It is no secret that CSS and Web Standards are IN, while HTML + Tables are OUT. Cascading Style Sheets provide for many advantages lacking in traditional HTML-based table-layouts. Clearly, the separation between design and content is needed like the separation between Church and State. It must happen for the betterment of society! Want to change the design? Just change the stylesheet! Want to have your content easily viewable on a mobile phone? Just change the stylesheet! Once you master CSS, web design and layout change becomes easier to code and more accessable for the end-user.
Where should you start learning some CSS techniques? One of my favorite articles is from Smashing Magazine, entitled, “53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without.”
This article is an excellent resource which covers some of the following:
- CSS Based Navigation
- CSS Tabs
- CSS Shadows
- and who could live without…CSS Rounded Corners
Switching from HTML table-design to CSS sounds like it is a big step to take. This is true, but it is a much needed step, and everyone who hasn’t already done so, should at least start making the effort. One great way to learn which has made it far easier on me is working with CSS-based WordPress templates. I have learned an incredible amount about CSS just by reverse-engineering WordPress templates. It is really nothing too difficult and the CSS is so tidy that editing and making changes is a piece of cake. Before you know it, you will be forgetting tables all together!
You know you have no reason to keep using tables…so go out there and jump on the CSS bandwagon! And don’t forget to have your CSS pages checked by the W3 CSS Validator!
Great tips, but the one about the text size switcher “Tip 33: CSS Zooming” isn’t a real css-technique. Does anybody know a sample without Javascript?
Won’t we all miss HTML? The good old days are starting to come back to me…