nicora — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 17:14:06 +0000

Start with the basics... checkout and replicate layouts from these sites

http://bluerobot.com/
http://glish.com/css/

Great reading about CSS here
http://alistapart.com/topics/css/

CSS inspiration
http://www.webstandardsawards.com/
http://stopdesign.com/

As far as an editor, when I'm not using CF Studio 5, I use good 'ol TextPad. Others here probably have better suggestions than I do.

Reply

papalovesmambo — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 16:42:00 +0000

Med text editor makes hand coding simple and is better than using something like homesite.

CSS editing can be simplified using topstyle lite (free) and is really useful. Personally i prefer to do most layouts in css and not nested tables but its up to you really.

The last two books by eric meyer on css have been excellent in helping me get to grips with the subject.

I mostly learnt how to use css through going on www.csszengarden.com where you can see peoples designs and view their css code at the same time and work out how its been done.

teammatt3 — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 01:15:20 +0000

There is a new open source wysiwyg editor called Nvu. Try it out at nvu.com. It's a decent editor, and it is 100% free.

Busy — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 20:39:51 +0000

Just for the record, there is nothing wrong with using tables for layout, and can be valid XHTML.
Just be careful when learning CSS as there are a lot of 'methods' that aren't 100% compatiable, I believe webmonkey does several CSS tutorials for example (using layers) that will only work on one or two browsers. If you're using Opera (profile) you already have a better starting point (rather than IE). good luck

Greg K — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 18:09:07 +0000

Can you give your reasons for not likeing the editors you mentioned? This will help prevent people from listing editors with the same things you already don't like, thus saving you the time from trying them.

Myself, I prefer doing it by hand and dreamweaver depending on the project (each can have their own advantages). Of course lately I'm mainly programming the php behind the pages, so ZDE's been my main buddy lately.

-Greg

Abhishek Reddy — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 14:57:14 +0000

Welcome to TWF, karlo. There's no need to cross-link to this thread on other sections of this site. Start a thread once in the appropriate section and be patient.

Switching from tables to divs and CSS can be tricky, and trying to duplicate with CSS a complex tables-layout could lead to complications. It might be more convenient for you to come up with a new design which isn't basically reliant on tables.

There are countless guides and tutorials out there that tell you how. alistapart.com has a particularly good collection - look under the XHTML and CSS categories. Google keywords such as XHTML, CSS layout tutorials to find hundreds more sites. Do search the forums for the same to find references too.

Dreamweaver is arguably the best WYSIWYG there is. If you don't like that, I'm not sure you'll enjoy using any others. I myself dislike Dreamweaver and prefer to code by hand in an editor. It might be a good idea to do this yourself, if you're going to be learning XHTML and CSS, as manually writing code may help you learn it better.