I've got what i think it a useful idea for CSS development but I'm unsure where to make my suggestion or to whom it should be directed.
Is there a universal inbox for CSS improvement suggestions at the W3C? I know it will take forever to get suggestions drafted, tested and put into the CSS specs but there is no time like the present...
The W3C has a Participation FAQ that you might be interested in, but if your idea is development-related, does it really need to be a part of the specification? Or is it the sort of thing that developers of popular (CSS-related, web development) tools could simply add support for?
Rather than going directly to the W3C, I'd suggest first trying to get some more exposure for your idea. Write up a blog post describing it, submit it to some popular sites like A List Apart, Hacker News, or Reddit -- basically, get as many eyes on your idea as you can.
If your suggestion really is a good one, it'll help to gain momentum by getting a lot of attention. Or, if it's a bad idea, you'll quickly find out by having people "review" it. You'll likely get some good suggestions to improve the idea, and you'll definitely spend your time better getting peer feedback than somehow trying to singlehandedly champion it to the W3C.
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Call me silly, but I'm looking for a way to use a website automatically, same time every day, but with the capability of responding to many different situations (all of them can be predicted so I can do it myself, I just need it to recognise it) The problem is im very new to programming as a whole and I'm totally lost on where to start with this project... can anyone help? Is it even possible for someone at my level?
To be simple. no. AI programming is very advanced and requires a lot of in-depth knowledge of programming. You might be able to hack together a solution using selenium, which is a tool for testing the UI.
There is also the possibility to make a bot that clicks on specific locations on the screen. they cannot respond to what is actually on the screen however. If the website is a bit slower than normal things can go wrong as well. That would not be the best solution.
I Hope you can understand my difficulty in finding a really good tutorial video for WordPress. Not sure why, but I'm having a hard time finding some basic stuff in WordPress; like how to create a custom template using CSS. I know CSS, and Html just fine. But instead of just googling every little thing I come across ( i would not follow the trend of asking for help for every little detail) I am looking for a complete and quality video tutorial in WordPress, not just for myself, but for my people.
Since beginning training in Java I've learned it's best to learn broader rather than getting hung up on details, which I can research later, and go back to with references. If I understand the whole concept then when I want to do something specific, I at least know where to start looking on my own. With WordPress I don't have a broad view, and that's what I'm aiming for. Please don't just Google search 'Good WordPress Tutorial Video' and post the first decent looking link. I am looking for recommendations through experience. If you know of a good Tutorial Video Series on WordPress please then consider replying. :) Thank you!
WordPress.org not in video but excellent documentation available!
I am interested in improving my understanding of CSS. I have been making web pages for a while, but I am still constantly thwarted by bizarre behavior that I can't explain when I try to get things to look the way I want. I have a good bit of development experience and I have no trouble understanding the finer points of Javascript, PHP, or even C. But when it comes to CSS and HTML, I find I am always trying to "trick" my code into working.
This must betray a lack of understanding on my part about how web pages and CSS actually work. Are there any good books or resources I could look at toward the end of truly understanding what is going on under the hood? I always feel like I'm at a loss, but I suspect I could get over that if I just cracked down and did some good reading.
I find I am always trying to "trick" my code into working.
Yep. CSS is often about creating the illusion of the effect you intend, rather than actually doing what you intend.
That said, there are very specific rules, as specified by the W3C. Understanding the visual formatting model can do wonders for your understanding as well. These specs are dense, and often confusing, however, so figuring out specific properties and building knowledge step by step is often the easier way to go. Find tutorials (see links below), or just play with them and see what happens (that's how I learned float and clear).
Even though it's often dead, there are a few SO users who will check the CSS Chat Room regularly (myself included), so if you have general questions (inappropriate for an actual SO question), feel free to ask there, and someone will eventually ping you back.
Also, I've created a Useful CSS Links document with links to official documents, several tutorials, and other CSS resources.
You might be getting mesmerized by the pretty blinking lights and forgetting to watch how everything is connected together. Just like you can get too focused on how a node in the DOM is affected by your javascript, you can't forget about the parents and siblings and how they all fit together. Your biggest problems are probably positioning. Remember how all the elements are connected together and that will solve a lot of confusion.
I'm sure you've already been here, but just in case:
Learn CSS:
http://w3schools.com/css/default.asp
Learn CSS3:
http://w3schools.com/css3/default.asp
However, the best way to learn this stuff is by trial-and-error. HTML and CSS are unique in their forgiving approach to malformation/errors. This, along with the fact that no two browsers render HTML/CSS exactly alike, presents a certain ambiguity that even experienced HTML/CSS developers occasionally grapple with.
