I would like to develop solid web development skills. I have some back-end knowledge (my weapon of choice is RoR), but I am absolutely terrible with HTML, CSS, Javascript, all the front-end / user interface stuff.
Do you know any good resources to develop HTMl/CSS skills? Javascript is more of a programming language, so I don't think it really fits within this question, but if you know any good resources, I'll also welcome those!
A List Apart
Smashing Magazine
CSS Zen Garden (more for inspiration than actually learning, but still)
Watch Douglas Crockford — The JavaScript Programming Language from YUI Theater to learn some javascript skills.
For HTML, i Learned a lot from HTMLDog. I don't think it is updated any more but it is all still relevant, as the HTML / CSS Spec hasn't changed since it was written.
For CSS, your first stop should be Eric Meyer's site. He literally wrote the book (four or five, actually) on CSS.
www.w3schools.com
http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/learning
html http://www.w3schools.com/html/
jquery www.learningjquery.com
Books I could recommend:
CSS the missing manual
Head First HTML With CSS & XHTML (O Reilly)
In my experience, most of the tutorials about HTML/CSS cover its sintax, tag meanings, attributes ,etc. You can cover them in a few days, and then you can forget quickly. IMO, it is better to look for designs, then see the source in order to know how they're made. In this way, you will be able to see what you can do with tags/css combinations.
You can see some free templates at the following sites.
Open Source Web Development
Free Web Site templates
First thing that comes to me, will be to understand the reasons of those meta languages, you should understand that the separation between contents, visuals, and functionnalities must be separated.
If you know RoR, you should know about the MVC pattern. It's quite the same here.
Try to learn, why, and you will understand how.
You should also know about (x)html semantic which a must to know before doing anything.
To have a good introduction, you could give a read to the Markup Guide which explains to clients every xhtml tags.
All links given by RegDwight should be a good start.
As a javascript library, i would advise jQuery, which complete, and easy to use, with a short learning curve (but complete anyway).
Related
When developing large application using ASP.NET (MVC or classic, doesn't matter), especially in large team, it is easy to produce a lot of messy, non-traceable CSS definitions. After some time we can end up not knowing why particular definition exists and what is its real effect considering style inheritance and cross-browser differences. Needless to say, changing anything in that mess is a risk and there are hundreds of ways how small change could affect the system.
I know some solutions to organize CSS stylesheets better, like predefined CSS "frameworks" or DotLessCss engine, but I still find it quite hard to cope with CSS as there is no such relationship between HTML markup and CSS styles like i.e. between interface and concrete class in C# code. I know this is by design to make presentation separate from the structure, but I believe it might be useful to have such a correspondence at development level.
Ideally, I need something that can enforce the team not to make messy CSS or be able to clean that mess up automatically. Do you know any resources that may help me, or any guidance how to manage my CSS definitions easily?
Let me ask for something a bit different:
Despite of my several years of web experience, I believe I would feel much more confident if some of my CSS could be moved into C# code, the same way as some of HTML generation is done by MVC HTML Helpers. It saves me writing a lot of unnecessary markup, still allowing to do so if needed. And it is more unit testable, easier to refactor using tools like ReSharper etc.
I don't need mergers and compressors of my CSS, I would like to be able to manage my CSS at declaration level.
Maybe there are some tools like that I'm not aware of, or maybe that idea is just wrong and wouldn't be useful?
The Firefox plugin Dust Me Selectors should help to clean up unused selectors.
That being said please read What's Wrong With CSS
P.S: Please make reading Jeff Atwood's blog a habit :)
It might be worth looking at how Telerik have their css structured in their MVC components.
Telerik
Maybe I formulated my question in wrong way, but I was hoping to be directed to some existing .NET APIs to define/generate CSS. Looks like there's nothing like that. And according to the discussion in parallel question, it may not be as useful as I thought.
I have to present a prototype of an web app in the following days to one of my clients, the thing is I'm not so good at CSS and worst of all I'm almost never happy with the results I get.
Coding the business logic poses no challenge to me, the UI design however takes more than 80% of my time. I don't need nothing breathtaking, just a clean, nice and presentable environment, an example:
This is a recurring problem I've been having, I wish web UI development could have a less naked default style, an approach similar to Visual Studio or iPhone SDK would be very useful to me.
