this site is a very good option. HTMLDog.com is an impressive and very informative site for people who are willing to learn CSS and HTML.

AListAPart.com

alistapart

This website is made for people who wants to advance their skills in CSS. Different professionals around the globe gives tutorials about CSS here in this site. This is a place where people could share their knowledge regarding CSS usage. AListAPart.com is a site where articles are build like newspapers. So it’s quite easy to find what you need and subscribe from the author you like most.

If you want to learn more about CSS or if you already have background about this and you still want to enhance your skills.Just visit the sites mentioned.

Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) is a coding language which is a prized possession in the website designing world. From tweaking to get the smallest detail to making the coding more search engine friendly, the qualities of resorting to CSS for website design and search engine is indeed quite great. Here are some details on CSS-related website design.

Reducing the Refreshing Time
The plus point in including CSS to a website design is that it reducesthe render time for the pages. In short, users would find it easy to browse through the pages of the website having CSS codes. With pages refreshing in no time, both traffic and search engines would feel at ease to browse the site. This increases ranking and popularity.

Updating Websites Faster
Today, with large number of websites following the dynamic content methodology, the content needs to be updated every minute. This updating sequence is much faster for a site having CSS code.

The updating sequence for global elements is also much faster using a CSS code. For instance, you want to change the border of the top band of your website from pink to red, a slight tweaking in the CSS source code would help change the color. Moreover, if you were to change the color in every page, the task would be Herculean and not without a fault using HTML code. The best way to deal with this is through CSS.

With Search Engine Optimization (SEO) having a direct relation to frequent changes in the website design, the idea of resorting to CSS is a wonderful proposition.

Browsing Equally Well in Different Devices
Search engines are in constant look-out for websites which are friendly to different browsers. They see how compatible a website is finally after its designing. Using CSS, you would be able to showcase your website to users with similar effect in a desktop, PDA, mobile phones, or Macintosh PC.

Coding with CSS for SEO
SEO for a website is successful only when CSS codes are used in the body text as well as the source code. If the source code is long with huge amount of JavaScript and other codes, the spiders would not be able to fully assess the website’s actually body text.

Here lies the brilliance of CSS code. The source code is spic-and-span and the short. The entire body text coding is also neat and error-free. The tables, fonts, and colors are neatly done and artistically created as well. You’d get even more enhancements using CSS code rather than settling for HTML traditionally coding.

So, CSS is a wonder-boy for website design and Search engine promotion.

Dreamweaver let’s you design and develop interactive, dynamic sites and is an industry standard with webmasters. It is an easy to operate and robust piece of software.

If you have tried to create cross-browser compatible CSS layouts in Dreamweaver, from time to time it seems comparable an uphill fight to get true cross-browser compatability for your layout with the discrepancies with the most important web browsers. At some point you’ll come to the understanding that there has to be a better way.

With Dreamweaver plug-ins you can add features to the core features of dreamweaver and make it do just about everything, this actual dreamweaver extension is called Eric Meyer’s CSS Sculptor that makes your job as a web designer a whole ton simpler.

Eric Meyer’s CSS Sculptor from WebAssist is an extension for Dreamweaver that creates compliant CSS layouts from an straightforward to use wizard like user interface.

For internet developers who are moving from table-based layouts to CSS layouts, it provides a manner to earn as you learn by creating standards compliant CSS layouts from it is easy to use interface and the preview window you’ll try out your layout and be sure that when you finalize your layout and upload it to your server it will be exactly how you would like it to be.

For further skilled Dreamweaver users, the process of generating custom CSS layouts is reduced to a tiny proportion of the time and is alone value the cost of the plug-in.

Every aspect of your finished CSS layout are all under your control while not the necessity for any hand coding, add all the aspects of your layout as well as divs, columns, header and footer, background images, margins, padding, hyperlink states and much additional with just a couple of clicks of your mouse.

CSS Sculptor permits full customization of your layout, select a template to start out with and then customise it to fit your needs thus if you would like a fastened width layout with 3 columns, build your choices on the first page of the user interface and every one the code needed for that layout is magically inserted in the background.

This CSS layout software helps you to control every facet of your CSS layout simply embody backdrop images into whichever layout div even insert repeating gradient pictures all from at intervals the easy-to-use wizard.

