CSS Basic Questions for beginner

[asiatic]

i am learning css, i like the layout of so many web sites but most of them have styled their css in an external style sheet. is it possible to know/read the css code of an external style sheet of any web page?:confused:

i have gone thru several css web tutorials but i found none of them showing entire web page layouts with css menu & tables (not html).i have tried div tags but is it possible for tables inside tables :mad:

for data work in tables should i stick to good old html?:rolleyes:

any example website or tutorials based on my above query will be very helpful - thanking you in anticipation:)

[djr33]

Those are very general questions, so here are some general ways to get started:

1. You can always view the css of a page: it'll be in view> source, either as CSS code inside the html file or as an external .css stylesheet-- find the url to the .css file somewhere in the head section and you can view it there.

2. CSS works WITH html. You can't make anything with CSS alone. CSS can work with divs, tables and basically every other tag that exists.
For 'tabular' data (like a chart), it's good to use tables-- that's the point. For everything else, you can use lots of divs within each other, with complex css properties, that ends up layering them in the right way.

3. The basic idea of CSS is that you do not include any style/formatting in your html. Your html is only the data and structure (divs, paragraphs, etc). Then the CSS formats it to look nice. To get an idea of this, try looking at a very complex page (for example, I think of facebook) WITHOUT the css. (One way is to save the html and NOT save the css. Then just open that file in your browser.)
Very often, then, you will find that the page is just a 'list' of elements without any normal formatting at all. It won't have 'tables' or 'layers' or even many colors. It will be ONLY the content and a basic structure ordering it.
After that, the CSS does the work to control the position, color, size, etc.


So the short answer is that you should learn to use CSS and HTML together as a pair that can't be separated: CSS needs HTML and HTML needs CSS. (Technically you never need to use CSS, but it is much cleaner and gives you more options than just HTML. It also makes pages much easier to update.)