Is CSS always like this?

[magnetica]

I find that no matter how much design i put on paper, and mark out things like padding, dimensions, margin, floats or whatever.

When i start on my CSS, it never turns out right (sometimes does but never work in all browsers)


So my Question is, is CSS always like this, am I always going to be kind of piecing together like a jigsaw (or so it seems)???

[alexgeek]

well.. yeah

[1840dsgn]

Well ocne you have experience in creating vrious layouts and experience in "hacking" IE6, (or when lazy people finally decide to upgrade to IE6!), then no not neccesarily.

But to begin with yes, a lot of it is experimentation - but I believe thats the best way to learn so don't be downhearted by that!

[alexgeek]

Sorry for the bluntness.. ha

[magnetica]

Well i'm not new to CSS and have been using it for about 6 months.
I always get problems but i can usually oversome them pretty quickly.
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It just seems that when i finish a style and look back at the code,its like i've just pieced it together, does look very clean if you know what i mean)
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Whats this about IE6 and 3 pixels or something?

[1840dsgn]

Whats this about IE6 and 3 pixels or something?

huh?

its like i've just pieced it together, doesnt look very clean if you know what i mean

Hmmm...my stylesheets sometimes end up a bit messay yea where I've added new styles without organising them. But recently I've made a concious effort to completely comment all my CSS and organise it in a sensible manner - I have also started using maybe 2 or 3 stylesheets - like one for structure, one for styles and one for navigation. This again helps organise it.

If I have a really messy stylesheet for a client I usually spend a while organising it at the end of the project - however as I said I'm continuosly trying to improve how I organise the stylesheet as I work on it.

[moojoo]

Well conditional comments will certainly help ease your pain and keep things structured. Make style sheets specific to IE etc. I personally like to organize my style sheets into sections such as:

Global styles such as typography etc..

Link Styles

Classes

Layout styles

Utility styles

Then I make a sheet just for IE which is a completely separate file containing ONLY those elements which need tweaking in IE so it is usually a very small file.

[1840dsgn]

Yea me too...but I find ti hard to stick to those sections when I start tinkering!

[Lchad]

So my Question is, is CSS always like this, am I always going to be kind of piecing together like a jigsaw (or so it seems)???

Probably because of the fact that different browsers see things or render things differently.

If you can get the largest aspects to do what they are supposed to do ie: header, navigation, content, wraps, footers, usually you only need a few jigsaw puzzle pieces to complete the package.

You sound a little discouraged? Hang in there...

[pa007]

CSS, or rather different browsers' varying support for it, can be a real pain (it is being a real pain for me at the minute - how am I suppose to make it beautiful if IE doesn't want me to!).

Makes me want to cry sometimes but some things are easier than others. It is irritating, you try to make something look great and do it all by the rules (separate style form content, make it accessible, etc.) and all you get is a whole bunch of browser complicating everything.

It'll be ok in the end, I guess. Just keep at it, it takes a bit of work sometimes but so do all of the best things.

Pete.