web development using CSS

I contributed several articles on CSS (Cascading Stylesheets), one of the languages used to write Web pages, to CSS Discuss. CSS Discuss (css-d) was a discussion and help forum for Web developers, consisting of a mailing list and associated Wiki.

The css-d Wiki has now been removed. Most of my css-d articles were written around 2004. There have been huge changes in the browser industry since then and browsers are far better in their support for CSS. CSS itself has advanced a great deal in its capabilities.

I have resurrected some of the pages I contributed to from The Wayback Machine (an Internet archive). I have provided links to them as PDFs below. Please note that others may have amended my original articles since I wrote them. Many of these articles have selected links to further advice. Although CSS has greatly evolved, much of the generic advice remains valid.

• Media Stylesheets – how to write stylesheets for various media including print; Media Types and CSS3 Media Queries. Also Media Defaults.
  • Print Stylesheets – printing Web documents using CSS; stationery sizes; page breaks
  • Handheld Stylesheets – how to design stylesheets for handheld devices
  • Projection Stylesheets – how to design stylesheets for projection devices
  • Speech Stylesheets – how to design stylesheets for voice browsers. I have provided a demonstration of voice browsing.
  • User Stylesheets - User stylesheets are stylesheets which a user can add to author styles to control what they see. Sadly, browser support for user stylesheets is poor to non-existent.
  • Opera User Stylesheets - Opera has very configurable options for User Stylesheets.
• Fluid Design – how to make Web pages fit a wide range of screen sizes; Media Types and CSS3 Media Queries. This site is itself an example – see fluid design using Media Queries.
• Diagnostic CSS – using CSS as a testing/diagnostic tool
• Progressive Enhancement using CSS – exploiting the advanced CSS support of modern browsers
• Which Browsers – deciding which browsers to use for development and testing
• Browser Stats – a guide to deciding which browsers to support
• Printing Page Headers and Footers
• Printing Tables – table headers and footers; controlling page breaks