Course Dates
- Monday 16th - 18th August 2010 \ 0 places fully booked
Creating websites using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) design is the modern method of creating web pages. Using CSS means that web designers can separate the content within a document from its design. By doing this, the information on a web page can be described using (X)HTML to give it semantic meaning while the design elements and layout can be contained within a separate CSS document.
This is the industry standard way in which professional web designers and developers build web sites today. This is the reason why all of the courses that are run at WebDesign Training teach web design this way. So what is the difference between this course and our Introduction to Dreamweaver course? Well, this course is primarily aimed at developers who need to maintain XHTML and CSS at the code level. If you are already creating PHP, ASP or Ruby code and want to be able to understand, create and troubleshoot flexible CSS based web sites, then this is the course for you.
The course is very hands on and focus will be on the implementation phase of developing W3C compliant CSS based web sites. Although the course works primarily with CSS v2.1 (this is the widest supported version of CSS) there is also mention and demonstration of the new features that will be supported with CSS3 for those that are looking forward.
Course Requirements
This course is an entry level course that does not assume any knowledge of XHTML or CSS. Those wishing to attend should have an understanding of web design and should ideally have built simple websites in the past. Although aimed at an entry level to CSS hand coding many experienced designers that have attended this course have found it useful to consolidate the bits of knowledge they already had. Web designers who would like to eventually move on to server side web development languages like PHP or ASP find this a good starting point.
Course Description
The course opens with a short explanation of where the XHTML and CSS standards have evolved from. This is useful to have a better understanding of how the implementation of XHTML and CSS benefits both developers, search engines and for the implementation of web accessibility. This leads on to a look at the software that can be used to implement web standards solutions and what the benefits and disadvantages are to these tools. For example, those that advocate the use of notepad as the sole tool for creating CSS based website are probably not being very efficient in their workflow.
The course then gets a little more hands on with students creating and understanding valid XHTML structured pages. This is followed by a healthy focus on page structure for accessibility and search engine optimisation with many students post course reporting significant improvements in ranking in Google after just implementing this part of the course on their existing websites.
Once the page structure is understood, the course then provides students with a break down of the various XHTML content tags that are used to give page information semantic meaning. This is once again vital to accessibility and ensures that XHTML tags are implemented to W3C standards. Special mention is made of creating accessible form elements so that all users and devices are supported.
Supporting JavaScript and 3rd party plugins like the Adobe Flash player is covered to ensure that documents still retain standards compliance when validating though the W3C validation services. The course also discusses the need for sometimes not complying with the W3C's standards.
The course then focuses heavily on the CSS aspect of the page design process by starting with a look at default browser styles and the need to be aware of how these may affect design. There is a good explanation of when to use internal and inline styles and then on to the main course of external style sheets and their cascading abilities.
There is a full break down of the CSS syntax with explanations of the various types of selectors that are widely supported by modern day browsers. The course then looks at the various value types that are available in CSS and what the pros and cons of using relative values (percentages and ems etc) versus absolute values (pixels and points etc). Contrary to popular belief, absolute values do have their place in the CSS world.
The box model provides for an interesting discussion on the implementation of standards across browsers. The course identifies the differences between inline and block level elements and how margin, padding and border properties can affect the layout of elements within a design. The box model also provides the ability to attach background images to elements and this can be used to great effect with CSS based designs especially with support for transparency either through PNGs or CSS3 properties.
Although most CSS designs can be achieved using floats and natural flow, there is sometimes the need for using the position property to absolutely or relatively position elements within the design. This can lead to issues with browser compatibility problems, so the course ensures that developers are aware of the rules associated with CSS positioning.
Finally there is a look at validating CSS to W3C standards and troubleshooting CSS inconsistency across the various browsers and platforms using tools such as the excellent Firebug plugin.
Course Trainer
Bjorn has been involved in CSS based web design for nearly 10 years and has experience developing web applications in both small and large teams of developers. Having insights into both the design and development worlds, he is able to understand the capabilities of design packages such as Illustrator, Flash and Photoshop as well as develop with server side platforms such as PHP. Combing these two worlds through the use of hand written markup and CSS is something he excels in and has been teaching these skills to other developers for over 5 years.
Over the past few years he has closely followed the evolving standards for web development and has spent countless hours discussing appropriate markup with web designers in the industry. He has also run training course on web standards and accessibility which stems from his vast experience with CSS web design.
Course Location
This course is run from our rooms in Nottingham's prestigious Lace Market area which is a part of the city's main commercial district. This is serviced by a state-of-the-art tram system allowing easy access to the city centre as well as direct hourly rail services from London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Derby and Leicester.
Course Details
- Course Duration :
4 days | 9.30am - 5pm - Course Location :
Lace Market, Nottingham, UK - Course Price :
£495 - Software Version :
N/A
Course Overview
The course covers the following areas :
- An Overview of CSS Design
- Overview of eXtensible Markup Languages (XML)
- Standards support in existing development tools
- Structural Markup (XHTML)
- Structuring documents for the XHTML1.0 Strict Doctype
- Effective use of title and meta tags for better search engine optimisation
- Working with the link tag to attach external stylesheets
- Using structural tags to identify content areas
- Marking up content appropriately using tags such as headings, paragraphs, ordered and unordered lists, tables, links, images and formatting
- Block level and Inline level tags
- Building accessible forms for interaction
- Optimising code and content
- Supporting Javascript and 3rd party plugins
- Validating Web Content to meet W3C Standards
- XHTML validation services
- Validation versus quality controls
- Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
- Understanding browser, user and author styles
- Implementing inline, internal and external styling
- CSS syntax
- CSS selectors (type, class, id, pseudo and relational selectors)
- CSS property values
- Using relative and absolute values (pixels, points, ems, exs, and percentages)
- The visual formatting model
- Understanding the CSS box model and quirks mode
- Block and inline level behaviours
- Working with margin and padding
- Text formatting (size, spacing, typeface)
- Working with background images and attachment options
- Fixed attachment backgrounds
- Working with alpha-transparency (PNG support)
- What's new in CSS3?
- The z-index property
- Layered presentation
- CSS layouts using natural flow, fixed, absolute & relative positioning
- Building effective float layouts
- Building and styling accessible forms for interaction
- Cascading, inheritance and specificity within stylesheets
- Modularising stylesheets
- Creating stylesheets for print or mobile devices
- Cross compatibility testing
- Fixing layouts in incompatible browsers
- CSS validation
- Debugging CSS issues