CSS From Scratch

So I’ve been working on a couple things on the site recently — most importantly an attempt to move all my /study and /writing content to a static format, i.e. not within my blog.

There are many reasons for this, but the overall picture is that I want full, direct control over the content so that I can use the displaying of the information as a learning tool.

The largest manifestation of this is my attempt to learn (and truly understand) XHTML and CSS. I got into this briefly a while back but never did a big project with it in order to pound the information in. This will be that project.

I’m doing two things really: 1) I’m moving my “static” content over to a static directory structure, i.e. it’s not going to be in my Wordpress database anymore getting rendered via PHP. 2) I’m creating my own custom CSS stylesheet, from the ground up, that’s going to incorporate what I’ve learned about the XHTML and CSS (mostly CSS).

This has been extremely pleasurable thus far, and I think I’m starting to finally “get it”. Of course once I’m finished I’m going to write a /study article on CSS. Like most of these pieces it’s going to be a reference for myself more than anything. But as usual I’ll be writing it in hopes that it helps others as well.

The next project involving XHTML and CSS is going to be rather major: I’m going to re-code my blog theme. Using the stylesheet that I’ll have completed for my static content, I’m going to remove all the tables from it and just generally tweak it to my liking. The goal here is to touch and truly understand every facet of the theme (and CSS as a result). I’m enthused about it.

So for my XHTML and CSS editor I’m using TextWrangler, by BareBones Software. It’s the free version of BBEdit — their flagship product. I’m quite pleased with it. Anyone doing this kind of stuff should give it a go.

Anyway, if you guys have any comments on what I’m doing as things progress, do let me know. I’m still very much in the learning phase of things; any input would be appreciated.