Still, learning this stuff is a blast, and really rewarding once you get a handle on it. Happy coding!
i am a hobby programmer with very little experience in web programming, i devote an average f 20-30 hours a week, but with summers coming i have some free time to experiment and learn. could anyone please tell me, whether a framework like (Kohana/cakePHP/CI) should be used or directly a CMS tool like drupal/joomla should be used to make a website something like stackoverflow, on a smaller scale though.
Thanks for your help.
It depends on what you want to learn. Depends on your goal.
Is it webdevelopment you wish to learn? CSS? Webdesign? Programming? Building sites?
If your goal is the site itself, I would suggest to start high up in the stack: use a ready-to-go CMS, such as Drupal, that gets you going fast. And that offers a (production ready) result in a few hours. Your downside will be freedom: sure Drupal can do a lot, so can Wordpress. But unless you move down in the stack (develop addons and such) you will have to do with what you are offered: ready made components that work according to the authors wish. Possibly not your wish.
If your goal is to learn webdevelopment in a more general way, you should start lower down in the stack. Ruby on Rails or Django are probably the best options. Simply because of their vast resource on newbie documentation. You will learn programming along the way there too. Within a few days you will have built a site according to your exact wishes (obviously, your milage may vary, depending on the wishes:)).
If your goal is development of software, Python and Ruby are most probably a good start too: both are cross-platform, have good newbie resources and offer great documentation. Both are really well (opinions may differ on this) abstraction and object orientation. They will form you into a good programmer, simply by their nature.
There's a Stackoverflow clone called Qwench that is free.
(search stackoverflow for open source stackoverflow clones)
and one built on drupal http://drupal.org/project/arrayshift
Wordpress can act very much like Stackoverflow with a proper template. See here: http://p2theme.com/ (demo here: http://p2demo.wordpress.com/). Actually you can than start editing the theme (.php files) and make it behave more and more like Stackoverflow (with reputation system etc. which should be easy to implement). This way you won't be reinventing the wheel and have a good headstart.
I personally use CodeIgniter and love it. I would recommend it to any novice looking to further their knowledge of object oriented programming, and any veterans looking to get their projects off the ground quicker. I am not going to go into great detail here, because I know Kohana and CakePHP are similar, and its mostly opinion. CI does have great documentation though.
I think learning the most common CMS is going to be hugely beneficial to you, tons of sites and companies use WP/Drupal/Joomla/Etc and it really can't hurt to understand them. These projects are very large, so you don't necessarily need to know their internal operations 100%, but you should know enough to be able to install, customize and get a site up and running fairly quickly.
Everyone has their favorites, but I invite you to try them all and see what moves you. It will NEVER hurt to learn something and not use it, especially with some extra time.
There are times to use a packaged CMS and hopefully be able to theme/customize it to what you need quickly...then there are times you will want to code a special case by hand using a framework.
Just understand the depth of the project you want to undertake, because starting from scratch is fun and rewarding, but once you get neck deep in code and get stuck its easy to lose motivation all together.
I would suggest learning the basics of HTML before diving in to using a content management system. The importance of understanding the basic building blocks of websites can't be overstated.
There are loads of resources online to learning about HTML - once you've got some experience with that, you can look at CSS, Javascript, and server-side scripting languages. Knowing the basics will help with using any content management system.
Joomla / Drupal are a good place to start with content management systems, as is Wordpress, but you'd be much better off learning how it works underneath (at least to the most basic extent) before diving in to anything else.
If you're already a programmer you won't find it too hard, but it's definitely worth doing.
I've been learning Degrafa recently, and I have noticed that there is not much consistency amongst examples posted on the web. Is there a place where I can find degrafa best practices (esp. for skinning)? or can anyone suggest examples that use best practices?
This is not really an answer, just a comment, I'm afraid :)
I think one of the challenges is that we (the Degrafa team) continue to develop Degrafa and therefore continue to introduce new (and easier) ways to do things - so some of the older samples are out of date and need to be refreshed. We will be refreshing a number of the older samples on the Degrafa site soon.
We'd love it if the user community starting making more examples as well - I know some people have and that there are a number of discrete examples and tutorials around but it takes a bit of googlehunting to find them and there is not a definitive guide somewhere. I can let you know that at least a couple of people (Jason Hawryluk and Josh McDonald) are working on full theme style skinning examples that will be able to be used as skinning templates to guide people for their own skinning, so this type of thing will be available in time - but I can't say when.
I realise that's not particularly helpful, but if you have specific questions about particular approaches to doing something then please consider posting the questions on the degrafa google group (in addition to posting here as well if you want) as it may get more visibility from current degrafa users, and it will be easier for us to incorporate the solution into a future sample/tutorial, or a collection of best practices.
-Degrafa