10 Resources for When You Need Help with CSS
Published December 11th, 2008 in CSSFrom time-to-time there will probably be situations where you could use some help or guidance with CSS during your web design and development work. While there are plenty of great CSS resources available, I would like to point out 10 that can be very helpful resources in these situations.
Stack Overflow
Stack Overflow is sort of a combination of social media and a forum. It is a niche specific site focused on programming and development (CSS is just one of the topics being discussed). The purpose of Stack Overflow is to ask and provide answers to questions for programmers. Anyone can post a question (you don’t even have to create an account) and then other members will be able to provide answers to your questions. Other users can then vote up or down on the various answers so it’s easy for everyone to identify the best ones.
CSS-Discuss.org
CSS-Discuss is a large and very active mailing list for CSS-related issues. You can either join the list to post and answer questions, you can browse through the archives in search of a particular issue, or you can browse through the wiki and get involved there if you have something to contribute.
CSS Cheat Sheet
The CSS Cheat Sheet is a great reference to have on hand in anticipation of those times when a little extra help might be needed. It is a one-page PDF document that includes all selectors and properties.
CSS Shorthand Cheat Sheet
If you’re looking for help in reducing the size and optimizing your css files, the CSS Shorthand Cheat Sheet is an excellent resource. With this one-page PDF document you’ll be able to create more efficient CSS code with shorthand techniques.
Web Developer Add-On
Chris Pedrick’s Web Developer add-on provides a great deal of functionality for your development in general, and CSS is just one of the specific aspects. Using the toolbar, you can do such things as identify all the styles that affect an element, view the CSS source code, see the sizes of block elements, and disable CSS to see how your pages degrade.
Firebug
Firebug is another add-on that puts a great deal of CSS information and resources at your fingertips. With firebug you can edit, debug and monitor CSS, in addition to HTML and JavaScript in any webpage. For anyone working with CSS, Firebug is a great tool to quickly edit and test your code, particularly when you’re experimenting and you need to see how your changes will impact the site.
CSS-Tricks
CSS-Tricks is a popular blog, which many Vandelay Design readers probably subscribe to. At CSS-Tricks Chris Coyier publishes articles and tutorials that cover all kinds of aspects of CSS. The archives contain plenty of posts that will be helpful to anyone looking to learn more about CSS. In addition to Chris’s articles, CSS-Tricks also includes a forum that is pretty active where you can get help.
Using CSS to Do Anything: 50+ Creative Examples and Tutorials
Noupe published a post earlier this year with 50 examples of things you can do with CSS. If you’re looking for some new ideas this is a great resource, and if you’re looking for help on a specific issue, there may be a resource here that is just what you need. Included in the post is help for styling lists, working with forms, footers, image replacement, image sprites, other image techniques, text and link effects, navigation, galleries, drop caps, rounded corners, blockquotes, and more.
CSS Layouts: 40+ Tutorials, Tips, Demos and Best Practices
This is another helpful post from Noupe that focuses on one of the most common problem areas for working with CSS, layouts. If you’re experiencing issues getting a layout to work the way you want it to, most likely there is something here that is just what you need.
Top Reasons Your CSS Columns are Messed Up
Warspire provides help for common issues in dealing with columns and layouts. The post covers the most likely problems and provides the necessary fix, including the code to be used.
Other helpful resources:
33 Responses to “10 Resources for When You Need Help with CSS”
Kind of off-topic, but your blog reminds me of Seinfeld! cool blog!
this is a great post, i’ve waiting to release this after the first theme design, i’m trying to learn how to integrate it on wordpress as i’ve don’t have enough time to tweak the css for that, but now this helps me a lot to work for wordpress. Thank you so much
great list.
As a beginner in webdev, I already knew Firebug but not the others. All this will be invaluable for the redesigning of my blog !
Many thanks and keep up the good work !
This is a great list, thanks for putting it together — your blog is awesome! What about CSS 3? We’re starting to use some of the benefits of CSS 3 on our web app. This site has been really helpful for me (you may want to add it to the list, or possible follow-up post?)…
=> http://css3.com
useful list thanks..
As a beginner in webdev, I already knew Firebug but not the others. All this will be invaluable for the redesigning of my blog !
thanks for this collection.
Thanks for the information… Great list of utility things there…..
If you have a large scale website using separate CSS files per section your site will be easy to maintain, update and edit.
nice list. Firebug is key!
You forgot the most important. The CSS specification (for CSS 2.1 here: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/) and the CSS reference from Sitepoint: http://reference.sitepoint.com/css
Fantastic List. I had never heard of stack overflow but thats a great site for reference.
Lets face it CSS has a small learning curve, getting it to work cross browser is the uphill struggle for web designers. Great resource, I think life will get easier when IE6 is gone
Stackoverflow looks really good, bookmarked it, im aware of the others which are fantastic tools and resources, i recently spent a lot of evenings on css-tricks, still a fair bit to get through on there too
Thanks for putting these together.
Web Developer Add-On is very nice in fact. i wish to use this for verifying my sites.
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