Workshop Survival Kit

Building Beautiful Websites with CSS

Created by Dave Shea, creator of 'CSS Zen Garden'

Photo of Dave Shea This Survival Kit is packed with valuable information from Dave's workshop, "Building Beautiful Websites with CSS".

There are three really valuable sections on this Survival Kit. They include: CSS Examples, Articles and Links, and 'The Rebuild'.

This Survival Kit gathers some of Dave's best code, ideas and examples, into one useful place. It'll give you real-world code examples ranging all the way from Zoom layouts to sliding doors. In the Rebuild section, he also gives you the entire sample code from a well-built CSS site.

The site examples come from a live rebuild that Dave conducted on the day. He takes basic site designs done in Photoshop and shows how to constuct a finished site using CSS.

Workshop Reviews

"A great overview and a fresh perspective on best practice, current trends and the future of CSS" - Jimmy Hemphill, Cardiff University

"Excellent! The final code example was the perfect way to solve problems" - Caroline Umali, QVC

"Extremely useful and inspirational" - Kyriakos Paschalidis, American Express

"Smashing!" - Stuart Johnston, Graphico

"Informal and friendly. Everything you need for a great workshop" - Mark Caudell, Rawnet

What's on the Kit?

CSS Examples - The CSS examples used during the workshop, including layout templates and CSS design techniques in action

CSS Hooks
Selectors
Rounded boxes
Min-height
Overflow auto and height
Alternating table rows
Fixed-width Layout
Liquid Layout
Liquid Layout vs. Large Images
Liquid Layout, with Fixed-width Sidebar
Elastic Layout
Zoom Layout
Resolution-Dependent Layout
Floats
Layout choices
Faux columns
Sliding doors
Sprites and navigation
Two Column Fixed
Two Column Liquid
Three Column

Articles & Links - Links to various articles and resources available on the web, including all external resources mentioned during the workshop.

Basic tools
CSS workflow
CSS design building blocks
Web typography
Real world examples

The Rebuild

The example site built live during the last session of this workshop

More on the author

Dave Shea

Dave Shea is the creator and cultivator of the highly influential web site www.csszengarden.com and co-author of the recently-published Zen of CSS Design (New Riders).

The founder and design lead of Bright Creative in Vancouver, BC, Dave also writes for a large global audience of web designers and developers on his popular weblog, mezzoblue.com. His sites have won multiple awards, including 'Best of Show 2004' at the SXSW (South by Southwest Interactive) conference in Austin, TX.

Dave and his work have been featured in numerous books and magazines, including Wired, Germany’s Page Magazine, and Japan’s “Style Sheet Style Book”, among others. He has spoken internationally at design and technology industry conferences, including Flash in the Can Web Essentials SIGGRAPH SXSW

With almost 8 years of experience working on the web, Dave is a member of the new generation of designers that believe in useful and responsible web design. Access for all users and devices, support for open standards, graceful interoperability between front, and back-end code, and highly detailed visuals are all par for the course.