Dear Mr. Tutorial Person:

[johnpalmer]

Thank you very much for your tutorial on Cascading Style Sheets. I think that the work of volunteers like yourself are what makes the world wide web so wonderful.

However, could I point out that if you say that you put CSS rules between "style" tags, you should *also* point out that you *only* do this *IF* you are including them within the web page itself, and that you *do not* want style tags in your .css file!

Razzafrazzin' twenty minutes trying to figure out something stupid....

(No, honestly, I *know* it's not the author's fault. But, I'm trying to learn web page design and Unix, and both suffer from the same fundamental problem. It's hard to find information that's neither babytalk nor over my head.)

Comments

Ouch, I remember that particular epiphany

[kightp.livejournal.com]

I found it a whole lot easier to learn CSS syntax when I had an actual functioning stylesheet to look at.

Want me to send you a couple?

Re: Ouch, I remember that particular epiphany

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

You could send me some CSSes, but I don't know if I'll need them or not. If you have one that is commented (so I know what each command is doing), that'll help, but right now I'm going through your CSS links, and learning some of the basics on my own, and I'm afraid that anything complex will just induce information overload right now. Maybe in a little bit, once I have more of the basics down.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Why don't you just ask kightp? That's what I do...

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Oh, never mind. I should have RTFC first...

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Well, the biggest reason not to ask her is that I'm a wonderfully amazingly superb theoretician. I mean, I know theory like nobody's business. People have stood in awe of my skills at theory.

Ummm... are you maybe getting the idea that I sometimes have trouble with *application*? Perish the thought! (That's not to say it isn't true, but I really don't want you to waste too much time thinking about it...)

If I had a nice little vanity website, with almost-working cascading style sheets, I'd be glad to have Pat help me sharpen it up, and explain what's not working, but I'm at the stage where, if I don't actually do some work with them, I'll sit back and cheerfully let her show me stuff, and not really learn anything. I mean, I'll know the *theory*, and I'll be able to occasionally spot a problem in someone else's webpage or style sheets, but I won't have a good feel for how to do something.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Which one of my sites are you calling a "nice little vanity website," buster? Although southphillyblocks.org certainly fits the bill.

(Actually, now that I've installed MSIE 6, I've discovered that a couple of my stylesheets are "almost working" but not the way I'd like. Hey, Pat... which online resources do you like best? It's time for me to learn the stuff for real.)

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Which one of my sites are you calling a "nice little vanity website," buster? Although southphillyblocks.org certainly fits the bill.

My point was that I don't have *anything*... not even, for example, a vanity website talking about me and my interests, let alone a 'nice' one. All that I've ever used HTML for is a bit of text formatting... I haven't even put images in with text.

I wasn't thinking about your web sites, or anyone else's... I was only thinking about how it'd be no good for me to learn how cascading style sheets work without immediately applying them to something in a way that locked their practical use in my brain.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

So make yourself a nice little vanity website, in plain vanilla HTML, and then create your cascading style sheets! Having a pet website is lots of fun. Arrrrrrrrr.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

These are the ones I go back to again and again:

Tutorial/reference:
http://www.mako4css.com/
http://www.westciv.com.au/style_master/academy/browser_support/text.html (a master list of what style elements are supported in which browsers)
http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/csscheck/ (validate your style sheet)

Theory/sterling examples:
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/
http://www.csszengarden.com/

(sorry for the delayed response - I got *waaaay* behind in LJ while my show was opening)