I have built web pages long before my real estate career, back in my teens. The first wave was table design, then scripting design, flash, etc.

After completly going crazy with my current tables design website (shown in my sig *incomplete) I have competly switched to a CSS based design. I could not be happier!!!
See a demonstration of css design at: www.csszengarden.com

I totally agree. I started putting together dummy pages for my new company site, using tables and older HTML. What a total PAIN!!!

Moved to CSS, the startup time of getting the basic style sheets set up is the main overhead. Once done, layout and formating is an absolute breeze!!!

Now to see how long the Template Presence Providers take to come up to speed.

Yes, CSS 2.x rules! Its fun to say that now that I don't have to make my living doing web dev.

Wow, those sites are really visually appealing. I look forward to seeing what the CSS future with hold for the internet.

Great! Very nice...

Know any good online tutorials? I've been meaning to learn more about it.

a google search will turn up a LOT of tutorials. To tell you the truth, I learned everything in less than 2 weeks, by reading the tutorials, and analyzing just about every design on the website i posted (www.csszengarden.com)

Its really not that hard, the only major problem is that CSS is not completly supported by all browsers to the best of its capability.

Hello,
Sorry I am neophyte to webdesign. If CSS is the way then how expensive is this new tool/technology compared to regular webdesigning?

I am planning to get a simple website build and I am looking for local web designer who can help me out.


Thank you
Ritu

CSS is free! There are no costs associated with developing a website using CSS. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is just a technology that integrates into regular HTML to help separate content from presentation.

Here are some good resources.

http://www.w3schools.com
http://www.meyerweb.com
http://www.w3.org
http://www.positioniseverything.com
http://www.csszengarden.com
http://www.cssvault.com
http://www.stylegala.com

Css is great for the design, however i believe that the future is behind dynamic web developent such as database driven php site

totaly, i have some css sites and some php, when i need to change something on my php site its 1/100 the time it takes with css.

css just helps for design.

Just to clear up some confusion.

PHP is a scripting language which is often used to deliver dynamic content. Usually PHP is used in conjunction with a database, MySQL for example, which provides the content. PHP is also used for creating certain aspects of a website, header or navigation for instance, and then using a template like system to reuse those bits over and over.

CSS is a technology used to style markup languages. Mainly CSS is used to add presentational information to HTML.

It's not really fair to say PHP is more important or more useful than CSS since they're not even close to the same thing.

very nice site

Its not new .. CSS has been around for a relatively long time.

It's too bad that not nearly enough people make good use of it.

The first version of my site was table based. I was cool towards CSS (really didn't get the point) until I came across http://www.csszengarden.com. This site just blew me away. Every design uses the exact same HTML file and yet are astoundingly different due to the CSS. I finally "got it."

So, the second (and current) version of my site is CSS based. The conversion was painful, and there are so many CSS related bugs in IE that you just want to scream. In a few places I just punted and used tables. But overall, I am happy with the result.

As far as PHP/CSS goes, they are totally unrelated. An HTML file is hard coded HTML content, PHP generates dynamic HTML content and CSS can be used to format either.

This statement is obviously made from a misinformed unit. The two "technologies", CSS and PHP, are used in two totally different ways, one is for pulling/capturing data and adding dynamic data (from a database or other location) into the site, while one is (for the most part) strictly used to define the data presentation. You can't compare apples to oranges.

I'm glad someone brought up CSS Zengarden, I used that site heavily when I was a web development instructor at the local technology center, it is one of the best examples of totally seperating content from layout and being able to roll out a new layout within a few hours. However, the learning curve is fairly high, and the initial time to construct the layout is a little higher than with tables.

-J

Hello
Question regarding cSS.. I am getting my website created with Advanced Acceess can I have them run the software for CSS or I can do externally?

Thank You
Ritu

Not to nitpick but PHP is still a flexible programing language and has MANY uses outside the realm of dynamic websites.

I've never used Advanced Access, but if you can specify different id and class values for different elements you should be able to use your own CSS file. They don't need any 'software' to make use of CSS as it's a client side technology, which means that it's up to the client accessing the website (the user, search engine spider, or whatever) to make use of the information contained in the style sheet.

What part of my post did you not understand?

PHP is mainly a construct to handle DATA, period.

CSS is mainly a construct to handle layout, period.

Yes you can do layout with PHP, but all your really doing is telling the PHP to write the CSS (or HTML to control layout) or pull DATA to construct a style sheet, etc. Again, PHP for data, CSS to control layout.

Am I clear now?

-J

Calm down there buddy, I didn't misunderstand you. I was just pointing out that PHP can do a lot more than just pull data out of whatever, people seem to forget that.

Quit making assumptions and then you won't get the gist that I'm getting hostile...

I never said that PHP could ONLY "pull data"... if you read what I posted, I said that it is mainly used to work with data, and it is; while CSS is mainly used to work with layout, of course you can do all kinds of things other than those two with each one but that does not mean it is best practice. I could use Javascript to read from a text file database to pull data to populate data in my website, doesn't mean you should though.

-J

From your previous post...

To the uninformed it sounds like PHP is only used to pull data out of a database for a dynamic page. I was just doing some PHP advocating by informing others reading this thread that PHP is more than just that.

Like I said, I didn't put the "only" quantifier in there, but maybe I should have added "manipulating" to the "pulling/capturing" and we wouldn't be having this discussion.

-J