devexp » css http://www.devexp.eu DEVelopment EXPerience, shared with the world! Fri, 28 Oct 2011 12:07:45 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Basic tips and tricks: 4.Css http://www.devexp.eu/2009/09/01/basic-tips-and-tricks-4-css/ http://www.devexp.eu/2009/09/01/basic-tips-and-tricks-4-css/#comments Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:42:12 +0000 van Rumste Kenneth http://www.devexp.eu/?p=899 Continue reading →]]>

Hello everybody, I’m back with another version of basic tips and tricks.

After having a talk with a client, about the basic on css, I thought it might be good to have an easy introduction.

So let’s give it a try. We’ll talk about:

  • Why would you use css?
  • How to insert css in your html file
  • How css is written
  • Css on objects, classes and unique objects
  • Basic css properties and there values
  • The pseudo class
  • Where to find good information on css

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation (that is, the look and formatting) of a document written in a markup language.

CSS is designed primarily to enable the separation of document content (written in HTML or a similar markup language) from document presentation, including elements such as the colors, fonts, and layout.

Why would you use css?

Whenever you create an html page without css, you will probably insert layout into it. But every object will have to get it’s layout specifications and that could be a hard time, especially if you have a lot of objects that need the same layout.
You don’t know any examples of objects with the same layout?

  • A menu with 4 or 5 buttons.
  • Buttons
  • A list
  • Different headings and titles
  • Paragraphs
  • …

As you can see, I don’t need to think very hard to get different objects on which the same layout can be applied.

I guess you see my point why you could use the same css code over and over again, instead of rewriting it for each object in your page.
And I’m not even talking about different pages or a whole website…

How to insert css in your html file

CSS is a file containing code you and that puts a layout on specific objects in your html file.

That code can be written in a html file within these tags

<STYLE type=text/css>                 </STYLE>

Or in a css file that is included within the <head></head> tags.

Whatever css code you write in there will be applied to the code within that page.

If you are creating a website or more than one page, it might be more sufficient to use an include so you can reuse the same code over and over again.

In my opinion the only times you can or should use the <style> tags without an include is if you are sure you will never create another page with the same layout or for testing.

Just for readability alone, it might be better to separate it from your original html file and include it.

How css is written

The coding is quite simple, the only difficult thing to learn is: what properties are there? And on which object are they possible?

Css is always written in this way:

selector [, selector2, ...]:pseudo-class { property: value; }
/* comment*/

This means:

Selector
Is the object you are trying to set the layout for.  It’s possible to put more than one selector by separating them with a comma.
Ex: paragraphs, header, etc…

Pseudo class
The pseudo class is a bit tricky and I will talk about that at the end of my tutorial.
Ex: hover, link, visited, etc…

Property
This is the property you want to set for a specific selector.
Ex: background-color, font-size, etc…

Value
This is the value you set for the property.
Ex: 1px, #f1f1f1, none, etc…

Comment
Comment is written between /* */ tags and can be 1 or more lines in length.

Css on objects, classes and unique objects

The selector is actually more then only an id and can be defined in various ways. I guess the best way to show this is by using some examples.
This will set all paragraphs in your page with the background color red.

p { background-color: red;}
<p>blabla</p>

This will set all paragraphs with the class nature with a background green.

p.nature { background-color: green; }
<p class="nature">blabla</p>

This will put a background color green on every paragraph and a brow background color on every font with class tree within the nature paragraph.

p.nature { background-color: green; }
p.nature font.tree { background: brown; }
<p class="nature"> blabla <font class="tree"> more bla </font>
</p>

If you are willing to put a layout on 1 specific object you can do that by using the #. In this case, the paragraph sky will get a blue background.

#sky { background-color: blue}
<p id="sky">blabla</p>

This part is very important because you can save tons of time and code by using classes and ids.

Basic css properties and there values

There are quite a few different properties and not all properties can be used on any object.

