Greetings Jen Simmons survivors! This week we talked about CSS and I learned that, apparently, beauty really is pain; a lot of pain. CSS is the icing on the top of the HTML cake that makes it pretty. Unfortunately, my frosting has absorbed a bunch of cake crumbs and everything is falling to pieces.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets for long) is another one of the “That’s not real coding” coding languages that some people use for web development and other lo-fi shenanigans. Maybe it’s because this is the most recent markdown language we’ve covered but I’m definitely having the hardest time grasping CSS. I suppose it’s probably for the best that the one I’m struggling with the most is the one that’s less foundational. After all, you can only really make use of CSS after you use HTML (at least, based on my limited understanding).
That being said, I think CSS is definitely the most exciting fake coding we’ve done this semester because it will allow me to revert to a childlike state and play around with various fonts and color options. Yellow Comic Sans on a background photo of your cat? Tangerine Papyrus on a forest green backdrop? CSS can make your styling dreams and nightmares a reality.
I’m certainly no expert but I thought it might be nice to go over some tips for writing CSS.
- Leave yourself lots of comments! This will allow you to remember what it was you were trying to type at 3 in the morning.
- Label things consistently and clearly! Anything you do with CSS/HTML has to be precise. A computer can’t really read between the lines for you. You need to tell it exactly what to do which makes clarity incredibly important. Making clear labels is even more important when you collaborate with others because you both need to know what’s going on.
- Split up CSS files if they get too long. I would have never guessed that’s even something you can do, but if you need a lot of CSS, consider dividing it up into smaller files so it’s easier to find what you’re looking for.
Without CSS, every webpage would look like an even uglier version of Wikipedia. So, while I definitely don’t enjoy CSS (at least, not yet though hopefully I will at some point), I’m still very grateful that it exists.
Comments
2 responses to “CSOS”
Hey fellow Jen Simmons survivor! Your intro is great and I love the comment on CSS with ‘beauty is pain.’ I totally get what you mean about CSS being the ‘icing’ and it makes that cake pretty. CSS seems tricky, but I love your enthusiasm for experimenting with styles. Yellow Comic Sans on a cat photo sounds like a bold choice and is definitely a statement! Your tips are very helpful, especially about leaving comments. I’m definitely gonna be making so many notes for myself, especially since I’m not very confident in my coding skills. I think we’ll get the hang of CSS with some practice. It’s nice to have the ability to make our projects visually pop, even if it feels overwhelming right now. I am definitely grateful CSS exists as well.
The CSS tutorials were not nearly as traumatic as the HTML ones. I felt like my brain was going to explode by the end of Jen Simmons tutorial, but I guess that means I learned something! Writing CSS has been way more fun than I thought it would. It’s been very rewarding! It almost feels like I’m on a gameshow waiting to see if I got the reward every time I refresh my browser to see if the CSS I wrote worked. I know both you and Dils recommended leaving comments, but that just overwhelms me. Having too much on the page leaves me a bit disoriented. I try to make my ‘code’ very straight forward and organized (at least organized to me) so that there are no questions as to what is what. This may change as I get deeper into the process, but we’ll see. Great post and good luck!