Help! Please, I need some good recommendations for a good CSS book. So far I'm leaning towards "Beginning CSS Web Development: From Novice to Professional" by Simon Collison. Based on the reviews, it sounds like a good one for the practically unititiated like me. Am also trying to learn more from the W3C place online. Would love to hear of some of your favoite CSS learning sources? Many thanks!

Most Sincerely,
Secret Hiker

Secret Hiker,

You might want to check out the W3School site (not affiliated with W3C) at http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp where you will find some great examples.

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the link , have been there now most of today going blind and still at the stage where most everything I try to duplicate on my CC Editor from looking at their "Try It Editor" examples is not working... its not sinking in yet. And I'm doing something wrong also while using the Style Sheets Wizard in the CC Editor. Will take some time to sort it all out. Thanks much again for that link.

Most Sincerely,
Secret Hiker

I prefer the Visual Quickstart Guides by Peachrelating to web authoring. They're not costly and serve as great reference books.

http://www.amazon.com/XHTML-Sixth-Visua … amp;sr=1-2

Secret Hiker,

If you are trying to accomplish a specific function with CSS, explain it here, and it is highly likely someone will know how to get it done (if it is possible).

Even if we don't get the answer the first time, sometimes the help is just enough to point to the solution.

Here is a tip. When building a style sheet make each element a different color initially (for testing). Once the template looks the same on various browsers and you're happy, change the colors to whatever you want. This is a good way to check allignment of divs that have padding and margins.

Hi all Many thanks for replies, all helpful. Am just now only starting to get a grasp of it. Am doing the testing as advised, too, a good way to learn! That w3schools.com place is an excellent learning tool, too, getting a lot of help from that. Haven't bought any books yet, waiting for more suggestions Or, how did you all learn CSS? Online? Trial and error? Books?

Right now I'm just trying to get the text to look the way I want it to. The trial and error way is slow, but hopefully, once the mental block falls away, the light *will* shine forth! I see a glimmer...!

One question tho... Once I figure out just how... if I create one style sheet file that describes how I want every page's text to appear, and save it as a .css file, and upload it to where my other site files are... do I just need to place the <link href="styles.css/mysite.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> in the head of every page I have? And that's really it??? And then only use <font> tags etc for little sporadic things?

Most Sincerely
Secret Hiker

Secret Hiker,

Once you have your style figured out, you just put <link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css" type="text/css">.

Notice that in you example, your URL would not have worked since you had a directory specified as styles.css, and you can't name a directory with a period in the middle of the name.

But the concept is correct. Once you have the style sheet linked in each page, you can change the font style on every page or the back ground on every page, all by making a single change in your linked style sheet.

I generally set the overall style from a linked CSS page, and put styles for a specific page in the head of the page itself. I did try setting a separate style sheet for the individual page, but that didn't work for me.

I use a single external stylesheet for a general overall look for the site and use inline styles to override the "general look" for individual pages that have a different look.

Could some of you experts explain how to create a 3 column page using css and show code examples. Nothing I have seen explains this. If possible could you have a button link to another page in the same window changing only the middle column.

Thanks if you can help.