You probably already know that every web page is generated based on HTML code. If you had reputable sources, you also know that HTML is not for graphical design. If you want to style your page graphically, you need to do so using CSS.
So how does this work? You need to write lines of code to create a design? Isn?t web design a drawing activity? Well, it can be so, at least for the beginning. Most designers use software like Photoshop to draw the entire page. It?s pretty easy to do, given that you have artistic skills. But web pages are not like brochures. First, they can be seen on different monitor resolutions. Second, they usually contain dynamic content. You may draw a 200 by 400 pixels box for the latest news section, but depending on the news themselves, the box height may change. That?s why representing the web page as an image is not enough.
CSS comes to the rescue. Cascading Style Sheets is a language that allows you to specify how your page looks. Some things that CSS enables you to do are: decide the color and weight of the text, decide the width, height, padding, margins and borders of your boxes, arrange you boxes in the page and many, many more.
Design is something that changes a lot when working for clients. After you finish the whole website, they may ask you to modify the font for all the titles, or change the color of all links. While this may sound tedious and error-prone (going through all the possible pages and making the changes), CSS allows you to specify the style of the title in a single place, so you need to make only one change. Most software for web design, Photoshop included, have the option to generate the CSS based on your graphic design. Yet, this generated CSS is of very poor quality, which is understandable, as an n algorithm can do correct naming and splitting for you. No designer/developer should use generated CSS, as it makes ulterior modifications a nightmare.
If you?re planning to become a web designer, CSS is a must have. While it is true that CSS is pretty far from art, it?s a necessary step in creating a web page. You may find a few clients that accept designs in Photoshop format, but almost everyone will look for the whole thing, so you?ll be losing money and leads by not knowing CSS. If you?re going the web developer way you still need to know CSS. First, you may be asked to implement the html/CSS slicing (converting a graphical concept into a web page). Second, there is no clear line between slicing and programming, so even if you get most of the page created by someone else, you will still need to tweak.If this article convinced you to start learning CSS, has an easy-to-follow tutorial for beginners.
|