September 2006 Meeting Notes: Beginning CSS Layout

At our September meeting, we started on using CSS to define the layout of a webpage. We began by reviewing the use of tables to format a page, a technique that is still useful and can be used to structure a page which is then styled with CSS. This kind of hybrid approach has its advantages, as is pointed out in this article at Builder.com.

To move on to pure CSS layout techniques, we started by looking at the HTML align attribute. Align is used with images and tables to move the element to the margin and let subsequent text wrap around it. We then looked at the clear attribute that is used with <BR> to begin text after an aligned item.

CSS introduces the float property that allows any element to be positioned along a margin with text wrapping around the element. And the clear property can be used with any element, not just line break. We did some work with these properties to show how they are used with images instead of using HTML align.

At our next meeting, we will start with a brief review of the box model, the basis for page layout. To see some visual representations of the box model, do a Google image search for "css box model." For a review of the box model, see this Builder.com article. For practice with the different properties of boxes, go to the Index of Sample Pages on this site (link in sidebar), and go down to Basic Boxes and the subsequent samples. Download them and check the comments to try out different properties that affect boxes.

September 16 Meeting Announcement

The first PACS meeting of the season will be next Saturday, September 16. The CSS Workshop will be meeting at the same time and place as last year, Room 713, 9 - 10 am.

We will be start the new season with a whole new topic: Page Layout. The old HTML way of structuring pages was to use (or mis-use) tables to organize elements on the browser page. CSS introduced new ways of structuring pages by separating presentation from structure. The properties that make layouts happen are float and position, and we will work through these topics in the first few meetings of the year.

We will start this month by reviewing the use of tables to structure pages and then see how to do the same thing with CSS. The basis of CSS layout is the box model, and we will review that subject briefly before getting into the float property. If you want to prepare a little bit, I suggest reviewing material on the CSS box model. A good article is Make better Web pages by understanding the CSS box model. You might also want to take a look at the sample pages of our website for the examples of boxes, borders, and margin and padding: Sample Pages for Testing CSS.

This month, PACS has the usual full schedule of web-related sessions on tap, including JavaScript, Flash, and a new workshop on ASP.net. The main Web Design SIG is at 1 pm, and we will be raffling off a copy of the first version of the book Designing with Web Standards, by Jeffrey Zeldman to all members who attend.

Complete details of this month's activities are at the new and improved PACS website. And in fact, the Web Design SIG will be a review of the process of updating that site.

See you Saturday.

New E-mail notification system

Subscribers to this site's e-mail notifications will notice a different type of notification coming into their mail boxes. I had been using a system called Bloglet, but the system has not been maintained, and in fact, notice of the the August 28 update might not have been mailed to you. For details on Bloglet, see the statement on the Bloglet site.

I followed Bloglet's recommendation and converted to Feedblitz. If anyone has trouble withe Feedblitz, let me know. It seems to run well, and it has an easy unsubscribe feature.

Details on Microsoft's CSS changes for IE7

Excuse the interruption to everyone's summer, but I thought folks would find this interesting:

Microsoft is close to finishing version 7 of Internet Explorer, and in fact a release candidate is now available. One of the developments many of us have been following is the CSS support in the new version. For the latest information on this topic, see the blog entry from Microsoft called IEBlog : Details on our CSS changes for IE7.

There is a pretty full list of changes and improvements shown there. And most encouraging is the working relationship between MSFT and the W3C.

Life just keep getting better!

June 2006 Meeting Report -- Navigation Menus

The June meeting of the PACS CSS Workshop was the last until September.

This month, we covered different techniques for using CSS to style navigation menus. We used a number of online resources to demonstrate different techniques for taking a set of links and styling them to display as interesting and functional navigation elements. The sites are below, and I encourage you to try their examples in order to develop your CSS abilities. (These links open into new browser windows.)

3D button effect

Go to number 9 on this list of favorite tricks to see the 3D effect that we demonstrated. The rest of the tricks are worth your time as well.

Menu tutorial

We followed this tutorial from one of our favorite CSS sites to create a vertical menu from a simple line of links and then a horizontal menu from the same CSS by just adding a couple of properties.

