So my daughter started school last week. No, seriously. At 2 1/2 years of age, my daughter is learning from a pre-school kit my wife purchased a little while back. For 90 minutes a day, my wife if teaching my daughter colors, shapes, and numbers. I watched them for a few minutes the other day, and it was extremely funny, cute, and exhilarating to watch – one of those moments where you’re a really proud dad.
My daughter loves to learn what my wife is teaching her. She soaks up every little bit. She loves learning new colors, playing matching games with them, and making crafts with materials of those colors. School and I didn’t get along nearly as much. Now don’t get me wrong, I could learn how to play a video game like it was nobody’s business; but don’t get me started on math. School was a necessary evil to me. And unfortunately, for so many people involved in the web, CSS (or Cascading-Style-Sheets) is a necessary evil as well. This attitude leads to unclean, sloppy, and often buggy design.
The thing of it is, learning has to be fun sometimes, especially things that seem boring to you. So I’ve compiled a few sites aimed to help designers, developers, and DIYers be able to grasp better CSS-driven web design that will ultimately produce better quality sites on the Web. Here you go, and enjoy!
Nettuts+ – As far as general web development online tutorials go, Nettuts+ is boss. The tutorials are clean, crisp and offer a variety of solutions to both the advanced developer and the amateur who’s trying to develop their personal blog. Though it covers a lot of things outside of CSS, its no slouch in the category. It’s filled to the brim with ooey-gooey CSS goodness.
W3Schools - W3Schools isn’t nearly as closed as Nettuts+, which allows it to be a much more robust resource. Granted, the articles and how-to’s may not all be high quality, but the good far outweighs the not-as-good. The Try It Yourself Examples section is a great way for testing what you’re trying to accomplish before actually butchering your site with it.
CSSPlay – This site is a little more niche and is dedicated to pure CSS instruction. What’s more it carries a lot of focus for certain areas that commonly hurt in the CSS department, such as menus and modules. There’s a lot here for beginners, but this is a great go-to for developers who need some on-the-spot inspiration or help for CSS.
