Opera is now free and without banners

Many of us have used the Opera browser because of its innovations and its adherence to standards. If you have avoided Opera because you did not want to pay a registration fee to remove its banner ads, your wait is over. Opera has just released version 8.50 of its browser, and it is now free of banner ads. At Opera.com you can get more information on this browser and download it for your own use.

I find Opera to be a good test platform to see if my code complies with W3C standards. And you might find that Opera is fast and convenient enough to make it your regular browser.

September 17 Meeting Announcement

The next meeting of the PCS CSS Workshop will be held Saturday, September 17th, at the same time and place as last year, 9-10 am in Room 713.

This month, I want to start by going over a couple of items that I posted on the website over the Summer and then quickly review the subjects we covered last year. I then want to continue with styling boxes. We were in the middle of that subject when we ended in June. I want to cover inline boxes so that we get a complete overview of the subject.

After that, we will move on to fonts, and I am thinking that we should be able to finish that topic at this meeting.

The PACS schedule this year is the most exciting ever for members interested in web design. Right after our workshop, at 10-11, Mike Ehling will conduct the Macromedia Flash Workshop, something we have wanted to do for a long time. Then at 11-12, Frank Stepanski will be running the JavaScript Workshop, another great addition to our lineup. To top off the day, the Web Design SIG at 1-2 starts the year featuring Nick Robalik, founder and President of Digital.Soapbox, speaking on avoiding design errors.

See you Saturday.

BW 50: Carefully Clearing Yahoo's Clutter

Check this article from Business Week called BW 50: Carefully Clearing Yahoo's Clutter. It is an interesting look at web design and useability issues. Be sure to check the interactive graphic that has comments on specific aspects of Yahoo's site.

An Event Apart in Philadelphia

Two of the leading thinkers in web design, Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman, will be in Philadelphia in December for what they call An Event Apart. You might recognize the play on A List Apart, one of the leading sites for cutting edge web design concepts.

This event might be priced out of the range of a lot of us, but if anyone wants a view of the cutting edge, these people will give it to you.

SiteProNews: The 10 Best Resources for CSS

This article at Site Pro News on The 10 Best Resources for CSS is a nice list of quality websites for CSS information. The listing is well annotated, so you can get an idea of which sites might be most useful to you. But note also the comments on how to develop CSS skills. The author lays out a practical game plan for learning.

Review of The Zen of CSS Design

Reed just posted my review of a new book, The Zen of CSS Design, at the PACS Web Design Book Reviews page. Many of you might remember that we have looked at the css Zen Garden website in the course of our workshop, and a link to it is on our Resources page. This book compiles some relatively advanced lessons to be learned from the designs submitted to the site.

Not every reviewer that I read on the Amazon site was as enthusiastic, but most gave the book 4 or 5 stars. I hope that we can work in some of this material next year when we get into images and positioning. It is not a beginner's book, but we won't be beginners for long.

June Meeting Notes: Styling Boxes

At our June meeting, we went continued our discussion on the box model by looking at ways to style boxes. At our May meeting, we had talked about height and width. We reviewed that topic and then went through borders, margins, and padding.

I used a couple of sample pages to illustrate the options, and I have uploaded them here with comments in the source. The first page is a sample of the values for the border property. Download this file and play with the source. You will see comments that will help you. Open the file in different browsers to see how they render borders.

The second page is an illustration of using margins or padding. The set off paragaphs look the same until you go to the source and add background color to the content.

At our next meeting, we will finish on this topic by running through the styling of inline elements.

June 11 Meeting Announcement

The June PACS meeting will be the second Saturday of the month, the 11th, instead of the third Saturday. This change is due to the school's schedule. The CSS Workshop will meet at the usual 9-10 hour.

This month we will work on styling boxes using the border, padding, and margin properties. As this session will be the last for the year, I hope to hit all those topics, so please be on time.

The Web Design SIG will be meeting once during the summer. If you have any questions after the June meeting, we may have a chance to do some CSS Q&A at that summer session.

We are working on plans for next year, and you can expect some announcements this Saturday. I will keep the CSS Workshop going next year if there is interest, so let me know what you think.

The Early Bird Catches the CSS: Planning Structural HTML

I came across another interesting article called Wise-Women: Tutorial: The Early Bird Catches the CSS: Planning Structural HTML. The writer is a teacher and web designer. She describes another take on the process of moving from HTML-only design to HTML as the foundation for a CSS-styled web page. But the process described is also generally applicable to tagging a page so that it is ready to be styled.

May Notes: The Box Model

At the May meeting, we reviewed the parent-child structure of an HTML document and then continued into a discussion of the box model. I used this sample document to begin illustrating the different properties and values that can be applied to the box created by a block element.
We will continue showing how to style a box at the next meeting. The subject of positioning boxes on a web page is one that we will hold until later in our workshop.