Tableless rollover navigation bars

This simple CSS creates a nice horizontal menu bar with a rollover effect.

List-u-Like CSS Generator

Instead of writing your CSS and guessing how it will look, try this generator to just make your property and value selections and then preview the results.

Tabbed menus

This site has a whole collection of different tabbed menus using CSS. The site says they are free. Just look at the source for the techniques used.

June 10 Meeting Announcement

The next meeting of the PACS CSS Workshop will be this coming Saturday, June 10, at the usual 9-10 hour. This month's PACS meeting is on the second Saturday of the month due to the school schedule.

This month we will work some more on styling navigation menus. We started last month, and we will continue in June with vertical menus, then move on to horizontal menus. Depending on time, we may be able to look at some more advanced ideas.

This meeting is the last of the season. We will take the summer off, and if there is interest in continuing this workshop, we will pick up again in September. Please give me some feedback.

This month's PACS meeting is particularly rich with web-related topics. In addition to the usual workshops, the guest speaker at the main meeting will be Eric Pascarello, who will talk about AJAX and the new developments that are changing the way we use the internet. Eric will also be the speaker at the Web Design SIG at 1-2. These are sessions you don't want to miss. More information is available at the PACS website.

Finally, I have blogged an interesting new website called Vitamin (see below).

Hope to see you all Saturday.

Vitamin - A resource for web developers, designers and entrepreneurs

A new online magazine called Vitamin - A resource for web developers, designers and entrepreneurs looks as though it will be an excellent source for information on all things web-related.

The site is the product of Carson Systems, a company I have seen mentioned as sponsoring some high-level web development seminars. The list of advisors to this new site is impressive and includes a lot of people whose names are easily recognizable.

I suggest checking out Vitamin and adding the RSS feed to your reader.

May 2006 Meeting Report--Navigation Menus

This month we finished up with the basics of the display: property. We then reviewed some of the styles that can be used with anchor (link) tags and reminded ourselves that context-sensitive styling will let you define different styles for links on the same page depending on how they are identified in your HTML.

We went on to navigation menus by taking a list of links and styling it to display as a vertical, sidebar-type menu. I used the menu that Reed Gustow drafted for the PACS Web Design SIG site as an example and stripped out the navigation HTML and CSS into a separate file. This file is now in our Samples section. The code is annotated so that you can play with the styles and try out some new ideas. Note that Bob Morgan has beaten everyone to the punch--he used the menu as the basis for a new sidebar for the HTML Workshop page. Sincere flattery.

Our June meeting is the second Saturday, June 10, due to the school calendar. This meeting is the last until September. We will continue with styling menus and get into more complex ideas. See you then.

May 20 Meeting Announcement

The next meeting of the PACS CSS Workshop will be this Saturday, May 20, at the usual 9-10 hour.

At this session, we will begin putting together some of the elements we have covered in the last few months and use those elements to style navigation menus. This topic might take us through the final two sessions this year, and there should be a lot of interesting ideas that you can play with over the summer, at least on cloudy days.

This month's PACS meeting will be end-to-end with presentations of interest to web designers. After CSS, we will have the regular workshops for Javascript and Flash in the morning. The Web Design SIG at 1:00 will be about installing a forum on a website--Reed Gustow will show how he did it for the Web Design SIG site. And in between, Reed will be the presenter at the main PACS meeting at noon discussing free tools for making websites.

There is so much going on, it will be tough to take a break for those cafeteria hot dogs, but that's OK--there will be a lot of good information to take away from the meeting. Check the PACS website for the schedule of events and for more details.

See you Saturday.

stu nicholls | CSS PLaY | experiments with cascading style sheets

This website called stu nicholls | CSS PLaY | experiments with cascading style sheets is getting a lot of attention lately. Rich Sias sent it to me, and Frank Stepanski has noted it.

The site is all about CSS and stretching its limits. Some of the examples are interactive items that one might usually associate with scripting. And it appears so far that the cross browser support is excellent.

I hope to be using some of these examples in upcoming CSS workshops.