CSS

CSS3 adds powerful new functionality to the web’s visual style language to help you create beautiful and engaging designs more easily than ever. With CSS3, you can create eye-catching visual effects such as semitransparent backgrounds, gradients, and drop shadows without using images; display text in beautiful, unique, non-web-safe fonts; create animations without Flash; and customize a design to the user’s unique device or screen size without JavaScript.

You’ll learn how to accomplish these effects and more by working through a series of practical yet cutting-edge projects. Each chapter walks you through standalone exercises that you can integrate into projects you’re working on, or use as inspiration. You’ll learn all of the most popular, useful, and well-supported CSS3 techniques, plus:

• How to use CSS3 to enhance your pages, not just in terms of looks, but also in terms of usability, accessibility, and efficiency

• When and how to provide workarounds and fallbacks for older, non-supporting browsers

• How to create stunning designs with unique typography and beautiful graphic details

• Advanced new selectors to streamline your markup and make it less prone to human errors

• New methods for creating multiple-column layouts

• How to quickly and easily create mobile-optimized web designs without using scripting

In Detail

Drupal is an award winning open source Content Management System (CMS). Based on PHP/MySQL, its power and flexibility combined with its exceptional design mean it is one of the most popular choices for creating a CMS website.

Drupal employs a specialized templating system and supports themes, which allow you to change the look and feel of the system's front and back-end interfaces.

Drupal 6 Themes is an ideal introduction to theming with Drupal 6. If you want to create a striking new look for your Drupal 6 website, this book is for you. This book is a revised, updated and expanded edition of Drupal 5 Themes, written specifically for Drupal 6. The book will show you techniques and tools to help you improve the look and feel of any Drupal 6-powered website.

Starting from the basics of theme setup and configuration, you will learn about the Drupal theming architecture and the PHPTemplate engine, and then move on to modifying existing themes and building new themes from scratch. You will find out about tools to make your theme development easier, and also find invaluable information about under-documented elements of the theming system.

What you will learn from this book?

• Learn about the Drupal 6 Theming Architecture
• Find and install new themes
• Get the most from Drupal's theme configuration system
• Create a new theme from scratch
• Master PHPTemplate
• Modify the default templates and styles
• Override the default templates with your own
• Create dynamic styling which responds to the content or the user
• Discover tools that make theming easier and more efficient

Approach

This book helps you understand the logic behind the theming system employed in Drupal, and how to make it work for you. You will learn key concepts and work through examples with careful, step-by-step instructions.

Who this book is written for?

The main requirements to make use of this book are knowledge of HTML, CSS, and a touch of creativity - you don't need to know anything about theming in Drupal, although you should be familiar with the basic operation of the Drupal system.

Although this book aims to make Drupal theming accessible to designers, theming in Drupal 6 involves writing some PHP code, and a basic knowledge of PHP will be helpful.

Regardless of your technical skills, this book will teach you to design themes for your Drupal websites in the easiest way.

In Detail

Drupal is an award winning open source Content Management System (CMS). Based on PHP/MySQL, its power and flexibility combined with its exceptional design mean it is one of the most popular choices for creating a CMS website.

Drupal employs a specialized templating system and supports themes, which allow you to change the look and feel of the system's front and back-end interfaces.

Drupal 6 Themes is an ideal introduction to theming with Drupal 6. If you want to create a striking new look for your Drupal 6 website, this book is for you. This book is a revised, updated and expanded edition of Drupal 5 Themes, written specifically for Drupal 6. The book will show you techniques and tools to help you improve the look and feel of any Drupal 6-powered website.

Starting from the basics of theme setup and configuration, you will learn about the Drupal theming architecture and the PHPTemplate engine, and then move on to modifying existing themes and building new themes from scratch. You will find out about tools to make your theme development easier, and also find invaluable information about under-documented elements of the theming system.

What you will learn from this book?

• Learn about the Drupal 6 Theming Architecture
• Find and install new themes
• Get the most from Drupal's theme configuration system
• Create a new theme from scratch
• Master PHPTemplate
• Modify the default templates and styles
• Override the default templates with your own
• Create dynamic styling which responds to the content or the user
• Discover tools that make theming easier and more efficient

Approach

This book helps you understand the logic behind the theming system employed in Drupal, and how to make it work for you. You will learn key concepts and work through examples with careful, step-by-step instructions.