Eric Meyers CSS Sculptor comes with 48 Internet standards compliant preset CSS layouts and twelve color schemes to get you started, and every one layouts will be easily changed for your individual needs. You’re be able to additionally save your presets, so you’ll speedily produce new websites from layouts you have already created.

You’ll be able to also insert spry components and style all of them from inside Dreamweaver.

Why CSS is good for Google?

Stylesheets cascading (CSS) are used to separate the stylistic elements of a page such as provision of fonts and color page content such as paragraphs and images. Stylesheets cascading (CSS) provide the presentation layer to a web page. Using CSS, Web designers can control the presentation of the display of a site from a central document.

I would suggest that the advantages to be gained from using CSS, not just for Google, are well worth the time invested in learning it.

So why is CSS good for Google?

CSS allows the file sizes smaller The CSS allows you greater control of page structure CSS allows you to hide certain content from browsers while it still gets picked up by Google

CSS allows the file sizes smaller

HTML page drawing styles and bringing a stylesheet (imported) style sheet (.css file), you can reduce the total amount of code on your Web pages. Pages with less code have smaller file sizes and Google prefers pages with smaller file sizes (many other search engines do too).

Though Google doesn’t offer specific advice on this matter, the search engine optimisation community is generally agreed that 100KB is a good upper limit for page sizes.

The CSS allows you greater control of page structure

The CSS allows you to structure your document as HTML standards without compromising the look-and-feel of the page.

Google rewards pages that are well structured, though many designers choose to ignore standards and guidelines as much as possible, because they (incorrectly) believe standards lead to bland pages. Using CSS, designers can create attractive pages with much flair, while adhering to the find ability design principles identified.

CSS allows you to hide content from browsers while it still gets picked up by Google

Using CSS you can hide content from certain browsers in certain situations. For example you may have some content that you only want to appear in print, or you may want certain content to only be shown on screen and not in print (such as page navigation). The advantage is that Google will still index all of the content and you will still get the benefit that content brings.

Browser Compatibility

If you are new to CSS, be aware that different browsers still interpret CSS standards in different ways, while some (very) old browsers don’t read CSS at all. Ensure that your CSS is as cross-browser compatible as possible, and that your HTML pages look acceptable even without CSS.

To start, let’s have a look at what CSS is and why it is so significant to modern site design. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets and was introduced by the World Wide Web Consortium in late 1996 with the aim to separate webpage content ( written copy, pictures, multimedia, etc. ) from display ( fonts, colors, layout, page structure, and so on. ).

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This is why CSS files are often known as’external style sheets’. When an HTML page or other sort of internet page loads like .aspx, .php, or .cgi, the page calls the external CSS file and reads all the presentation properties outlined in the file. The CSS file tells the HTML page how to style the website’s's content and in the case of tableless web design, where to place it. With CSS, a web site designer can set rules for the presentation of individual webpages or a whole site.
Historically, web pages were built using HTML with tables to layout the page structure and content. These cell based tables are very similar in form to a table found in Microsoft Excel and Word. An advantage of using tables is when used correctly, it closely mimics the standard page layout in print media like papers or magazine articles. However, as web technology has advanced and become more dynamic, a new era of design with larger possibilities has emerged. A new solution to coming up with and laying out internet pages was created to break the constraints of structured table layouts.

It is important to appreciate that normal table based design and CSS aren’t jointly exclusive ; CSS is commonly used by web developers using table based design to control the properties of tables and other items on their internet pages. On the other hand, tableless design wouldn’t be possible without CSS. However instead of using tables, a tableless designer uses what are known as’DIV’s, which is short for’division’. A DIV’s properties are defined within the CSS file. CSS tells the DIV where to appear on a net page, its width and height dimensions, and its appearance i.e. If it should have a background color or image, a border, or whether it should even be plain. There are a big variety of other CSS properties that can be applied to DIVs. Instead of being restricted by the firm grid structure of tables, DIVs can be made any size and placed anywhere on a webpage including layered on top of one another. This is what makes CSS tableless DIV design so tough.

