Not sure about CSS?
So CSS and Web Standards are definitely catching on everywhere (yay). But what if you don’t have a clue what they are or what the benefits of CSS and web Standards are? I found this great article by the gang at “A List Apart” a great design resource webmasters, or those just breaking into making webpages. Read below and enlighten yourself.
“When I first encountered Cascading Style Sheets in the autumn of 1998, I was trying to do cool stuff—make this stuff over here move, make that stuff over there change color—and it took another six months before I started using CSS to control presentation rather than behavior.
It took me two years to break out of the comfortable prison of layout tables, and another two years before I could use CSS to produce layouts that were originally intended for tables.
Even though I was forced during that time to deal with such anachronistic works of art as Netscape 4.0 and Internet Explorer 5.0 for Windows, the moral of the story should be clear: it took me a long while to achieve genuine mastery of CSS.
There are plenty of excellent books and articles out there, including many written by the contributors to this publication. While most of those works gracefully walk the inexperienced developer through challenging layouts and teach by literal example, few of them acknowledge that using CSS to create standards-friendly sites requires a mindset that is alien to many experienced developers. This requirement hamstrings a lot of talented people, and for two years I’ve been looking for the words that will heal their pain.
The cries of frustration I hear from other developers about CSS are only an echo of the ones I made for years. As a result I like to think that I can relate, and I’m writing to convey the most important lessons I’ve learned so far.”
Click here to continue to the article’s origin and follow the steps.