Online Introduction to CSS3 and HTML5 Course

Learn how to create state-of-the-art websites using modern CSS3 and HTML5 techniques. Take your existing HTML skills to the next level and start building sites like the pros. If you want to survive and excel in the fast-paced world of web publishing, you're going to need to keep up with ever-evolving standards. The new standard for web developers is to use CSS3 and HTML5.

CSS3 and HTML5 not only make it easier for you to build and manage large websites, these powerful languages can also give you more precise control over the appearance of every page you build. Almost every web development tool, including Dreamweaver, Microsoft Expressions Web, and Visual Web Developer, offer support for CSS3 and HTML5.

This course will provide you with the foundation you will need to master two critical and fast-growing new web languages. If you're a web developer, why not begin your transition to CSS3 and HTML5 today?

What you will learn

• Learn two of the most important languages in modern web design
• Improve your existing HTML skills and discover how to build sites like the pros
• Discover the broad applications of two foundational web languages that are supported by nearly every web development tool
• Examine the techniques behind state-of-the-art website design

How you will benefit

• Enhance your skillset by learning about the ever-evolving standards of web design
• Gain confidence in your ability to write HTML code while keeping your skills up to date
• Upgrade your skills to survive and advance in the fast-growing field of web publishing

Outline

Getting Started

This first lesson focuses on whom this class is for and what it's all about. You will get hands-on right away, creating a folder and adjusting some settings in your operating system and editor so you're ready to start creating a website. Finally, you will learn to save time by creating an HTML5 page template that you can use as the starting point for each new page you create in this course and later on your own.

Styling Your Website

In this lesson, you will discover how CSS lets you give your site a consistent look, feel, and unique identity. If you ever decide to change something in your styling, you won't have to go digging through all the pages individually to make changes. You just change your style sheet in one place, and all the pages in the site update instantly and automatically.

Styling Backgrounds

Background colors, photos, textures, patterns, and gradients can really add some pizzazz to your website. In this lesson, you will learn to do them all, and you will have a lot of fun doing so.

Borders, Corners, and Shadows

In this lesson, you will learn how to add some real professional polish to your design with borders, rounded corners, and drop shadows. Better yet, they're easy to do, thanks to some simple CSS properties.

Styling Text

This lesson will teach you about the many ways you can style your text with CSS, including fonts, text shadows, and more. This lesson starts with an overview of the primary tags for text markup in HTML. Then you will explore the many properties CSS offers for making your text look great.

Spice It Up With Pictures

Pictures add a lot of visual interest to any website, and in this lesson, you will learn all about using pictures in your site. First, you will start with an overview of the types of pictures you can use, and then learn how to insert them using HTML tags. Finally, learn the ways you can float, position, and size pictures using CSS.

Mastering Style Classes and Link Styles

In this lesson, you will learn about style classes and links. Style classes are a great tool for defining styles that you can use freely wherever you want throughout your site. They can be a real boon to your creativity and a real time-saver for managing your styles. You will also learn about pseudo-classes, which are a special type of class for styling links and mouse-over effects. As an added bonus, you will learn some advanced techniques for links including opening pages in a new window, using jump links within a page, adding tooltips to your links, using pictures as links, and creating email links.

Fun With Sound and Video

Nothing brings a site to life better than sound and video. In this lesson, you will learn all the newest and most modern techniques for playing sounds and showing videos on your site. You will learn the secrets of embedding YouTube videos on your pages, so you don't have to upload video files to your own site. You will also learn about all the modern file formats and HTML5 tags for embedding sound and music into your pages without using YouTube or any other site.

Styling Tables

HTML tables are the perfect tool for displaying information in rows and columns, like tables you see in print. In this lesson, you will learn techniques for styling tables with traditional CSS, as well as brand new CSS3 techniques that really make tables shine with minimal coding.

Mastering the CSS Box Model

This lesson is all about solving the mysteries and overcoming the frustrations by exposing the secrets of the ever-important CSS Box Model. Getting control of the size and location of things and the gaps between them can be a real challenge for web designers.

Creating Modern Page Layouts

Modern business websites often use page layouts that include a header, footer, sidebar columns, and a navigation bar. Historically, these layouts were done using HTML tables or div tags. In this lesson, you will learn what those tags are, how to make them work in new and older browsers alike, and some professional-grade techniques for styling them with CSS.

Making a Multi-Column Layout

Your final lesson is all about adding side columns to your layout, be it a left column, a right column, or both left and right columns. As an added bonus, you will add a vertical navigation bar to a side column with the links large enough that they're easy to work with a mouse, as well as a fingertip or stylus on a mobile touch screen.

Prerequisites:

Completion of the online Creating Web Pages course (or equivalent experience with HTML and web publishing) is recommended. You should have basic computer skills including a familiarity with files, folders, text editing, and copying and pasting.