[CSS for web developers]

I think that CSS should take more than a week to learn. I think you should be able to pick up the basics and the overall concepts in a week, but an actual understanding of layouts and positioning and CSS browser compatibility issues will take longer than that.

 

I don't necessarily think that you have to be an expert at it, but I do think you should have a pretty good understanding. The development you do will have to eventually be shown in the browser, and the browser will require HTML/CSS to display it properly.

 

How skilled you need to be depends in part what your eventual goal is. If you plan to purely be a backend developer (PHP, Ruby/Ruby on Rails/databases/etc.) you may not need it as much, but then you will be limited by the fact that you will really only be a good fit for jobs where you have others doing the frontend development (HTML/CSS). If you plan to freelance, you'll probably have situations where either you'll need to do the frontend development as well or where you will have to hire another freelancer to do the frontend stuff, which will force you to charge higher rates or earn less money per project.

 

No jobs at my area at the moment. Actually, many lost their jobs . So I want to be a freelance. I am kind of opening a new opportunity myself. I know it's not easy as there are lot of freelancers out there and they have great experience but I am trying to do my best and use the available resource, I have, which is TIME. I don't actually know if I'll succeed or not after a lot of reading and trying code.

[CSS for web developers]

Hi,

I'm new to web development. I learned HTML (simple language) and I am working on CSS. Some say that CSS won't take more than a week to learn. What I found is that CSS has a lot of topics (text styling, margins, padding, borders, image styling, positioning, layout,...etc) so the question is "Is it necessary to be good at CSS as a developer or I just need to know the basics and then go to Javascript and PHP?"

[Found a website I would like to model after. What now??]

What do you know about designing websites?

 

The one you link to was created using shopify.com

 

Most beginners(including me) learn the basics and they find it difficult to build a real website. So we try to copy (model) a website that we found interesting and easy to build. I don't know if what we are doing is the correct way of learning or not. But we're just trying to learn on our own. We'd like to hear from web experts what is the best way to learn and build 'real' websites.

[did anybody had this problem while learning]

You'd probably learn more if you tried to build your own practice sites. Start with something simple with just a few pages, or find one you like and try to duplicate it - and use your book to look up what you need to achieve whatever it is.

 

And if you get stuck, come here, give us a link or at least paste all your code, and we can see what's going on and help you along.

 

Thanks for your reply. I'll try to do that but I have to wait a little bit until I read about page layout.

[did anybody had this problem while learning]

Hi, I am a new CSS learner. I have been reading a book "CSS the missing manual" for a while. I got a soft copy of the book and I read about 6 chapters till now. After learning the basics, I feel bored and clueless. I don't know what I should do exactly to make something meaningful. Yes, I know HTML tags and CSS styles to make them look better. But it's not enough. I don't know the METHOD of how to think of a web page/ website. How to make choices and organize content. I don't know if I am the only one who has this problem or other new learners have the same problem.

 

I'd like to know what should I do. Should I continue reading the book or go somewhere else and try to work on building a web site. I am really confused but at the same time I am bored because I just read what each style property does, try it on a sample web page, and get back to continue reading.

[what do you think of this CSS book]

Books get outdated fast and cannot be corrected when they are flat out wrong.

 

Use web sites like W3schools.com, they can stay up to date.

 

The problem with w3schools is that it does not teach how to think of a web page. It just explains what each tag does in plain English. For me, I think this is not enough to build a good web page. I want to learn how to put things together

[what do you think of this CSS book]

If you are wanting a book that is definitely one of the best I have read. I prefer videos but that book helped me a lot.

 

Thanks for your reply. I am going to buy that book soon.

[what do you think of this CSS book]

I'm new to web programming. I learned basic HTML tags using w3schools website. It was easy to grasp and simple but I did not build any good looking web pages just basic text, images, and hyper links. Now, I want to learn CSS to build good looking (real world) web pages. I did a search on amazon and I found that this book has good reviews

CSS the missing manual

 

I'd like to hear from you guys if you recommend this book or other books to start with.

 

Thanks for your help,