Cascading Style Sheets

Few of us understand CSS on a truly deep level. Even those of us who think we get it still have our training wheels on.

Jeffrey Zeldman, 16 Feb 2001

Rob’s CSS pages:

CSS home page

CSS buttons

This is just a list of CSS resources on the Web. I think they’re helpful.

Need an introduction? The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommends Dave Raggett’s introductory article.

HTMLhelp.com has a very useful Guide to Cascading Style Sheets that you can also download to your local computer. This guide only covers CSS-1 (font and text styling, backgrounds, display, etc.), not the more difficult positioning properties of CSS-2. For that reason, it may be an easy place to get started.

One of the best all-around CSS resources is the (recently redesigned) House of Style, developed by Westciv Software. It has a complete guide, articles, and free courses.

WebsiteTips.com also has an extensive annotated resource for CSS - W3C info, tutorials, reference charts, bugs and workarounds, validators, CSS editors, etc., etc.

The Index DOT CSS guide has all the CSS properties listed in (possibly confusing) detail. I use this site frequently.

You might like the CSS Pointers Group, with links, articles, and an easy-to-remember URI: http://css.nu. It includes frequently asked questions about CSS. Even more questions are located at allmyfaqs.com.

Once you have your styled site online, feed its URL to the official W3C CSS validator. The HTML Help site offers other CSS checkers as well.

Eric Meyer’s amazingly useful browser compatibility charts can show you why your stylesheet doesn’t work as expected in certain browsers that shall remain netscape nameless.

The CSS Layouts page at glish.com is a great way to start using CSS to build complex layouts without the poor, overworked <TABLE> tag. (Be forewarned: The layouts look great on screen, but they don’t necessarily print well. You can get around this with the CSS @print media selector.)

As always, the most authoritative resource is the W3C Style website, where you can find specifications for CSS-1 and CSS-2.

Finally, if you can’t get enough CSS, you might want to examine the W3C Candidate Recommendations for CSS-3 Selectors, CSS for mobile devices, and other pieces of a future CSS-3 recommendation. You can also read the history of CSS development.