Web Development

[dannyjay]

I can't seem to get into the coding side of it!

I've heard a lot of good things about CSS but I can't get my head around how it works.

I'm dyslexic, and shite with numbers which doesn't help but has anybody got an idiots guide to help me get into the coding side of things!

I can design fine, as I'm not bad at photoshop - but when something goes wrong in the code I'm F.U.B.A.R!

[MPorter]

Hi

Here's a good tutorial, which takes you through creating a small demo site. LINK. What I liked about it was the way you started with a design, created an HTML page, broke the page up into div's, or logical sections, and then introduced CSS to style style the page.

Other than that, W3Schools is pretty good, and for troubleshooting code, their reference guides are really useful - LINK

Maria

[lightinthedark]

Also, if you're going to do anything with layout and css you can run into some odd behaviour in some browsers which may be confusing at first. I strongly recommend starting out with a standards compliant browser such as Firefox for all your page previewing. If you do use Firefox then you can install the Firebug addon which allows you to inspect elements on a page and see what style rules apply to them (along with a whole heap of other potentially useful stuff once you start doing more advanced things). This may help you understand what's going on ... especially as you can change attributes in the firebug bar and see what effect it has on the page very directly.

Hello
:-Dave

[matt40k]

I can't seem to get into the coding side of it!

I've heard a lot of good things about CSS but I can't get my head around how it works.

I'm dyslexic, and shite with numbers which doesn't help but has anybody got an idiots guide to help me get into the coding side of things!

I can design fine, as I'm not bad at photoshop - but when something goes wrong in the code I'm F.U.B.A.R!

I suck at Photoshop, can do XHTML\CSS blah... trade lol

[srochford]

Take a look at the W3Schools site on CSS.

This allows you to make very quick changes to sample code to see what happens and gives lots of easy (I hope!) to follow examples to get you started.

The other thing that might be worth playing with if you're using Windows is Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express (free!) which also tries to make CSS easy to do.

Stick with it because it really is worthwhile!

[PaulBM]

Perhaps video podcasts would help you?

iTunes search podcasts for The Art of Code. They start at the very beginning with a blank html page and add a stylesheet to style some of the page. He goes on to discuss margins and padding and a lot more.

[danIT]

My only suggestion would be to steer away from using 'software' to learn css, try and stick to something like notepad, notepad+ or Editplus that highlight the syntax to give you a helping hand.

[dannyjay]

Hi

Here's a good tutorial, which takes you through creating a small demo site. LINK. What I liked about it was the way you started with a design, created an HTML page, broke the page up into div's, or logical sections, and then introduced CSS to style style the page.

Other than that, W3Schools is pretty good, and for troubleshooting code, their reference guides are really useful - LINK

Maria

Thank you I'll give that a shot!

Also, if you're going to do anything with layout and css you can run into some odd behaviour in some browsers which may be confusing at first. I strongly recommend starting out with a standards compliant browser such as Firefox for all your page previewing. If you do use Firefox then you can install the Firebug addon which allows you to inspect elements on a page and see what style rules apply to them (along with a whole heap of other potentially useful stuff once you start doing more advanced things). This may help you understand what's going on ... especially as you can change attributes in the firebug bar and see what effect it has on the page very directly.

Hello
:-Dave

I use firefox anyway, so thats a plus! I think its going to take awhile for me to get my head around it! Haha. Sounds abit like DW too!

I suck at Photoshop, can do XHTML\CSS blah... trade lol

Sure Lol, start a business?

Take a look at the W3Schools site on CSS.

This allows you to make very quick changes to sample code to see what happens and gives lots of easy (I hope!) to follow examples to get you started.

The other thing that might be worth playing with if you're using Windows is Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express (free!) which also tries to make CSS easy to do.

Stick with it because it really is worthwhile!

That looks awesome thank you Scroch, that w3schools seems to pop up a lot - seems really helpful too!

Downloaded VWD and going to try that soon! I'm in shock MS released something for free!!

Perhaps video podcasts would help you?

iTunes search podcasts for The Art of Code. They start at the very beginning with a blank html page and add a stylesheet to style some of the page. He goes on to discuss margins and padding and a lot more.

Never thought about that! I'll have a look tonight!

My only suggestion would be to steer away from using 'software' to learn css, try and stick to something like notepad, notepad+ or Editplus that highlight the syntax to give you a helping hand.

Ahh, so stay away from DW then?

[danIT]

When ever you use software like DW they have there own way of doing particular things and aren't really standards compliant. (Not that everything you do will be as not all browsers are standards compliant lol)

It just makes it a bit harder to learn thats all.

[gibbo_ap]

think it would be a gr8 idea to make a sticky with a load of useful links in the web dev area. i have and have lots so many great links!