February 26, 2006

PACS Web Design Archives

Reed Gustow has just done us all a great service by updating the Web Design SIG's archives page. Over the years, Reed has posted notes and links relating to presentations at the SIG's meetings. This new page indexes those postings, making it easy to retrieve meeting notes from as far back as 2003.

Check it out because the page is not only a useful resource, it is a fun place to browse.

February 14, 2006

February 2006 Meeting Report--Styling Lists

At our February meeting, we just about finished styling lists. We began by reviewing unordered lists and then got into the more interesting subject of ordered lists, where CSS gives the web author options that do not exist in HTML. From there we looked briefly at styling definition lists. We used this samples page from last month--it can be downloaded and edited to test out list properties.

We then worked on the descendant selector, which lets you define the properties of an element when it is the child of another element. In our case, we styled nested lists to make sublists with different bullets and numbers. Of course, we took it to the extreme to create some styling straight out of the 90's dot-com boom--all legitimate, but a little ugly. I uploaded this samples page that has nested unordered and ordered lists. Use it to practice descendant selectors and styling sublists.

The next meeting is March 18. We will tie up a couple of loose ends with lists, and then move on to more creative uses of CSS.

February 04, 2006

February 11 Meeting Announcement

The February meeting of the PACS CSS Workshop will be next Saturday, February 11. This date is a week earlier than usual because of the school schedule.

We will continue on the topic we started last month, styling lists. We did a little work with unordered lists, but this month we will get into more interesting topics, like ordered and nested lists. Along the way, we will consider descendant selectors, so that we can do things like create outlines. It will be a lot of fun, and we can then follow up and get into styling navigation links.

This month we also have the usual lineup of sessions for JavaScript and Flash, along with the scheduled return of the HTML Workshop. Plus, Reed Gustow will be presenting at the afternoon Web Design SIG, talking about how to create a contact form for your site.

See you Saturday.