The above mockup created with Balsamiq Mockups is a great example, all the most common "components" are available to use, and best of all: there is only one good-looking style to choose from.
Is there something like this for the web? A neutral yet nice CSS or Javascript UI framework?
Options so far:
Bootstrap
Qooxdoo
jQuery UI
jQuery Tools
MochaUI
Ext JS
Yahoo! User Interface Library
BlueTrip
BluePrint
Uki (Demo)
Napkee
YAML
Baseline
iPlotz
Sproutcore
ForeUI
I'm interested in knowing if there are any CSS-only UI frameworks.
I found this page with a very nice list of Web UI Libraries, but most of them (at least the good ones) seem to be specific to Java, are there any equally good alternatives in pure CSS or JS?
PS: I'm not interested in AJAX, effects, behaviors and so on... my main (only) concern is style.
Thanks for all the suggestions everyone!
After a very careful consideration of all the UI libraries suggested, I've come to the conclusion that ExtJS and Qooxdoo are the ones that most closely fit my needs. jQuery UI seems promising but only offers a reduced amount of elements.
As far as CSS-only libraries go I've found BlueTrip / BluePrint and the themes suggested by tambler to be the best. Aside from that, Flex and Napkee also seem to be worth exploring.
Time to learn ExtJS now! =)
A combination of 960gs for layout and jQuery-UI for styling is probably what you are after.
You could also consider the blueprint CSS framework instead of 960gs.
I can't believe nobody has mentioned:
http://www.extjs.com/
Its a commercial js frameworks, but pretty affordable, and makes putting together a nice UI a breeze. There's a much more complete set of elements then jqueryui, and its designed to make an entire app. I've only played with it a little, but I really love it so far. Free for personal use.
If you really want to get a feel for a complete UI developed with EXT, try this url:
http://docs.sencha.com/extjs/4.2.1/extjs-build/examples/feed-viewer/feed-viewer.html
What about using dojo and dijit?
Dijit is a fast way to create widgets and elements. It also comes with 3 default themes which are easy to modify.
A good list of different widgets here
Pair up with someone who specializes in UI design.
If you are better at dealing with business logic, your time is better off spent exclusively coding business logic so you can master it. This will require you to learn how to interface with someone else who excels at presentation. (xml and json are common means)
Business logic and presentation are very different. Designing a system that not only looks good, but is intuitive and easy to use is quite difficult. Equally as difficult and time-consuming as establishing the inner workings of a complex application.
A good interface is not as simple as including a css framework.
I consider myself to be a more 'creative' programmer who does excel in presentation. I happened to be lucky enough to cross path's with someone who was, first of all... very motivated, and second of all very good at 'business logic'. He had a lot more experience planning and implementing complex systems, while I mainly have been focusing on interface design.
If you are more productive doing system architecture, planning, developing, whatever... you should push yourself in that direction. While solo development projects can be rather fulfilling, I view it as inefficient. It is very rare that someone possess skills to develop top-level applications solo.
The challenge is finding someone who you work well with.
Check out Google Web Toolkit. It has a pretty clean default look. They have examples . In particular, their Showcase example demonstrates all of the available widgets and the css styling used to achieve the look.
There are a few frameworks aimed at (G)UI Design; Qooxdoo, JQuery UI and MochaUI being a few of them (although the last is more a proof-of-concept than a usable framework). These frameworks usually offer a variety of JS-powered elements (form elements, such as input fields and submit buttons, but other elements like tabs as well). However, it will still be up to you to position these elements, and perhaps style them, to your liking.
Perhaps familiarizing yourself with a CSS framework (such as 960GS) might complement the above JS UI Frameworks.
(As a personal disclaimer; I have very little experience with any of the frameworks mentioned above. But I'm sure either Google or SO can provide answers I can't.)
This won't help you out for your current project, but it's worth considering for future projects. After spending many years creating GUI applications in HTML 4 and constantly wrestling against the limitations of CSS and HTML, I thought I'd try out Adobe Flex. What an improvement!
Rather than faking a tabbed page control or data grid, with Flex or Silverlight, your markup can simply specify a tabbed page control or data grid. And the frameworks come with default styles that are boring but not at all bad. I'm not saying these completely replace HTML, but if you need widgets and GUI layout, I believe they're a much better alternative.