Even though the utilization of tables for website page structure is deprecated, tables still play an important role in CSS tableless design. An example of best practices for using a table in your design that many novice CSS tableless designers overlook is when building a web form, for instance a company information request form. Therefore it’s important for CSS tableless designers to grasp how to use tables and when they’re a better and more efficient solution than using strictly CSS tableless design.
By trying CSS style sheets it is extremely straightforward to maintain visible consistency thru your internet site. When using table based layouts, it is simple to lose this consistency because each web page’s style, layout, and design are frequently hard-coded individually into each page. If you need to make a change to your site across all pages, you’ll have to change the code on each individual page. With CSS, all pages can use the same CSS document for their layout and styles. If you change a property in the CSS file, the changes will be instantaneously reflected across all pages of your internet site.

As an example, if you’d like to modify font sizes and colors within your website, your external CSS file can be simply opened and the necessary changes made without making the change on every page of your site.
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Technology is constantly evolving and advancing and nothing shows this more than the (short) history of the web.  Just a few years ago, the internet was full of websites with blinking, animated icons and background midi music and lots of people thought it was really great.  Advance a few years forward and, although you still see those things from time to time, the web now contains much more sophisticated elements like video clips, rss feeds, detailed flash animations, and more.   

As the “ideas” about what a website is and what it should, or could, do for a company have also evolved, designers have strived to streamline the process of developing websites and to make them more efficient and predictable.  Because different browsers interpret code differently, it hasn’t always been easy to make more complex websites look the same (or even good in some cases) across browsers and systems. What used to work in the early days of the web was no longer working the way web designers wanted or needed it to.

Cascading Style Sheets to the Rescue
Cascading Style Sheets, also known as CSS, were introduced to improve the capabilities of web presentation.  Prior to CSS, almost all of the html attributes that made up the “look and feel” of a web page were contained within the html directly. This made web page code heavy and often quite clunky.  By using Cascading Style Sheets, designers could separate the design elements from the content of a web page and thereby make the pages more efficient, more streamlined, and easier to maintain.

Not all designers jumped on the CSS bandwagon, and even today, many designers still prefer to layout their web pages using html table-based design, the way just about everyone used to do it. Using CSS to layout a webpage is quite different from the “old fashioned” table layout.   However, the advantages to using a CSS layout for a web page heavily outweigh any argument given for using html tables.  

Although I wouldn’t expect clients to know the intricate details of Cascading Style Sheets (and let’s face it, most clients don’t really want to know much if anything about it!), I do think that clients should be aware of the advantages of using CSS layouts and how they can enhance their websites both now and in the future.

Advantages to Using CSS for Web Layout

Web pages will load faster
No one likes waiting for web pages to load and if a page takes too long to load, many users will often simply leave.  Generally speaking, CSS based page layouts require much less html coding than table-based layouts.  This usually results in the pages loading more quickly.  Moreover, an externally linked CSS file, once loaded the first time, does not have to be reloaded and re-read on every page.  When using CSS for layout, browsers can cache (keep in memory) all the formatting and stylizing for your pages instead of having to read and interpret each style tag on every page. This can also result in much faster page loading times.

Visual consistency across pages
One of the strengths of using Cascading Style Sheets in a website layout is that design elements can be defined in a single place (the css file) and will automatically be applied to those elements on the website.  No longer does each individual page have to be updated to reflect the new style.  This makes for much greater consistency throughout the site.  With CSS, you do not have to re-code every element on every page (and check and double check that you didn’t miss some pages!), styling updates are automatic and site-wide.

Accessibility and usability
CSS allows for more interactive style elements, including font size and line heights, which can make web pages more usable for people with disabilities.  Web pages that use CSS layouts are also often more compatible with more browsers.  What’s more, designers can create specific css files specifically for printing, or mobile devices, as well as the standard computer screen, thereby making websites truly multimedia applications.

CSS is better for SEO
Since pages load faster with CSS Layouts, search engines can more easily crawl through the site.  Also, since there is often less coding on the pages and because CSS separates the design elements from the content, it is easier for search engines to determine what a page is about and to index it appropriately.  Finally, search engine spiders rely heavily on structural organization (heading (h1, h2, h3, etc) tags) and CSS allows designers to design those elements as needed and to place them within the page layout in a way that is most beneficial for search engine optimization.

Future redesigns will be more efficient (read, less expensive!)
Since CSS layouts separate design elements from content, once a site has been designed using Cascading Style Sheets, making changes to the design is often easier because fewer files need to be updated (often only the css files rather than every page on the website!)  This makes for faster and less expensive design changes in the future.  Set your site up using CSS now and you can have easier, more efficient and quicker updates in the future.

