CSS isn’t hard, it just has a learning curve at ninety degrees to that of HTML – at least if you learnt HTML back in the days when padding was achieved with nested table cells and spacer gifs and the mighty font tag ruled over all. Thank goodness then for CSS crib sheets – collections of the kind of CSS hints that are simple once you know them but can cause you hours of pain otherwise.
Dave Shea’s Crib Sheet provides a great collection of CSS hints, and has even been translated in to 3 other languages. Andy Budd has been taking a different approach, posting tips one at a time with in depth explanations. If you’ve ever had problems with gaps between vertical nav elements in IE5, clearing floats (also covered by Eric Meyer) or centering a div, Andy’s your man.
And since we’re on the subject of CSS tips, this seems as good a place as any to insert a plug for the CSS-Discuss Wiki. I set the Wiki up back in October 2002 and pretty much left it to do its own thing. The wiki has been steadily growing ever since thanks to the efforts of a large and talented group of contributors and is now home to a huge variety of excellent information. My favourite page is probably this invaluable summary of three column layout techniques, but you can easily spend hours browsing around the other content. Best of all, if there’s anything you think is missing you can add it straight in there yourself.
Simon Willison
