How important is css?

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scottspfd82

scottspfd82

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I know that sounds like a newbish question, and maybe it is. I've built probably 50+ websites so far and I don't know any css at all.

Usually I'll build sites from a template, sometimes wordpress, and sometimes from scratch in dreamweaver, without style sheets.

Take this landing page for example.

Get Great Ringtones at PlayPhone.com

It looks nice and clean. Besides javascript for the rotating images, what's to stop someone from designing the whole layout in fireworks or photoshop, and just using html to keep it in position and put the form fields in?

I'm not trying to discredit css, just wondering how important of a skill you guys consider it to be from an internet marketing standpoint, and if I should actually sit my lazy ass down for a couple of days to learn it.
 


CSS allows for a smaller page size and better control over how the page looks. The smaller the size of the page the faster it loads. If you're using tables to lay out the page everything in the table has to be loaded in the browser before anything shows up. This adds to the time it takes for a page to load.

You can also create a template with HTML and change the look via CSS. Cutting the time it takes to make pages significantly.

CSS allows a page to degrade gracefully if a browser doesn't support certain aspects of CSS. You can have multiple formats (display, printing, access, etc..)

The page you pointed to as an example isn't really a page I would use as an example as to what CSS can do. For that I would go to css Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS Design. There you can see why CSS should be important and why it can be a very powerfull tool. The site uses one HTML page and the look is changed simply using a style sheet.
 
CSS is the way websites should be designed as per standards. HTML defines the data, CSS defines the view. CSS helps you avoid code repetition.

For example if you wanted the font to be red, without CSS you'd go with something like this

<span font="red" size="3">hello</span>

Now imagine you have 50 or more such tags where you need your text to be red, that's 50x font="red" size="3", now image you wanted to change that? That's a nightmare to maintain. CSS also reduces page size, instead of heavy HTML tag modifications that eat up bytes pretty quick you can just apply the same class everywhere.

Yes, you should learn CSS. It doesn't take two days to get started, it's more of a concept to grasp, the execution itself is easy.
 
if you're going to design a single landing page there's not much difference, you'll probably complete it faster without any CSS, probably just slicing it into photoshop and exporting to HTML will make it
if you're doing a dynamic website without CSS and at a certain time the owner wants to give it a new layout you're pretty much fucked (or better, you'll almost have to recode the whole website)
otherwise if the layout is based on a CSS you'll be able to apply major changes not spending so much time on it
the hard part of CSS is not learning them, but learning the way to use them in order to have all the major browsers render the page in the same way
 
The n0other's 'font' example is the one that does it for me - separating the formatting from the HTML makes these site-wide changes a breeze, and CSS makes this possible.

But, and this is just for the sake of playing devil's advocate you understand, if you can carry this out with software (frontpage or DW? I don't know), then why not just carry on? As long as the page works, you can maintain it quickly and easily, and it's accessible to the (majority) of your viewers, then what's the problem?

I'm not in favour of learning technologies just because they happen to be in the mode, or because the technical community tells me that's what's best for me. Look at AJAX for an example of how fashion can make people fit their task to the tools they want to use.
 
Thanks for the replies.

Well damn. I hated learning html. I guess I'm going to start messing with css. That zen garden site is very impressive, thanks for pointing that out to me.
 
Zenglider has a lot of good points about CSS.

As far as seo goes. Utilizing css strips out a lot of that uneeded code and puts it in an external document, thus giving the spiders a much better chance to read everything on your page.

When you utilize CSS you also use header tags which give weight to rankings via the search engines.

CSS is also a great plateform for web 2.0 sites.

One of the greatest strengths for CSS is being able to change many asthetic features on a site (site wide) via one single document.
 
The big #1 reason CSS was created was to separate content from style. Your HTML should only contain your actual site data (text, etc) and the CSS should contain your style info (place item with name "table of contents" at location x, y, make text called "title" bold and lime green, etc). This allows a large site to easily be redesigned without having to modify all the HTML code (assuming you use only static HTML worst-case) - it will theoretically be possible to only change the single CSS file and change the layout of the entire site instantly if done right - this is the main reason why you see so many "don't use tables you noob" css zealots in design forums.

Another advantage is that when you use a separate css file, it means that users on slower dial-up connections will be able to browse faster. They will only have to download the css file once, and not every time a new page is loaded (if the style elements were embedded in the html, it would be downloaded every time).

CSS has it's downside as well - most browsers use them differently, and many of them (most notably Internet Explorer, even IE7) has a horribly broken CSS parser, which means you will always have to use a lot of hacks and test thorougly with all the different browsers.

Personally, if you are going to have a lot of separate pages on your side, I would use css - it will make maintenance a lot easier. If you are using a template based cms (wordpress, mambo/joomla, etc) it is less important, because your template will only have to be designed once. If you make changes, you will only have to make the change once, whether you use css or not.
 
I recently changed font-types on one of my sites. It took 3 seconds to change the font and 2 seconds to upload the css file. Yeah, you need CSS. You can quickly change colors, sizes, fonts, even bold using a quick css file edit.

If you have DW, you already have all the tools you need. Review the help file regarding external style sheets.
 
CSS is a must but IE sucks and having to remember to hack up your code to get it to work in IE is a pain if you forget about it.
 
A CSS-based site also makes it easy to split-test X designs. For example, you have the same .html landing site and want to know if the ctr is better when the header is yellow vs. maroon. Thats two .css files. Include one or the other, and track the ctr for each.
 
If you have not been using CSS you may want to start, CSS being used for design and laying out of elements has moved from being a "Fad" to being an essential tool. Its no longer the in thing its a must!

But I can see how slicing and importing a page out of photoshop may still be of some use, for landing pages and other small applications.
 
If you know what you're doing, you will never have to write CSS hacks for IE.
Xrproto said:
CSS is a must but IE sucks and having to remember to hack up your code to get it to work in IE is a pain if you forget about it.
Click to expand...
 
DavidR said:
If you know what you're doing, you will never have to write CSS hacks for IE.
Click to expand...

Well I must have no clue because if I write a page exactly like how CSS is intended it wouldn't look right in IE.
 
Saw this in a thread on Earner's Forum: "ever notice ANY links that actually help people are in WF? Everybody here keeps their ideas/secrets or whatever to themselves. Yet for some reason I still read here??"
Click to expand...

Just a quick comment on your signature... Yeah, people don't exactly post their websites and keyword lists, but I find useful info that has made me money here almost everyday.

I know you quoted it from another forum, just saying this site has been awesome for me as someone just starting out, and I'd guess that it helps out plenty of experienced and successful marketers as well.:rasta:
 
scottspfd82 said:
Just a quick comment on your signature... Yeah, people don't exactly post their websites and keyword lists, but I find useful info that has made me money here almost everyday.

I know you quoted it from another forum, just saying this site has been awesome for me as someone just starting out, and I'd guess that it helps out plenty of experienced and successful marketers as well.:rasta:
Click to expand...


What the fuck does that have to do with CSS?

CSS is an art which = freedom.

CSS is an art, if you created it and it works for you and your intended audience, well then fuck everyone else! Doesnt matter if your using hacks or following standards.

CSS has become a required skill, but an art none the less.....
 
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