You might consider browsing the following site:
http://themeforest.net/category/site-templates/admin-skins
There are several "Administrative" themes available for purchase here that may suit your needs.
wireframe mockups like that are a brilliant way to start.
Having used most of the UI framewroks discussed here, I'd liek to steer you towards jQueryUi for the following reasons:
jQueryUI CSS framework takes care of the consistent and cool looking CSS for you (it's really easy - just make some markup and apply the classes)
jQueryUI has tabcontrol, and heaps on neat quick easy ways to style forms.
If you are targeting modern, non IE, browsers, then you should check out Sproutcore. For mockups I use mockingbird.
A relatively new PHP framework specifically designed for development of UI-focused software. Elements you have here including Tabs, Filters and Grids are included and will take you about 20 lines of code to implement.
http://agiletoolkit.org/
Have you tried Axure? It's a tool for rapidly creating wireframes, prototypes and specifications for applications and web sites.
It works in a similar way to Balsamiq, but it allows you to export your wireframes/prototype as HTML, CSS and Javascript.
You can then upload this to a server or run it on your computer as a working example.
You can create forms, links, tabs, rollovers, Javascript effects.
If you are already using Balsamic Mockups for your prototypes then you should consider Napkee. To quote the website "Napkee lets you to export Balsamiq Mockups to HTML/CSS/JS and Adobe Flex 3 at a click of a button."
I ran into this awhile ago, and couldn't find anything, so I took it as an opportunity to learn css. But since then it seems great strides have been made towards this subject.
Summarizing your problem, there is a wikipedia page.
There is yaml-css, which takes yaml and turns it into css
There is baseline, but it assumes some css knowledge.
I'd also suggest looking at Adobe's Dreamweaver. They have a lot of css and style generation tools which produce very readable and w3c compatible code.
I hope that helps.
A combination of 960gs for layout and jQuery-UI or Jquery tools is great
i use them almost in every project but i'd like to add to http://easyframework.com/
although its not a business friendly so
make sure to check out its license
but i like it
I recently discovered a nice website called iplotz.com where you can create a mockup of your application/website/project online without installing anything.
It also has most of the common controls, along with much more features for managing thw whole project and sharing it with others online.
I must admit, i didn't try it yet myself, but i looked at it a bit and it seems pretty cool. I'll probably be using it soon enough.
Sass looks like it has potential as a way to mitigate some css headaches.
I like to add Bootstrap it's intuitive, and powerful front-end framework for faster and easier web development.
I like RocketCSS. Nice clean design, give it a go.
For some reason, it never dawned on me that there could be frameworks for CSS. I have been working on my own personal site, and I just really hate 'designing' with CSS (I think more then a few programmers might agree with me). Anyways, I understand the benefits of a framework for a language such as Java, PHP, [insert language]. I downloaded a couple different CSS frameworks and couldnt really figure out how to use them. I guess I might be expecting an API or something (which obviously doesnt make sense given the lack of logic in CSS)...
Has anyone here used (and would reccomend) a CSS framework? Is it overkill for a relatively simple layout?
Please do not post links to other sites, I know how to use Google. I would rather hear the opinions and insights of the community. Thanks.
Please understand framework here simply as 'a collection of helpers for getting things done'. So what will you get in most cases is a set of CSS definitions, resetters and hacks, which you will probably need to code for yourself anyway when having cross-browser compatibility on mind.
No links? K. First, you should get familiar with Grid Design techniques. My fellow front-end developers recommend Blueprint for handling CSS-based layouts, no matter how complex they are. Hope this helps a little.
Caveat: I haven't really looked into this subject in a few years, the landscape may have changed.
The few CSS frameworks I've played with in the past have been more or less hideous things designed for snapping to grids, wrongheaded desires to bring WYSIWYG into the picture, and providing things like generic rounded corners and such. They tend to have some semantic issues (.italic FTL) and require a lot of manual tinkering for a framework.
More practical for the CSS beginner or rapid dev site, are perhaps the CSS reset which functions to baseline CSS across browsers (yahoo's) (Erik Meyer's). But this is not without it's own controversy and never seemed to be enough.
Basically. I find CSS requires a toolbox of common techniques of your own, but something you'll pick and choose and modify constantly. As in much of web dev I think the more experienced you get the more you find yourself wanting to roll your own.