It’s not very complex, but with some try and error you’ll find your way quite fast in the exciting world of properties. :-)

I’ll give some examples first from simple to a bit more difficult and there possible values.

background-color: #cccccc;
/* #cccccc is a grey color and can also be replaced by the string 'grey' */

margin: 5px;
/* this will put a margin of 5 pixels round the element */

font-size: normal;
/* The font size can also be replaced with number of px,em or % */

background: #FFFFFF url(image.jpg) repeat-x scroll left top;
/* As you can see it is also possible to add more than 1 value to some properties. */

#FFFFFF:          /* Is the default color the background has */
url(image.jpg)    /* is the image that will be displayed on the background*/
repeat-x          /*  is the way it will be repeated in. x is horizontal, y is vertical*/
scroll            /* sets if the image will be fixed or scroll with the rest of the page*/
left top          /* is where the background starts*/

/* Those are the more complex properties but can easily split up into different css properties if it's too complex.*/
background-color:  #FFFFFF;
background-image:  url(image.jpg);
background-repeat:  repeat-x;
background-attachment: scroll;
background-position: top left;

More properties are possible and you can find them other websites that I got lined up in the last part: ‘where to find good information on css’

<strong>The pseudo class</strong>

These are used to add special effects to the object they are put on.

In this example you will add different text colors when the link is visited, hovered or active

a:link {color:#FF0000}     /* unvisited link */
a:visited {color:#00FF00}  /* visited link */
a:hover {color:#FF00FF}    /* mouse over link */
a:active {color:#0000FF}   /* selected link */

Other pseudo-classes are possible like: first-child, focus, lang, etc…

Where to find good information on css

General information
Test your css
Official w3c website

Off course this doesn’t cover the whole story as this is only a basic guide.

I just hope you have some advantage from reading this.

C u next time. K.

]]> http://www.devexp.eu/2009/09/01/basic-tips-and-tricks-4-css/feed/ 0 enhance your css http://www.devexp.eu/2009/03/19/enhance-your-css/ http://www.devexp.eu/2009/03/19/enhance-your-css/#comments Thu, 19 Mar 2009 08:43:29 +0000 van Rumste Kenneth http://www.devexp.eu/?p=445 Continue reading →]]>

Writing css code isn’t that hard, it’s easy, clean but can be a pain in the ass to keep it readable when you have hundreds or maybe thousands of lines of code.

When sticking to specific rules it can all be made a bit more readable:

  • always use a reset of some sort
  • alphabetize
  • write comment
  • consistency
  • start in the right place
  • Understanding Class and ID
  • Power of li
  • CSS Debugging Tools

read the full text to enhance your css code

5 Ways to Instantly Write Better CSS (click here )
20 Useful CSS Tips (click here)
]]> http://www.devexp.eu/2009/03/19/enhance-your-css/feed/ 0 layout inspiration http://www.devexp.eu/2009/02/05/layout-inspiration/ http://www.devexp.eu/2009/02/05/layout-inspiration/#comments Thu, 05 Feb 2009 12:00:29 +0000 van Rumste Kenneth http://www.devexp.eu/?p=363 Continue reading →]]>

designA lot of programmers seem to hate the layout part of the job. Well if you work in a big company you probably won’t do the two jobs, but in some cases, or when you work in a small company (ex 1-5 employees) you have to do them both (layout and programming). And for those guys, it isn’t always easy to have inspiration right away, well there is a solution.

Here are a few sites that have a huge portfolio with nice layout sites. You can grab the css in some cases, and that’s the interesting part of it.

Take a look at them.
cssmania
cssremix/
cssimport
designsnack
Anyone got a better idea to get inspiration? Feel free to add your way of working in the comments.

]]> http://www.devexp.eu/2009/02/05/layout-inspiration/feed/ 0 basic tips and tricks: 1. Basic HTML http://www.devexp.eu/2008/11/03/basic-tips-and-tricks-1-basic-html/ http://www.devexp.eu/2008/11/03/basic-tips-and-tricks-1-basic-html/#comments Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:02:52 +0000 van Rumste Kenneth http://www.devexp.eu/?p=230 Continue reading →]]>

There seems to be a big lack of knowledge in the field of basic web design, therefore I decided to write a step-by-step web design tutorial. Every post will be a new chapter in development; I will try to give you a fresh view on what really matters and is interesting for starting users. We’ll start with the basics like tags in html and go on with CSS; the future will tell us how far we get. The point is to share my experience with you guys, not to teach you every detail, if you are completely fresh to HTML and CSS; you better take a look at w3schools first. (http://www.w3schools.com)

So let’s start off with our first post: BASIC HTML

First off all, if you want to learn HTML and CSS, try not to use the design view of programs to often. It’s very easy to create simple pages with those design views, but you won’t learn the code, and that’s the important stuff you need to know. So let’s take a look at basic fresh html code generated by Dreamweaver:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Untitled Document</title>
</head>

<body>
</body>
</html>

So what is really important in this example?

