How to go about it... CSS, Templates, Oh my!

Great Elephant · #1 (**permalink**) 05-09-2008, 10:23 AM

I made sure I read all the threads before I wrote this question because I didn’t want to repeat any previous questions. I’m in the beginning phase of my website design and I’ve just completed my HTML refresher at w3schools.com. The one thing that I didn’t know about was CSS. When I was in school we kinda just assumed that anything we didn’t understand would be taken care of by the program like Dreamweaver for example. (We were lazy kids

) That was a long time ago when I wasn’t really serious about understanding the fine details that go into web design.

I’m well aware of the fact that this stuff isn’t learned overnight and I’ve already picked up some books to help with me get familiarized with Dreamweaver “again” and I plan on going back to w3schools.com to continue the process of understanding CSS BUT I have a question.

From what I read in previous threads, a lot of people

1. Learned CSS from a template (and practice)
2. Just use templates without learning CSS
3. Rely on WYSIWYG
4. Just stick to HTML
5. Anything else i haven't mentioned

My question is basically (I’m babbling again)

… well I guess it’s more of a scenario. I’d like to learn CSS because I feel that is going to be very useful. But does learning CSS from a template accelerate the learning process? I’m thinking that whenever I do get around to starting that I might look for a CSS based template and then learn from it and either create my own website from scratch or continue using the template if I learn how to manipulate it

I’m very interested in what you guys think

James · #2 (**permalink**) 05-10-2008, 01:09 AM

It depends more on how you learn than what we recommend.

Lisa usually recommends learning from templates. That's a good way to learn and a similar approach is to look at a lot of them on line. I often right click and choose "view source" on a site, then look for the name of their css stylesheet and enter it into my browser. You can see just how they do their work if they use mostly html and css. Of course, if they use a lot of php or something you can't get as much.

Personally, I would prefer at least starting with the w3schools css tutor, or the htmldog tutor on css to get a more organized presentation. Going step by step through the basic process in an orderly way is much easier for me. Also, these two sites tell you how to do it right and the problem with templates and sites is that most of them are not compliant with web standards and you can learn a lot of stuff that is really not good to be doing.

Great Elephant · #3 (**permalink**) 05-10-2008, 02:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by James

It depends more on how you learn than what we recommend.

Lisa usually recommends learning from templates. That's a good way to learn and a similar approach is to look at a lot of them on line. I often right click and choose "view source" on a site, then look for the name of their css stylesheet and enter it into my browser. You can see just how they do their work if they use mostly html and css. Of course, if they use a lot of php or something you can't get as much.

Personally, I would prefer at least starting with the w3schools css tutor, or the htmldog tutor on css to get a more organized presentation. Going step by step through the basic process in an orderly way is much easier for me. Also, these two sites tell you how to do it right and the problem with templates and sites is that most of them are not compliant with web standards and you can learn a lot of stuff that is really not good to be doing.

Thanks,

Totally agree with you in the sense thats its pretty much up to me and to tell you the truth my mind was pretty much made up I just like to think out loud. I find sometimes people have better solutions or ideas that help in the process

lisa · #4 (**permalink**) 05-11-2008, 03:16 PM

w3schools is good because you learn the fundamentals of how CSS works and it can help with troubleshooting, etc. Even though I suggest using templates I can see why there are advantages to going to official sites like w3schools.

I'm just not a "go-by-the-manual" kinda gal so I usually take the template approach and poke around until I figure things out. That's how I learned HTML. It just really depends on how you learn best. There are pros and cons to both approaches.