The url below is a near-replication of my homepage but using cascading style sheets exclusively for all formatting, including complete replacement of all tables used on the original home page ... comments welcome (but still work in progress):

The original (minimal css, mostly html formatting) version:

http://crowthornemusicalplayers.org.uk/

The CSS test version:

http://crowthornemusicalplayers.org.uk/css_test.html

Nice...
Much more compact...

Looks good but did you choose the left alignment?

No ... I haven't figured out how to get the main DIV block centred on the page without centering every item of text inside it. I would much prefer a centred page.

I dont know either to be honest, maybe if you make it all a table and then centralize that.

Ita quite common for sites that are of a fixed width to be left aligned, afterall microsoft use that effectively.

I dont think it makes a difference, your site is very good.

The plan isn't (wasn't?) to replace my current site. This is a style sheets experiment. Apparently future HTML versions won't supporrt formatting within the HTML (including tables) and style sheeets will have to used instead. Also, text only and speaking browsers handle tables sites very badly (I tried one on mine and it was unusable). So this is an experiment to see how much effort it would take (and how feasible it is) to remake my site with proper styles formatting, and then to see if that makes a difference to text only / talking browsers. So far, the results are very positive :-)

I thought I was sad having a day by day counter to my show, but a second by second one.......??!!!

Hey, it was a free script ... it would have been more effort to take the seconds, minutes, hours countdown out plus, it proves that kettles do boil if you watch them

Style sheets every time!

It means not only can you change the look of your site by altering just one file (so if that shade of blue is just off a bit you can change it once instead of on tens of pages) BUT also essential for users with accessibility issues.

Using a style sheet means that users have more control - those with say visual impairments can change the colours, size and fonts to suit their needs.

Once you start to practice with style sheets it does get easier to understand them, and it makes life much quicker - especially to change things sitewide.

Rachel Partridge
Publicity Officer
Derby Theatre in the Round
www.dtir.freeserve.co.uk

Rachel,

Your comments are quite right..................

Keep up the hard work on your site, it looks good!

This is in continuous development so apart from this link the other one to watch is this link.

Centering divs does seem a problem with css. If anyone knows how please tell. However the thing to do to get the enitre content of your page to appear more centrally on the screen is to establish a margin. Have a look at my site to see what I mean:http://CheshamYouthTheatre.tripod.com CSS is pretty easy to use. I taught myself off the free web tutorials at webmonkey and various other places even though I could summarise my knowledge of computers on the back of a postage stamp.

It works if you set the left and right margins to auto ... that centres the box on the page.

Due to a bug within the latest IE browsers you will not see alignment correctly if using the standard methods in CSS.

Use the following example to help centre align a table when using IE 5+ browsers:

You will also need to add the following to your html to get around the bug in this browser. Nest around your table cells:

I think that Kenny is aiming more towards "tableless" design.....

I certainly appreciate where you are coming from though Richard.

My implementation works just fine in IE6, Netscape7, Mozilla1.3, Opera7. I have used auto left/right margins as already discussed. The text-align center unfortunately only centres the text inside the div, not centre the div itself. I want normal left justified paragraph text. Just wanted the box (page) centered.

right. I now understand more about what you are wanting to achieve using CSS. Bascially creating a website that looks like it used tables but is instead using multi-column layouts.

If you are wanting to achieve this with the use of XHTML then http://zvon.org/xxl/CSS2Tutorial/General/h.../htmlIntro.html should give some good information on how to use CSS style sheets.

HTH

Good Links Richard thanks for the advice!

Just glad to help.

Having worked in web design for the past 6 years I like to pass on any tips and links that I know of. I'm currently re-writing a large site of mine from plain html to a combination of CSS and ASP, at the same time as moving hosting servers, so could be busy for some time

Any useful posts are always welcome!!

Please be sure however to explain things so that everyone can benefit from them. This is not aimed at anyone in particular but we must ensure that even the most intermediate of web developers such as myself can benefit from the discussions in here.

I repeat this is not aimed at anyone so nobody take offence.........

Blimey! If you're intermediate I'm a complete moron! Well... actually that's not far from the truth....

Not a JOT of offence taken!

Everyone has room for improvement.

Even the most basic of Web Developers can produce an excellent website. It is if you want to take it that little step further that is harder.

Both Richard and Kenny, and myself to a little extent, have knowledge of other things that help to make your site that little bit more special.

Richard & Kenny both have a lot of experience to share with other members of the forum, they can offer advice and tips that we can all use. I am just trying to make sure that technical information in this and other topics are kept on a level that more people can understand.

I hope that makes sense

Yup, I still have loads to learn but am willing to share what I do know with those who need it so feel free to ask. That's what the forum's here for.