I used YAML (Yet Another Multicolumn Layout) in a few projects, because I didn't like to "fight" with the Internet Explorer 6 HACKS.
There is a good explanation of how to use it and you can customize it to your needs (as long as you're going to use a multicolumn (2 or 3) layout).
960.gs seems to be fairly popular with designers lately, although I have never quite seen the point to CSS frameworks myself.
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As a little side project, I am starting to build a new website for a certain organization I am affiliated to, which current site is simply outdated.
I am regularly a Java developer, and last time I really did some web development was back in the late 90s, when <p> was still more popular than <div> and Javascript was cutting-edge technology (JQuery is for lazy bums these days :) ).
Anyway, I feel really outdated. The website basically is going to be:
Django based
mostly serve static information pages
it will have a dynamic news and updates page (based on Django admin capabilites)
and some basic apps I'll develop myself (polls, small registration app, etc...)
My problem is designing the whole thing. I found some nice web-based CSS layout generators that got me going, but I still feel I'm wasting my time smoothing out the CSS files and aligning <div>s.
Are there any tools - the simpler and faster, the better - that you recommend I can use to speed up the design part of the site so I can concentrate on the real work?
I don't need anything fancy, just a nice looking layout and design that I can tweak a bit so the site will look presentable.
I second Brandon's suggestion to use a CSS framework. It won't give you 100% freedom to design anything you like, but it can speed up your design process greatly and free up your hands to do the coding you really want.
Suggestions Updated July 2013:
Twitter Bootstrap http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/ - complete grid, typo, UI widget prototyping framework
ZURB Foundation http://foundation.zurb.com/ - responsive grid, type, UI widget prototyping framework (similar in scope to Twitter Bootstrap, but feels 'cleaner' in some ways)
960 http://960.gs/ - grid layout system
Tripoli http://devkick.com/lab/tripoli/ - really good typography, but no grid system
YUI Grids http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/grids/ - very customizable (to the point of overkill) grid system
Blueprint http://www.blueprintcss.org/ - grid system and basic typography
BlueTrip http://www.bluetrip.org - a hybrid system, mixing the best of the Blueprint grid with the best of the Tripoli typography
I won't lie to you. This website isn't the best place to go if you're looking for reliable Web Design advice. Stack Overflow is a programming community and programmers rarely know anything about design. If you want to get some real advice then I would strongly recommend the main Web Design/Development forums on the Internet, especially SitePoint.
That being said, as a former freelance Web Designer/Developer I'll offer my input on the issue. Not that you should value it, of course. After all, this is a programming website.
NEVER EVER SAY CSS LAYOUT GENERATOR EVER AGAIN! If you're going to seriously get into designing web pages then you need to learn semantic XHTML and CSS first. Whilst many people tout W3Schools as the definitive resource I see it as a programmers answer (i.e. not very good) and would prefer that you read up on the subject using...Google. There are countless examples of great websites to pick up the basics of Web Design/Development that Google is probably the best website for the job. Also, with a plethora of new websites offering this information you know it's going to be more improved than W3Schools. You'll seriously want to get clued-up on writing your design because it'll be much harder to fix things later on in the project.
If you're going to be designing web pages it would be a good idea to learn what actually makes a good design. Check out CSS Vault for a fantastic resource of some of the best-designed web pages around, of course with all the source code intact so you can have a play around with their code and see how they've managed some of the wonderful effects they've produced. I've learnt more than a thing or two from websites that have been featured on CSS Vault. On top of that you should read up on Web Design from the big Web Design/Development sites. Two of my favourites are SitePoint and A List Apart, two names that you'll near time and time again when you hear people talk about resources. Browse those websites, check their forums, see what REAL Web Designers/Developers are using, not what programmers are using.
On the subject of CSS Frameworks; they do help! The problem with using them is that you'll often spend so much time looking for a worthwhile framework that you could have finished most of the CSS for your website yourself. You'll either love them or hate them, but many people will say that they're not necessary.
Once you've got your mind set on what a good design looks like and you've got the resources you need to make something of value I suggest that you get to work! In reality when you're designing a web page all you really need is a text editor with a save function, an image manipulation program, a browser window and FireBug. An IDE helps a lot of people, but if you do use one then you'll definitely want to work in its text mode. I use NotePad++ or Emacs exclusively but a lot of people like to use Aptana Studio, so it may be worth a look.
