Stephanie Leary

Writer and WordPress consultant

  • Books
    • Content Strategy for WordPress (2015)
    • WordPress for Web Developers (2013)
    • Beginning WordPress 3 (2010)
  • Blog
    • Fascism Watch (2016-17)
    • Content Modeling for WordPress series
    • WordPress Hidden Gems series
  • Work
    • Portfolio
    • Services
    • WordPress Plugins
    • WordPress Themes
    • Presentations and Interviews
    • on GitHub →
  • About
    • Press Kit
  • Contact
    • Mailing List

Going from HTML to CSS

June 10, 2003 Stephanie Leary

Via Simon Willison, I found what’s probably a Godsend for people just learning CSS: how to duplicate old-school visual effects without using those attributes (align, height, width, marginheight, center) that you aren’t supposed to use anymore.

Someday (this week?) I’m going to post here a revised list of CSS tutorial sites. Visiting them in order will give you a much better start with CSS than I had.

I was introduced through Teach Yourself HTML 4 in Ten Minutes, which was not bad for upgrading my knowledge from HTML 3.2, but was absolutely bass-ackwards in its explanation of CSS. For example, it pretty much fails to mention that you can style all the text on your page with something like this:

p { color: #f00; }

… and instead talks about classes.

.redparagraph { color: #f00; }

Want to know why so many of us started out using classes for everything under the sun? I imagine I’m not the only one who found this book in the remainder bin for $4 and chose it over the larger, more comprehensive $30 web manuals.

Web Design

Fascism Watch

The Fascism Watch is a daily(ish) news roundup. View all the previous Fascism Watch posts »

Latest WordPress Book

Content Strategy for WordPress

A short book for content strategists and managers on implementing a complete content strategy in WordPress: evaluation, analysis, content modeling, editing and workflows, and long-term planning and maintenance.

Read the sample chapter

Kindle Nook iBooks Kobo Smashwords

WordPress for Web Developers

WordPress for Web Developers (9781430258667)

This is a book for professional web designers and developers who already know HTML and CSS, and want to learn to build sites with WordPress. The book begins with a detailed tour of the administration screens and settings, then digs into server-side topics like performance and security. The second half of the book is devoted to development: learning to build WordPress themes and plugins.

This is the second, much-revised and updated edition of Beginning WordPress 3, with a more accurate title. Everything’s been updated for WordPress 3.6.

WordPress for Web Developers is out now. See what's inside...

The best WordPress features you’ve never noticed

  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Screen Options
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Bulk Edit
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Private Status
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Dashboard Feed Readers
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Options.php

Content Modeling for WordPress series

  • Content modeling for WordPress, part 1: analyze content
  • Content modeling for WordPress, part 2: functional and organizational requirements
  • Content modeling for WordPress, part 3: a sample content model

This is an excerpt from Content Strategy for WordPress.My latest books are Content Strategy for WordPress (2015) and WordPress for Web Developers (2013). Sign up to be notified when I have a new book for you.

Copyright © 2021 Stephanie Leary