“So what is it good for”, you say? One of the easiest uses of the float property is to wrap text around a html block-level element.

You can make an image or even a section on your webpage have text wrap around it. I will show you examples of both.
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Books

The first book I ever purchased about CSS was very helpful at explaining why you do certain things with CSS.

CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions
New: USD 23.09

50 New & used from USD 16.00

Another book I have used many times on ways to work around old browsers or weird quirks was helpful in my CSS learning experience.

CSS Hacks and Filters: Making Cascading Stylesheets Work
New: USD 23.99

59 New & used from USD 1.07

The book below is a great reference for terminology and rules. A must for those who don’t remember what a :pseudo-element refers to.

CSS Pocket Reference: Visual Presentation for the Web (Pocket Reference)
New: USD 9.99

41 New & used from USD 4.00

Website Links

One of the best CSS example websites out there.

Basic menu designs done in CSS.

Great list of CSS best practices.

CSS layouts done well for almost any situation.

Random Resources

Grid calculator for your layouts.

What you should know about CSS specificity.

An Em to Px calculator.

Books

Some of the best help books I’ve found are written by, Larry Ullman. Here is one of his best.

PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide (2nd Edition) (Visual QuickPro Guide)
New: USD 26.39

51 New & used from USD 12.50

This was my first PHP book. It’s not the greatest book out there, but if you want full application examples this is the book for you.

Beginning PHP5, Apache, and MySQL Web Development (Programmer to Programmer)
New: USD 26.39

52 New & used from USD 11.32

This next book isn’t a PHP book, but it is a great resource for learning MySQL. MySQL is free database component that works great with PHP.

MySQL Crash Course (Sams Teach Yourself in 10 Minutes)
New: USD 16.49

39 New & used from USD 8.14

Website Links

PHP cookies were something I didn’t learn from a book. Here are a few links that really helped me develop those skills. PHP and cookies. PHP.net documentation.

Here is a great forum, not just for PHP, with lots of questions answered about PHP.

I wanted to learn about REGEXP in PHP, mostly for security verification. Here are two links that helped pave the way. The basics. More advanced methods.

Just a great website with lots of PHP centered tutorials.

PHP.net. Just use it!

Random Resources

Just some good ideas to implement.

Sometimes there are good articles at Digital-Web.com about PHP.

You should at least check out .htaccess.

Great articles at alistapart.com about alot of things, including php.

Books Recommended

Here is the list of books that I researched were really good at the teaching the basics, and had amazing reviews on Amazon.

Build Your Own ASP.NET 2.0 Web Site Using C# & VB
New: USD 29.67

40 New & used from USD 20.00

Programming ASP.NET, 3rd Edition (Programming)
New: USD 32.97

41 New & used from USD 11.19

Online Tutorials

Also, one of the best resources for tutorials is actually asp.net. There are video tutorials from ‘best coding practices’ to ‘integrating AJAX’. You should really check them out if you like video tutorials.

An example would be where you would need to make product links visually say “on sale”. And to do that without having to recreate thousands of images and reupload them.
A preview of what we are trying to achieve.

A few things that I want to keep in mind.

1. Usability for client
2. Reusable code/images
3. Accessibility
4. Valid xhtml

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Articles / Websites to Help you Learn More

• hasLayout (you should learn about this)
  • hasLayout explained
  • Microsoft documentation on hasLayout

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There are plenty of standards that I try to abide by as a web developer.

• CSS - http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
• RSS - http://validator.w3.org/feed/
• XHTML - http://validator.w3.org/
• Link Checker - http://validator.w3.org/checklink/
• Section 508 - http://www.contentquality.com/
• WCAG 1, 2 & 3 - http://www.contentquality.com/

My fear is that this will open a door for the government to have more control over how we can use the internet and what we can use it for. There are already standards in place, like those above, that I (and many other web developers) try and abide by. I hope that Target ignoring these standards won’t create rules that infringe upon my freedom to create websites.
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Most of the time I am using server side PHP code to create or validate part of the form. So I created a few server side functions that I have found help my process along. Two things that I seem to need often are radio lists and drop down options. I needed them to be as dynamic as possible. (To work with javascript, labels, css, validation, and database information)

I created two functions: one for radio buttons, and one for drop down options. I am going to list the entire functions and than explain the different aspects of them.
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One simple thing that I’ve started doing is using hosting that has gone green. I’ve found this is really easy, and doesn’t require that much work on my part, but it can make a huge difference. You can even use it to promote your website or as a selling tool to your client.

Be More Aware

I’ve had a desire to be more recycle minded. So I’ve tried to take that more into account with what I do and where I work. So I’ve started to do a few things…
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But first, my entry was the smallest size! I’d say I’m proud of that.

Most of the things I knew would be on there. Like, late, not working in safari, bad border on ratings, bad text-resizing, css not validating because of font instead of font-family(stupid mistake), basic browser inconsistencies, and hard to read code. ugh…thanks for pointing those out guys.
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So I thought I would share a simple trick that creates a really clean effect. It’s what I call a double border. I don’t like adding borders onto the actual images I put on websites, so I’ve experimented with using css to create the borders. What I’ve found is that css rocks at doing this!

Basically you put a <div> tag around the image you want to add a border to. And add css to the div, not the image. That way we can still control the image, but we have much more variation with what we can do with borders.

Here is what the <div> and <img> html would look like.
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This is the second part to the learning to create css layout series. This part focuses on how to make the menu. The last part left off here.

We are going to create the menu from an unordered list. The main reason we do this, is because of semantics. When css is disabled or someone is using a screen reader it’s helps in navigation. But also it is because the menu is a list or grouping of links.

So lets start with the xhtml.

<ul>
<li><a href="#" class="active">Main 1</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Main 2</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Main 3</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Main 4</a></li>
<li><a href="#" class="last">Main 5</a></li>
</ul>

Which is pretty simple. Much cleaner than separate <td> for each link. (more…)