tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91986712010-04-25T23:15:41.484-04:00The Philadelphia Area Computer Society CSS Workshop started with the basics of cascading style sheets and will continue as long as there is interest and we have something new to learn.John Daveynoreply@blogger.comBlogger170125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-70205362923097724172010-04-25T23:15:00.001-04:002010-04-25T23:15:41.519-04:00

This blog is now located at http://pacs-css.blogspot.com/. You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here. For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to http://pacs-css.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default.

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-56532957067300616182010-04-18T11:21:00.004-04:002010-04-18T12:02:22.392-04:00

At our April meeting, we looked at websites relating to some of the topics we have been covering recently, and then we followed up on items from last month's meeting.We started with a site called Pagetest that lets you measure the download speed of a webpage. The site give feedback on where a page slows down when it is loading. This information might be relevant to a page's Google ranking, see

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-77531420713117401852010-04-15T22:29:00.001-04:002010-04-15T22:31:14.792-04:00

The PACS CSS Workshop meets this Saturday, April 17, from 8 to 9 am in the Alps Room of the Giant Supermarket at 315 York Road, Willow Grove, PA. We have a number of follow up items to topics we discussed last week, including navigation, styling links, and CSS3, plus a new way to test your page's performance. In addition to the usual lineup of sessions, this meeting also features the debut of

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-90591439211981795902010-03-21T11:42:00.002-04:002010-03-21T11:53:43.814-04:00

At the March meeting, we followed up on our topic from February, showing how to clickable image using CSS and not putting the image into the HTML. We then took a second image and used it as the hover background image.We spent the second half of the meeting looking at some of the new features that will be part of CSS3. The sites we looked at are listed here:Basic CSS3 Techniques That You Should

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-52426149805243566202010-03-19T09:09:00.000-04:002010-03-19T09:10:29.540-04:00

The next meeting of the PACS CSS Workshop will be this Saturday, March 20, at the usual 9 - 10 am hour.We have two things I hope to cover this month. One is to look at background images using the example from last month and expanding on it, including using different images for link and rollover. That last topic will lead toward a discussion of the CSS sprite.But we might not get to sprites

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-52100247352337778272010-02-20T22:12:00.002-05:002010-02-20T22:26:31.092-05:00

At recent meetings, we have looked at styling links and positioning elements with CSS. This month, we took those styles and added background images to create a clickable image that was entirely styled with CSS.The technique was based on the article Clickable Background Images Via CSS. We started by reviewing the HTML technique for making an image clickable, and we talked about the deficiencies of

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-46119315223134204062010-02-15T22:28:00.000-05:002010-02-15T22:29:36.503-05:00

The next meeting of the PACS CSS Workshop will be this Saturday, February 20, at the usual 9 - 10 am hour.We have been working on navigation menus, starting with styling links, and then going to positioning. This month, we will tie up some loose ends from last month. Then we will put the elements together to make a link with a graphic background, using as an example something I recently did for a

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-12486440003286846822010-01-16T21:36:00.002-05:002010-01-16T21:49:18.121-05:00

We started out January meeting with a look at some statistics from some local government webmasters showing the browsers used to access their sites. Over the last year, generally Firefox has increased in use, IE6 is still a major player, and Chrome has made progress.We then looked at an article on The Case Against Vertical Navigation from Smashing Magazine. The article was nicely related to the

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-3890566947474172292010-01-11T20:24:00.001-05:002010-01-11T20:25:22.999-05:00

The next session of the PACS CSS Workshop will be this Saturday, January 16, at the usual 9-10 am hour.At our November meeting, before the snows, we looked at absolute and relative positioning, and then put them together to see how they worked with each other. At this month's session, we will finish the positioning tutorial that we have been working on, and then move to another tutorial on

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-4821687386907642702009-12-20T19:40:00.000-05:002009-12-20T19:41:24.715-05:00

We were snowed out this month, so in January, we will continue with positioning and navigation. See you then.

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-55122924305123152252009-12-17T21:39:00.000-05:002009-12-17T21:40:11.033-05:00

The next session of the PACS CSS Workshop will be this Saturday at the usual 9-10 am hour.Last month, we looked at absolute and relative positioning, and then put the two together to see how they worked with each other. At this month's session, we will finish the positioning tutorial that we have been working on, and then move to another tutorial on that is more focused on graphics and links. The

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-16173686634714137512009-11-22T12:03:00.004-05:002009-11-22T12:19:57.790-05:00

Our November meeting started with a look at some websites with useful CSS material:10 Tips for Writing Better CSSDifferent Ways To Format CSSPoll: How do you format your CSS?We also looked at two Firefox add-ons that let you see the structure of your page, something that is important in order to understand how positioning will work with your elements:FirebugDOM InspectorWe then continued with the

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-44215541589979583272009-11-19T22:17:00.000-05:002009-11-19T22:18:29.403-05:00

This month we will continue working on positioning. There was something that bugged me as we were doing the example last month, and I will see if we can resolve it. We will then move on with the different ways of using the CSS position:relative properties. I will also have a couple of new websites that have some good ideas on using CSS.