As you can see, html is completely built up with tags and every tag is written inside the tag it is containing to. You can see that the head and body tag are within the html tag, because the html tag is the whole page and the header and body are in it.

The head tags are simply to give information like the name of the page (now ‘Untitled Document’) and include the necessary files (that’s for later). The real important one is the body tag because that is what the user will see. Whatever you will write within these tags, will be displayed on the screen of the person that visits your website.

So if we write <body>test</body> the user will get an empty, blank screen with test written on it. Easy, isn’t it? So now you can write whatever you want in the page. The tricky part is the layout of the text.

Layout of a text is also done with the tags as they are written in the first example. So when you want to write for example this is bold this is italic and this is underlined, you will have to write this:

This is <b>bold</b> this is <i>italic</i> and this is <u>underlined</u>

As you can see every type of layout has its own specific layout tags b for bold, I for italic and u for underline. When using tags, be sure that you always close the tags just as in the example.

Like there are tags for text layout, there are also tags for line breaks and paragraphs. When you are writing long texts with paragraphs in it, always try to write your text within the <p></p> tags. Don’t use 2 <br /> tags instead; this is a very often made mistake. This is for the simple reason that <br /> isn’t the same as a paragraph, it doesn’t react the same way for every user, a paragraph tag does. So use your <br /> tags wisely within the <p> tags like so:


This is a long text and when we go to a new line within the paragraph we use a line break
So this will be displayed on a new line within the same paragraph

This is a second paragraph that will be displayed

This will result in:

This is a long text and when we go to a new line within the paragraph we use a line break
So this will be displayed on a new line within the same paragraph

This is a second paragraph that will be displayed

The last thing for today is the headings which are used to display titles. Just like the paragraph tag you can use the heading tag: <h1></h1><h2></h2>. H stands for heading and the numbers are the scale that the heading is displayed in, 1 being the biggest and 6 being the smallest.

That was it for today my friends, this was the easiest part, in next lessons we will talk about topics like:

DIV vs. Tables
CSS and how to use it properly
debugging and testing
and much more

]]> http://www.devexp.eu/2008/11/03/basic-tips-and-tricks-1-basic-html/feed/ 0 Tables: use or don’t use http://www.devexp.eu/2008/09/16/tables-use-or-dont-use/ http://www.devexp.eu/2008/09/16/tables-use-or-dont-use/#comments Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:38:32 +0000 van Rumste Kenneth http://blog.mg-x.eu/?p=50 Continue reading →]]>

When creating a more complex table the last few days, I noticed that it is very useful to create them with the different additional elements: tbody, thead, tfoot, col, th, td, etc…
In order to create a table in your webpage, it is not required to use these elements but when using css and trying to put a layout on a table, they are very handy.
For example you can, by using the display property, specify the function of all the elements:

  • TABLE { display: table }
  • TR { display: table-row }
  • THEAD { display: table-header-group }
  • TBODY { display: table-row-group }
  • TFOOT { display: table-footer-group }
  • COL { display: table-column }
  • COLGROUP { display: table-column-group }
  • TD, TH { display: table-cell }
  • CAPTION { display: table-caption }

TFOOT will always be displayed as the bottom row of a table and most of the time contains totals.
THEAD contains the header information of a table.

Not really a very interesting post, but I just love it when using a bit more complex css on tables. It makes the tables easy to manage and they are tons more readable in code.

The thing me and my colleagues noticed is that tables aren’t very good for web design; they are created to display data and not a whole site or newsletter. A few years ago everybody started creating sites in tables because they were easy to set up, and looked great in a few hours. But the horrible time starts when you need to change layout after worth. In the most cases you’ll end up with a table that contains a table that contains another table. I guess you get the picture and that they are very difficult to manage. By experience we can tell that they are not very layout friendly and readability sucks.

We started using divs and with good css you can do anything.
Take a look at it, we recommend it.

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