mmi — Sat, 02 Mar 2002 18:56:55 +0000

hey - don't forget the blooberry patch

raine — Fri, 01 Mar 2002 23:25:37 +0000

Thanks again everyone, this is becoming a great learning experience for me! I will read up on those two as Megan has pointed out, and will also do any other research I need to do...

this bites... 200 pages... ah well, it's gotta be done to save me a headache later on! =)

Megan — Fri, 01 Mar 2002 14:11:20 +0000

I learned css at http://www.webmonkey.com - a good tutorial there. http://www.w3schools.com is another good one.

detox — Fri, 01 Mar 2002 11:57:11 +0000

There used to be a great CSS site around that had a name something like css recipe book or something like that. I cant remember sorry!

Just to add my two cents worth as well though, you should think about having some kind of browser check with javascript at the head of your page to direct different browsers to different external files. You might have to then edit 2-3 css files but that is a heck of a lot easier than editing 30-50-100.....2000 pages worth of tags!

Busy — Fri, 01 Mar 2002 08:47:56 +0000

I had to edit 2000+ pages with different font tags (as mentioned before), since it was an old site it had a lot of mismatched font tags, like:
and and and ....

but since all (98%) of the font tags were the same result I just used the search and replace on every combination I found starting at the top, then once I thought I had them all, i then searched for "... seperatly.

Took a few hours, was very boring (music helps pass the time) but now with help of an external style sheet all fonts are controled by one tag: body {...}.

As for a good site, I dont think there is one, but dont settle for one site to learn CSS, a lot of sites out there teach bad habits and messy code that doesnt work on all browsers. do a search for css and follow a few sites finding out what works and what doesnt, dont worry to much which version they teach, css2 is the normal one but they are up to 3, which IMO is still in beta.
could also do a search in here for css.

good luck

mmi — Fri, 01 Mar 2002 06:56:20 +0000

hey - the first point I wanna make is that I think yer making a mistake if you think HTML is complicated - it can be, but only in fairly narrow or advanced areas - mmy guess is that you're already familiar with the basic structure of a document and that's about half the game - don't be intimidated by it - it's not like scripting/programming - to me, that's like comparing checkers with chess

if you have a large number of pages, I guess the automated search-and-replace approach could be a real good idea to strip out stuff you don't want - but as DM notes, these pages will still require careful attention

Quote: And using CSS is not as simple as just adding that one line, right? I still have to add lines like before all the titles and whatnot, correct?

well, I guess you may need to go into each document and paste in CLASS attributes - depends on how you've used elements so far, I suppose

disaster-master — Fri, 01 Mar 2002 06:15:43 +0000

LOL....I feel your pain Raine. gee that rhymes;)

I just recently converted one of my clients sites. I am still not finished building all of his pages but I am glad that I swapped over to css when I did. I did approx. 35 pages. It wasn't that bad. I had to go through almost every little inch of code to make sure that there were no font tags left. That was the biggest thing. After you get a "system" going though you will breeze right through your pages. And the rewards will be great when you finish.

Thanks

raine — Fri, 01 Mar 2002 06:09:10 +0000

Thanks everyone!

Now, I have many many urls to decent guides to teach me CSS... but in your opinion, what is the best site to learn CSS from? one that will teach me to get rid of what i need to teach me what I need to put in?

OK, it don't have to be the best, but as long as it works! =)

Suzanne — Fri, 01 Mar 2002 05:58:26 +0000

And when you use classes, it looks like this in the CSS sheet:

.class {...}

And like this in the HTML

Suzanne — Fri, 01 Mar 2002 05:57:38 +0000

not quite.

you only need classes for unique circumstances.

your basic CSS just states what each tag should look like:

h1 {font-size: xxpx;}
p {}
body {}

If you don't remove the font tags, and you use no DOCTYPE or HTML Transitional 4.01 or lower DOCTYPE, then the CSS will NOT override those tags unless you declare it in the CSS.

font {}

You should, ideally, remove the font tags. You'll also have to tidy up the content to make sure all tags are closed.

Suzanne