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-49173732773322262422009-10-17T20:30:00.002-04:002009-10-17T20:57:58.730-04:00

We started the October session with a look at some recent articles on web design:Online Web-design tools for the beginner is a collection of web tools to get site going quickly and easily.Guide to CSS Font Stacks is a collection of sites about choosing fonts for websites.CSS Tips and Tricks Collection is just what the name implies -- a set of links to sites with various ideas for website

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-40969455661495875232009-10-15T22:30:00.000-04:002009-10-15T22:31:25.369-04:00

At our next meeting, we will get back on track after a detour into free and open source software last month.We will look at some issues with positioning and background images, and how they work together. Our aim will be to add these styles to what we previously worked on with links, and then make some creative navigation menus.

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-80999815117200980402009-09-20T21:12:00.004-04:002009-09-20T21:28:29.043-04:00

The September meeting of PACS was devoted to free and open source software. With that theme in mind, at the CSS Workshop we looked at HTML editors and related programs that are free and in some cases open source.We started with a current listing of free programs at Best Free WYSIWYG HTML Page Editor Review.We looked at these editors: Amaya, an open source editor from the W3C. Last updated

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-62199424288574183952009-09-10T21:11:00.002-04:002009-09-10T21:20:02.616-04:00

The first meeting of the season for the PACS CSS Workshop will take place on September 19. We will again meet at the 9-10 hour in the Alps Room.This month, the theme of the PACS meeting is Software Freedom Day. The group will be highlighting free and open source software throughout the day. In line with that theme, we will start our session with a look at free HTML editors. These programs let you

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-75765136733061738522009-08-17T20:08:00.002-04:002009-08-17T20:20:20.544-04:00

If you have gone through all the current vampire novels and still need something to read down the shore, try out Mega CSS Resource Roundup. I just found out about this site. This CSS resource roundup looks like a promising collection of tutorials and references. Note that the article is actually a collection of links to other sites, so there is no guarantee of quality control. If you try any of

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-702344987621022402009-07-09T20:39:00.002-04:002009-07-09T20:53:16.230-04:00

The Line 25 website has a nice run-down of articles from various sources entitled 15 Must Read Articles for CSS Beginners. We have covered most of the subjects at our workshop, and others will be covered next season.Don't be fooled by "Beginners" in the title. These articles might be introductory, but some of the subjects are fairly advanced. And you might find that the locations of these

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-65623047207766613102009-07-04T12:56:00.002-04:002009-07-04T13:01:59.364-04:00

ViewLike.us is a new website that lets you check how your website looks in different resolutions. Checking different resolutions is obviously a good idea, but it is not always easy without a bunch of computers. This site might be a solution. It even includes iPhone and Wii Browswer.If you try it, leave a comment here about how the site worked for you.

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-18977366884648704252009-06-21T15:51:00.006-04:002009-06-21T22:13:50.893-04:00

At our June meeting, we discussed the elements of navigation menus and then saw how those elements worked on some sample menus.We first considered the HTML foundation for a menu. Looking at a couple of major sites, we saw that the unordered list seems to be the most accepted format, but a simple sentence list is often used for secondary menus, like footers. Compare the White House site with the

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-37821760468174641972009-06-18T21:34:00.000-04:002009-06-18T21:35:07.503-04:00

The next meeting of the PACS CSS Workshop will be this Saturday, June 20, at 9 to 10 am. At this session, we will bring together the different elements of navigation styling that we have discussed this season. We will sum up where we have been, and then show how to use CSS to make navigation menus that are attractive as well as functional. Along the way, we will raise another of our web design

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-38652616417574327432009-05-21T21:48:00.002-04:002009-05-21T21:57:20.582-04:00

At our May meeting, we returned to the topic of styling navigation menus, a topic we have been covering throughout this year.This month we looked at the CSS properties that I think are keys to creating attractive menus. Those properties includepseudo-selectors, using the LoVeHA order;display:, both block and inline-block, the latter being increasingly supported by browsers;list-style,

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-89218658311684664582009-05-14T21:05:00.001-04:002009-05-14T21:05:59.614-04:00

The next session of the PACS CSS Workshop will be held this Saturday, May 16, at the usual 9 - 10 am hour.We will get back to the subject of navigation menus by looking at the building blocks of good navigation styling and considering some issues that come up in designing a navigation system.We will also cover a couple of other topics of interest related to web design, as well as anything else

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9198671.post-81428084432594507472009-04-30T22:37:00.002-04:002009-04-30T22:41:36.291-04:00

Since we have been talking about CSS navigation this year, I think this article from Six Revisions will be of interest. Many of the examples are from websites where you can find even more ideas. We'll see if we can work through some of these approaches to navigation in coming meetings.

John Daveynoreply@blogger.com0