Posted by Andy Dingley on 07/03/07 00:27

On Mon, 02 Jul 2007 15:24:13 -0700, oldbones55@hotmail.com wrote:

>I'm in the beginning stages of learning CSS but I'm just not seeing
>why I would use this. So far everything I've learned I can simply do
>in HTML.

Start to draw the distinction between "HTML 3.2" (10 years out of date)
and "HTML 4.01 Strict" (what you should be using).

In HTML 3.2 you can do "everything" (for large values of "everything")
in HTML alone. That's good, because it's all you've got. In HTML 4 you
do the "content" stuff in HTML and the "presentation" stuff in CSS.
This separation conveys many benefits, the biggest being that it's
easier to do two simple things than one big complicated thing in one go.

CSS also has more precise control over many features than you had with
HTML 3.2. You control broadly the same things, plus a few more, and in
finer detail.


> Any good CSS for "dummies" sites?

No. Two good books though: "Head First HTML with CSS" and then follow
it with Lie & Bos "Cascading Style Sheets". I don't know any comparably
good books or websites.

[Back to original message]