Who this book is written for?

The main requirements to make use of this book are knowledge of HTML, CSS, and a touch of creativity - you don't need to know anything about theming in Drupal, although you should be familiar with the basic operation of the Drupal system.

Although this book aims to make Drupal theming accessible to designers, theming in Drupal 6 involves writing some PHP code, and a basic knowledge of PHP will be helpful.

Regardless of your technical skills, this book will teach you to design themes for your Drupal websites in the easiest way.

CSS3 adds powerful new functionality to the web’s visual style language to help you create beautiful and engaging designs more easily than ever. With CSS3, you can create eye-catching visual effects such as semitransparent backgrounds, gradients, and drop shadows without using images; display text in beautiful, unique, non-web-safe fonts; create animations without Flash; and customize a design to the user’s unique device or screen size without JavaScript.

You’ll learn how to accomplish these effects and more by working through a series of practical yet cutting-edge projects. Each chapter walks you through standalone exercises that you can integrate into projects you’re working on, or use as inspiration. You’ll learn all of the most popular, useful, and well-supported CSS3 techniques, plus:

• How to use CSS3 to enhance your pages, not just in terms of looks, but also in terms of usability, accessibility, and efficiency

• When and how to provide workarounds and fallbacks for older, non-supporting browsers

• How to create stunning designs with unique typography and beautiful graphic details

• Advanced new selectors to streamline your markup and make it less prone to human errors

• New methods for creating multiple-column layouts

• How to quickly and easily create mobile-optimized web designs without using scripting

• Shows Web developers how to make the transition from HTML to XHTML, an XML-based reformulation of HTML that offers greater design flexibility
• Demonstrates how to work with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)-now supported by ninety percent of browsers and integral to new site-building tools from Macromedia and others-and implement a consistent style throughout and entire site
• Explains how to make a site accessible to people with impaired vision, limited hand use, dyslexia, and other issues-now a legal requirement for many sites in the U.S. and the U.K.

* An expanded, updated, and retitled edition of HTML Bible, examining HTML, XHTML-a set of extensions to HTML to make it more like XML-and cascading style sheets (CSS), which provide a simple way to add consistent formatting to HTML Web documents
* Focusing on reader feedback and changing industry trends, this new edition is a major overhaul that addresses the extensive changes in Web development
* Shows readers the best, most efficient way to use HTML and examines which peripheral technologies are worth learning for the long run
* Features "before and after" pictures that show the results of improved Web page coding
* Offers continued coverage of key topics, including site administration, dynamic data-driven pages, and many others, in addition to new sections on hot new topics such as blogs and content management

Brilliant HTML & CSS is a visual quick reference book that teaches all that you need to know to create clean, forward-looking, standards-compliant, accessible Web sites using HTML & CSS. It will give you a solid grounding on the theory, coding skills, and best practices needed to use HTML & CSS to build sophisticated web pages a complete reference for the beginner and intermediate user. Summary Brilliant HTML and CSS provides beginning Web designers and developers with the necessary theory, coding skills, and best practices to create clean, forward-looking, standards-compliant, accessible Web sites. The text reinforces the important distinction between structure and presentation and emphasizes the proper application of HTML tags and CSS properties from the opening chapter. Part I focuses on structural development, while Part II addresses presentation topics, and Part III offers advice about common design and navigation problems and the rationale behind their solutions. Upon finishing this book, a reader with no prior experience in Web design and development will be able to build sophisticated static pages. (An ideal companion to this book would be Brilliant JavaScript.) In keeping with the Brilliant series, the book uses a highly visual, task-based approach to achieve its objectives. Brilliant Features * Detailed index and troubleshooting guide to help you find exactly what you need to know * Each task is presented on one or two pages * Numbered steps guide you through each task or problem * Numerous screenshots illustrate each step * See Also boxes point you to related tasks and information in the book * Did you know ?...sections alert you to relevant expert tips, tricks and advice