K thanks Tofu

This CSS thing is what is keeping me from building more site for customers. I'm an old school (heavens, I went back to college in the late 90's!!! I KNOW!!!! ) web designer and know tables very well. And I basically let Dreamweaver look after the code. It worked very well for me for the better part of a decade. But now, as Bob Dylan said, the times they are a changin'.

Could some of you CSS dudes out there recommend a good book that covers Css in a realatively non-tech way? Or one that helps me understand using Dreamweaver to work with it?

I might have just ONE more website to design before I shuffle off this mortal coil, and I guess it will have to be CSS

This looks like a decent introduction to CSS.. http://www.csstutorial.net/
I honestly started watching the video tutorial and couldn't sit through it. Zzzzzzzzzz...

Anyway, I think the first challenge for most folks might be getting used to coding by hand rather than letting some WYSIWYG editor do the coding for them. Now I'm all for having a visual representation of the page, but at some point if you are going to be building sites you need to be able to delve into the HTML itself.

Once you are familiar with HTML and are comfortable with creating DIV tags and applying styles to those tags, CSS is not too bad. Now, sure as you get more complex styles, it gets tricky (as with anything else), but applying basic styles is not too much of a learning curve if you already are familiar with HTML.

Hope this helps a bit..

Az

I think this will help:
www.w3.org/Style/CSS/

Good Luck!

I was going to mention w3c, they apparently are the ones trying to get this whole xhtml and css STANDARD. They are pushing a lot to get coders to consider people with vision impairment when they build a web site. w3c's site is a good resource, but is a bad example of good visual design! To see the better side of css, just go to css Zen Garden.

I used videos from lynda.com to learn css, I thought it covered most of what I needed to know. I would suggest learning to play around with java, there are some great open source java coding on the internet. I love what they did with jquery, especially for thickbox, go to the link and scroll down to examples; beautiful and easy tool!

Personally, I'm now going the way of wordpress and php, my "clients" all want to be able to edit their website themselves through their browser. Still, I think my knowledge in html and css will help me with the learning curve.

I was where you are now several years ago. CSS on a basic level worked but created problems across browsers, forcing some to hack the code to make it work. "Why work with something that's going to suck your time and energy testing code across browsers and platforms when tables work just fine!" was my thought. But, the coding was on the wall. CSS or die. So, eventually I learned about CSS, but by no means am I a guru. I prefer to let others perfect the code and spend time testing. I'll buy what I need and tweak the CSS myself.

One of my favorite CSS app developers is ProjectSeven.com. Even my own web site is a CSS theme that came with my blog software, Movable Type, which has been heavily tweaked, and continues to be tweaked by myself.

If you were able to learn HTML, then you can learn CSS. Keep it simple. Don't spend time trying to reinvent the wheel. Study from the best, buy from the best or use one of the many free online resources.

I think the hardest part is how to switch gears. You have to think differently about how you design a web page for CSS than for tables. CSS opens up a whole lot more opportunities. And CSS makes it extremely easy to control nearly everything with one style sheet which can manage every page tied to it.

Good studying.

The Web Developer Toolbar is a good tool to see how others have built their own website.

Also, I have to mention Web Designer Wall, great up to date ressource. It helps get your designer juices flowing.

Thanks everyone for your feedback. This might just be a project for me NEXT winter.

The truth is, as a "working artist" I need a few irons in the fire if I'm to avoid Flipping Burgers (not that there is any dishoner in that - I just don't want to go that route ever again ). One of my main income streams, along with general graphic design and photography (and now music is back in my life as well professionally) was doing small websites for Mom & Pop Shops. So I may yet be driven to study this most (to me) challenging CSS thing - the howling of the wolves at my door may yet inspire me there!

Cheers!
- Reinier

You no read my replies anymore Mr. DeSmit?

In reality, I don't pay a lot of attention to what goes on at this site much anymore, Mr. Tofu. I'm happier, it seems, that way. But your communications are always important and enjoyable to me - so please let me know which you are referring to here and I'll check them out.

reinieR

Just referring to the earlier post about the O'Reilly "Head First" and "Head Rush" books. They're really pretty cool as learning tools.

Oh! Got that one (my THANK YOU was to "EVERYONE" there above, and you may include yourself in the EVERYONE pile. Please, keep your hands to yourself though! )

I like the O'Reilly books. Some of my best learning comes from that line.