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Layout Galaby Alessandro Fulciniti – a collection of 40 CSS layouts based on the same markup and ready for download! Look Ma, No Tables.CSS Layout Techniques: for Fun and Profit ThreeColumnLayoutscss-discuss – Bob Easton Open Source Web DesignDownload and upload free web designs Open Web DesignDownload and upload free web designs Sample CSS Page LayoutsHere are a range of CSS page layouts, including 2 column and 3 column layouts – free to use and abuse as needed Yet Another Multicolumn LayoutA multi-column layout CSS LayoutsStu Nicholls – Three columns, CSS frame, “Fixed”, Cross browser…. CSS TEMPLATESAll templates are XHTML 1.0 and CSS2 css Zen Gardenlist of all Zen Garden designs added to date..980+ layouts Flexi-Floats3 Column CSS Layout – Fluid, Multi-Column Stretch – Header, Footer, Fluid Center – Fixed or Fluid widths FirdamaticFirdamatic is an online tableless layout generator that allows you to create and customise layouts easily… Free CSS Template Code GeneratorMaker for 3 Column Layout (tableless) Page Maker – The Generator Form v2.90CSS Source Ordered Variable Border 1-3 Columned Page Maker QrONE CSS DesignerOnline CSS Generator ScriptomizersA CSS stylesheet generator CSS CreatorLive CSS Cascading Style Sheet Layout generator for your web site CSS HTML PHP Website Template MakerThis PHP – HTML – CSS template generator creates a two column layout with both a header and a footer…. CSS Rounded Box Generatorgenerates html and css for rounded corner boxes Listamaticnot a tool but very useful! – one list, many options – Using CSS and a simple list to create radically different list Listamatic2nested list options List-O-MaticGenerate CSS-styled navigation menus based on list items List-O-Rama!Dreamweaver MX and UltraDev Zone – List-O-Rama will allow you to generate nice CSS inline menus in seconds CSS Menu GeneratorCSS Menu Generator will generate both the CSS and the HTML code required to produce a text-based yet appealing set of navigation buttons.

Flash vs XHTML.

This article will outline the difference in capability between Flash and CSS/HTML. Both forms of web design are powerful yet which is the one that is most suitable to use within a design environment, which one will be suitable for client project and which one will get you found on search engines like Google and Yahoo.

So, what can Flash do? What can this Adobe vector based program give us that XHTML cant? Predominantly it gives a designer freedom. It gives the designer freedom to place graphics around the page wherever they want without having to worry about tables, absolute positioning, inconsistencies across numerous browsers, tables in tables, frames or anything like that! You place the image where you want and that’s it! Done! You are free as a designer!

It is important to realise that this is not just a simple little perk to using flash. Freedom on the web is what designers have wanted since the inception of the internet. Flash was the first of its kind and still offers incredible design opportunities. You can pretty much do anything you want. Your flash animation will load correctly in any browser depending on whether they have the flash plugin of course. It will not look different in any browser which saves so much time being a designer.

Flash enables enhanced interactivity around the site. This could literally be anything you want. ANYTHING. We are not talking about little button rollovers. Adding music, video, several animations running at the same time is all possible within the realms of flash. The sky is the limit and really comes down to how good you are at using the program. Additionally the integration of several file types is perfectly acceptable. Image files such as GIF, JPEG, PNG, PCT, TIF and vector based files such as EPS are all easily implemented onto flash. No problem. The same goes for font, you will never need to embed a font onsite to download it as the flash file itself is self contained. This also applies for movie files and loading.

So I have outlined the very brief advantages of using flash so now I want to outline the disadvantages. The biggest of all is that you need a plugin to run the flash file on your computer. Not all home PC’s will have flash or even know what it is so you are risking the fact that no one will be able to see your site at all. Secondly, SEO is practically impossible when using Actionscript 2. Flash is not designed to embrace SEO and vice versa. However, recent developments on both fronts have started to change this. Actionscript 3 has given the chance to Flash users of implementing meta data and other search engine friendly techniques. It is a recurring issue that Adobe are dealing with and it is something that you will see change in the near future.

Video compression and playback function sin flash are not as good quality as some of the players developed exclusively for this purpose alone such as Quicktime. For examples, Flash video does not take advantage of enhanced video drivers for optimized playback at enlarged sizes which can cause problems.