Learn the basics of Cascading Style Sheets and Dynamic HTML.

Description:
This course contains three weeks of Cascading Style Sheet lessons and three weeks of Dynamic HTML lessons.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are called simply Style Sheets. CSS, as presented by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), provide a simple means to add style to your web pages, allowing you to control things such as colors, fonts, margins, line-spacing, borders, backgrounds, and so much more. The work of CSS started in 1994 and became a W3C recommendation in December, 1996. However, there was not much browser support for style sheets at that time. But now there is and Style Sheets are fast becoming a popular aid to web site design. Style Sheets represent a major breakthrough for web page designers, expanding their ability to improve the appearance of their pages.

So what can you do with Style Sheets? You can create Dynamic HTML! Dynamic HTML (DHTML) can make your web pages come alive with some very startling effects. So what exactly is DHTML? Well, DHTML is a combination of things that together enable your web page to be dynamic. Dynamic is the ability of a browser to alter a web page's look and style AFTER the page is loaded! To make a web page truly dynamic, DHTML draws on HTML, Cascading Style Sheets and JavaScript.

This course does assume that you have some familiarity with HTML but assumes no prior knowledge of Style Sheets and no prior knowledge of Dynamic HTML. This course does however, assume some familiarity with the basics of JavaScript for weeks 5 and 6. If you require a lesson on JavaScript, let us know when you receive this course and we will be pleased to send you one that covers all the basic needs of JavaScript.

This is a self-directed course on Style Sheets and DHTML by award winning teacher and author John Gilson. The many examples are clear and easy to follow. There are also many questions for you to answer and problems to solve. All questions and problems come complete with answers and solutions so that you get immediate feedback on how you are progressing. By the time you finish this six week course, you will have a firm understanding of Cascading Style Sheets and of DHTML. This is the course to take if you have little or no previous experience in Style Sheets or in Dynamic HTML.

Outcomes:
Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:

* Format text with Style Sheets
* Layout web pages with Style Sheets.
* Create Dynamic HTML web pages.
* Integrate Style Sheets and Dynamic HTML into your web pages.
* Understand the power and functionality of Style Sheets and Dynamic HTML.
* Adapt Dynamic HTML scripts from other sources to spruce up your web site and to engage your visitors.

Assessment:
This is a self-directed course. If you wish to be assessed, there is an assignment that can be completed at the conclusion of the course.

Week 1 :
Understanding Cascading Style Sheets.

The objective of this lesson is to introduce Style Sheets. In this lesson you will study the structure of a style and how to apply styles locally, in an internal style sheet and in an external style sheet.

Week 2 :
Formatting text with Style Sheets.

This lesson will concentrate mainly on defining ALL the text styles that you can use and apply to your web pages which include setting text color, background color, underlining text, defining styles for links, blinking text, choosing a font family, font sizes, italic and bold text, aligning text, grouping font values, using small caps, line heights, and setting white space.

Week 3 :
Layout with Style Sheets

The objective in this lesson is laying out a web page with styles. We cover creating a border, setting margins, alignment of images and text, wrapping text around images, styles for ordered and unordered lists, creating page breaks, setting the width and height of elements, relative and absolute positioning.

Week 4 :
Dynamic HTML - introduction

Ordinary HTML is not dynamic. You can think of ordinary HTML as a "page description language". That is, with ordinary HTML, you specify the position of text, the size of text and the color of text. With Dynamic HTML, you can change text color, or watch the text grow bigger right before your eyes - and this is all done AFTER the web page has been loaded! With DHTML, you can alter the content of a web page on demand without erasing anything else! The objective of this lesson is to introduce you to Dynamic HTML with specific emphases on the layering of objects with DHTML, absolute and relative positioning, and 3D text.

Week 5 :
DHTML animation

In week 5 you learn how to position objects dynamically. Our objective this week is to take this one step further and animate these objects once they have been positioned. This animation will be done through JavaScript.

Week 6 :
Great transitional effects in DHTML.

With DHTML, you can also have your web page open up before a visitor in any number of transitional effects such as wipes and fades. These and many other special effects (such as special effects with images) are only possible when you use Dynamic HTML. The objective of this lesson is to introduce you to some great DHTML transitional effects.

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