When you're getting to actually building the code behind your website you can't really go much worse than your favourite IDE/Text Editor and a source control tool. As a Java programmer you're better suited to talk about programming so I won't lecture you on a subject you already know.
In the end, Web Design is going to take time and many of the tools that we choose to use that we claim will "save time" save very little in reality. If you're not a design guru then it will take you a substantial amount of time to create a great-looking website. It's a fact of life. Call me old-fashioned (a funny word coming from a 21 year old) but I still think that the quickest way is to sketch a design out on a piece of paper (a image program if really necessary) and to just get out there and make the damn thing! Again, I'll have to take this hunting for the silver bullet mentality as a programmers trait, one that really won't help that much when designing, because designing a web page is vastly different to writing a Java program.
In short, ignore everything you read here, read what REAL designers are doing and just make the damn thing!
There's one piece of advice that saves more time than any other when it comes to rapid development of CSS styled sites and that's KEEP IT SIMPLE
Use an attractive simple layout that doesn't require pixel perfection and that can 'gracefully' degrade in less compliant browsers (IE6). Minimise the amount of CSS and fix the basic bugs mentioned by meouw above. Then get on an concentrate on content and functionality...the real work
In my previous employment I created dozens of templates for websites.
The most useful too I ever discovered is the Firefox Web Developer Toolbar.
It has a wealth of small useful tools. My favorite feature is the ability to edit the CSS and see the results in real-time. This saves on the whole edit - upload - refresh cycle. Watch out for ie CSS inconsistencies though!
Off the top of my head, these are the most important gotchas.
double margin bug [google: double margin bug]
incorrect (but more intuitive) box model [google: box model]
incorrect (but more intuitive) float clearing [google: clearfix]
FireBug is another really usefull Firefox plugin for more in depth analysis.
I've always found Open Source Web Design to be a good resource when looking to get started trying to design something.
- http://patterntap.com/
- http://www.dotemplate.com/ (interesting concept of customizing template)
- http://www.templatemonster.com/
- http://www.freelayouts.com/websites/html-templates
- http://www.templateyes.com/
No idea what the site is going to be, but have you thought of using a pre-build CMS like Drupal, Joomla etc etc.? You can then tweak templates etc, rather than worrying about making it from scratch.
This question is pretty old, but since we're in 2012, it's only proper that I answer my own question with the exact thing I was looking for, back in 2009.
Twitter Bootstrap
Have you looked into any CSS frameworks? If you are competent enough with CSS something like a framework could help speed things up.
Don't forget firebug :) if you're worried about tweaking the design it's really great. With the inspect feature allowing you to real-time edit the CSS of your page.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843
I second Jens Roland's list of CSS frameworks.
But I would also suggest you have a look at websites such as Smashing Magazine. You might find this article of interest, amongst a lot of others. They tend to do a lot of nice and long mash-ups for the web developers that will at least give you inspiration if not a direct solution.
A colleague of mine has been trying to convince me all week that Dreamweaver, 5 years after I was last forced to use it at gunpoint, is actually now worthwhile for knocking up a design quickly and painlessly, and is also now competent at producing the HTML for that design.
I refuse to invest the 10 minutes it would take to find out based on my previous experiences of it, but you might like to give the demo a quick run around the block :)
I'd recommend finding a CMS package, since you're using Django, look into django-cms. It has TinyMCE and Markdown Support so updating your pages should be easy. Also django-cms integrates well with the Django admin interface.
A piece of paper to sketch your design
A text editor (preferably set up to save directly to a development server local or otherwise) to write up the initial HTML/CSS
FireBug/IEDeveloperToolbar to inspect each element that looks wrong and edit its CSS directly in the browser until it looks fine, followed by commits with the text editor
If you're doing any JavaScript development, use an advanced editor that highlights errors and warnings as you type. This kind of functionality has until recently been the province of static language editors only, but the free NetBeans 6 achieves this amazing feat. Traditionally, you first discovered JavaScript typos and simple bugs when first loading the parent page into a browser. The speed-up you get from being able to short-cut these iterations is profound.
NetBeans 6 also highlights CSS errors and is a more than capable editor for most all languages a web developer is likely to use these days.
