Cascading Style Sheets or CSS is one of the most powerful tools available to web designers and developers. If utilized properly CSS can save countless hours with project and site redesigns. For modern publishers using a content management system or CMS using CSS is the best way to take advantage of separation of the content and presentation layers.
Top CSS Tips
Separate Content from Context
All of the content in your web pages should not have any formatting elements. No font commands, no extra spacing or line breaks.
DIV as Required
Use DIV tags to separate and isolate specific logical groupings of the content. Many people learning CSS make the mistake of giving every element it's own DIV tag. This make the file larger than it has to be creating problems of code bloat.
Develop a Template Library
Develop your own library of CSS templates you use frequently. This gives you a baseline to quickly start working on new projects.
Design to Web Standards
Design to web standards using Firefox. Tweak as required in IE. Validate your file when you are finished.
Absolute and Relative Positioning
Learn how to work with both relative and absolute positioning. For SEO or pixel perfect design absolute positioning is the optimal choice, but is more difficult to work with. Realative positioning is easier but gives you slightly less control.
My CSS Library
Designing With Web Standards (VOICES)
Amazon Price: $23.10 (as of 10/11/2008)
Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design (VOICES)
Amazon Price: $34.65 (as of 10/11/2008)
Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition
Amazon Price: (as of 10/11/2008)
The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web (Voices That Matter)
Amazon Price: $29.69 (as of 10/11/2008)
CSS Guides and Tutorials
- Mulder's Stylesheets Tutorial
- Mulder's CSS Tutorial - Webmonkey.com
- Starting with CSS: revisited - KuraFire Network
- A basic CSS Tutorial
- CSS layouts: liquid, fluid, elastic, flexible, jello...
- CSS hack-free liquid layouts. One html markup, many different layouts (try that with tables)...
- Ten CSS tricks you may not know | evolt.org
- Some quick and easy CSS tips
- Ten more CSS tricks you may not know
- Follow up to the popular article, Ten CSS tricks you may not know - learn something new and see how many you already know!
- Nifty Corners
- Nifty Corners: rounded corners without images
- The Complete CSS tutorial
- A Complete CSS tutorial
- CSS Directory - Your one stop resource for css links, articles, tutorials, examples, tips, layouts, hacks, books, and web standards
- CSS Directory: a directory containing links to articles, tutorials, and examples about css design
- Box Model Hack
- Essential Hack for building CSS websites
Great Stuff on Amazon
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) By Example
Amazon Price: $27.57 (as of 10/11/2008)
Beginning CSS: Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design (Wrox Beginning Guides)
Amazon Price: $26.39 (as of 10/11/2008)
Professional CSS: Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design (Wrox Professional Guides)
Amazon Price: $29.09 (as of 10/11/2008)
Core CSS Cascading Style Sheets (With CD-ROM)
Amazon Price: (as of 10/11/2008)
Css Practico / Beginning CSS: Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design (Programmer to Programmer)
Amazon Price: (as of 10/11/2008)
CSS Template Library
- css Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS Design
- A demonstration of what can be accomplished visually through CSS-based design.
- glish.com : CSS layout techniques
- A resource for web designers and developers who want to learn CSS layout techniques to replace archaic table-based web page layouts..
- Max Design - Liquid layouts - the easy way
- Liquid CSS Layouts
- 3 Column Complex Layout demo
- A demo showing possibilities for laying out a complex 3-col page.
- Max DesignColored boxes - one method of building full CSS layouts
- How do you go about building a full CSS layout? Is there an overall process that can be used for any layout?
- A List Apart: Articles: Flexible Layouts with CSS Positioning
- Need to spend less time on CSS hacking and more time on design? Dug Falby shares techniques for practical grid-building with CSS positioning.
- Ordered Borders Layout
- Structured CSS templates
- The Layout Reservoir - BlueRobot
- Resources to build from
- Little Boxes
- Workarounds for CSS browser issues.
- CSS Template Library : Graywolf’s SEO Blog
- A library of CSS Template Files
- Ted Leonsis
- Ted Leonsis
