Hello and welcome to my website. This website is my story and my path to website developement. In it I hope to provide a nice place to experiment and develope my craft. It is also my hope that this can be a user friendly enviroment for other beginning web developers to find helpful resources and have some basic questions answered. For whatever reason you find yourself here remember to have fun with this and happy coding.

This monthes topic is about what I am learning about CSS and just how powerful it is. Truth be told I am currently a novice at this. If you've read the about me then you know that I currently have only 2 semesters under my belt, but you also know that I have a passion for web design done right as well.

There are several resources available on the web that will teach you all about CSS. Unfortunately if you are a beginner there really aren't a lot of websites strictly dedicated to the teaching of basic CSS. What I mean by this is actually explaining the code not just showing you an example. Don't get me wrong, but even W3schools CSS lessons are not very well laid out. If your not sure what CSS is there are some fantastic examples of what CSS is truly capable of at the CSS ZenGarden website.

All of that said, the best resource that I can encourage anyone to get is "Stylin' with CSS" by Charles Wyke Smith. In this book I have found the best resource for CSS that is available. Charles takes great care to go into detail of what CSS is capable of. He does this in a way that really comes across as meeting you where you are at. When he uses code within the book he takes the extra step of putting annotations beside the lines of code to actually explain what that line of code is accoplishing within the whole. As well as this there is a great reference in the back of the book, a cheat sheet if you will.

If that isn't enough you can register at his website and you are able to download, free of charge by the way, what he calls his stylib library. This library is full of redundant code that he has used over and over again and then kept a record of so he doesn't have to keep retyping the same code. As of this typing he also updates the stylib library frequently. On top of all of this good stuff he takes the time to answer your CSS questions. This past spring semster I was having problems with some code and decided to email Charles and to my suprise I recieived an email response within 24 hours. I would also like to note that even though I was a begining coder he was extremely respectful and very down to earth

In conclusion, if you are in need of some real down to earth answers to CSS "Stylin' with CSS" is the way to go. From cover to cover there is not a better resource available