Call yourself a Web Designer? Then you must learn CSS!

By Alex White

You know, there are loads of WYSIWYG web design programs out there that claim to turn you into a “pro”. Nothing could be further than the truth. What these programs do is give you a bunch of templates and all you do is replace the images and text. You wanna call yourself a designer with this? I should hope not.

The joy of origination

Sometimes the easy option turns out to be the harder option in the long run. One can go on using the same old tired templates that other ignorant folk use. Wouldn’t it be great if you can sketch out a web page layout on paper and then it automatically generates your web site? You know it would!

This is where it is crucial to know how to use CSS. It has been said that CSS is harder to get your head around than using tables for layout, but I think that it is the other way around. For me, and I’m sure you’ll find it for yourself, CSS layouts are so much easier to once you know how. Really? Okay, with tables I personally found that it was difficult to get precise measurements – regardless of setting table widths and so on. I’d check my tables in different browsers only to see it displayed wrong in either Internet Explorer or Firefox. Bah! CSS is not without problems, but I have found that the problems can be easier to identify and fix. One can do much more in CSS than in tables.

So I took Futuretrend‘s Dreamweaver intro course and Dreamweaver Next Step course. This certainly opened up my mind to the power of CSS based design. CSS design is so lean and clean. CSS based websites are more favoured by search engines as such,they are much more accessible than table based sites.

Challenge

Why not take the CSS challenge yourself? Why not endeavour to make your site accessible to the max? Trust me, learning CSS is one of the best things I’ve done towards my career as a Web Designer. Now when I look at web design magazines I’m able to understand the tutorials; whereas before I’d struggle to understand them.

You still want to hang on to your substandard WYSIWYG web design program? That’s right, throw it in the trash! Get your pencil and sketch pad out, draw a unique layout for your site then realize it in CSS and Dreamweaver.

 

 

3 thoughts on “Call yourself a Web Designer? Then you must learn CSS!

  1. Giovanni

    I seriously knew about virtually all of this, but however, I still considered it had been valuable. Fine job!

    Reply
  2. Jimmy

    Can anyone help me palese, i have built a html form with in a page, and have used this PHP that this guy supplied, i have gone through changed the email etc uploaded both to host and still nothing works, is there some sort of other connection i have to make between the PHP page and the form? Please help

    Reply

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