You can also use www.zbugs.com - it will help you speed up a process of compressing and gzipping your CSS and Javascript files
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As web based designer who has designed web sites using tables but never with css, how can a novice get started with css?
Related SO posts
SO - Css Book & website for CSS
SO - Css blog
Get started by reading tutorial web site first. This way, he will see how to create simple CSS and see the benefits.
http://www.w3schools.com/css/
http://www.echoecho.com/css.htm
http://www.csstutorial.net/
http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/011/firstcss
http://www.westciv.com/style_master/academy/css_tutorial/
Than, I suggest since he knows how to design website to check other website source and see their CSS files. Zen Garden is a good start.
If he requires more information, he can always get a book (I do not think it's necessary but if he wants a book), he could try Core-Css.
Definitely get the Firebug plugin for Firefox. Go to a site you like and check out the CSS for it. Turn some off and on, change things, just get a feel for how it all comes together. Great learning tool.
Read CSS: The Definitive Guide, Third Edition by Eric A. Meyer. It's one of the best technical books I've read.
To all the other suggestions I would add Smashing Magazine's list of CSS articles.
I recommend Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design by Andy Clarke. It's less about the technical aspects of CSS and more about the mindset switch that needs to happen when moving from tables based design to separating content from design.
When I started learning CSS, I found myself coding pretty much the same way. Instead of tables and tds, I was using divs and spans. Still working from the outside (design) inward (toward the content) and designing my markup and contents around the look of the page, locking it into the design. Transcending CSS gets into the process of going from the inside (content and markup) out (design) leaving the site's appearance flexible.
Technical info is easy enough to find. I tend to frequent W3Schools.
I'm a big fan of reading tech books, so I learned from Beginning CSS Web Development: From Novice to Professional
I learned a lot from Eric Meyer on CSS and More Eric Meyer on CSS. The books take you through several examples step-by-step, starting with unstyled pages and explain the purpose for each step along the way. They would only be a starting point though, since they're a little bit dated. Sites like A List Apart will give you the most up-to-date information.
Start simple. Read a few sites like A List Apart and Position Is Everything.
Don't try to replace your whole site at once - change one piece at a time.
Keep testing it in different browsers - the earlier you find out it looks different in one (or all!) the better.
The book that got me started was Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook. by Dan Cederholm It is not a reference, but gives you a good start with real-world examples. Dan does a good job of holding your hand, taking it slow and not boring you. I bought it several years ago and still refer to it on occasion.
This is the only CSS book I own. I use the web as my CSS reference.
SitePoint have a large amount of tutorials and reference on this. They even have a book that sound like it would answer your question directly!
HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS, 2nd Edition
http://www.sitepoint.com/books/css2/
with 4 chapters available free
For French there is a good site : http://www.alsacreations.com/ there is tutorials on HTML, xHTML and CSS and many examples (how to create "pretty" menus etc...)
I learned a lot of CSS by downloading free site designs from http://www.oswd.org/ and trying to implement the same effects on my own. It also gave me some insights into ideas for site-wide design patterns in CSS.
I'm a fan of the brute-force approach. Learn a few basics then start trying to recode your HTML using pure CSS. Every time you need a new technique, google it. You may want to subscribe to the CSS-discuss mailing list or read the wiki.
http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/#specs
Someone already listed a w3c link. This link goes to the specs which is how I learned what I know about css. Anyway, start with level 1 then move on to the other levels. Well, level 1 should get you most of what you'll use so you may just want to learn level 1 then google the other things you want to do as needed.
I have found that using a DreamWeaver template is a good first place to start when creating a new page. They have made some very simple templates that allow you add any formatting you want, you just need to know things like 2 or 3 columns or elastic or fixed. Before I started doing this, I was constantly trying to figure out how to position stuff, but this has helped a lot, at least giving me a start.
Also consider a reset CSS file. It really helps dealing with browser differences.
Along with this, of course read tutorials and search the net.
Have a look at the Web Design From Scratch website. It has been really useful to me.
One important concept that most references are missing is that the CSS attributes aren't independent or cumulative. The most important properties, 'display' and 'position' react to each other and even change the behavior of other attributes. They interact in such a way that any guide that tries to teach these attributes independently is fail.
Most people doing HTML/CSS don't understand this, and are stuck fiddling without a real clue.
The only book I've found that relates these attributes at all is "Pro CSS and HTML Design Patterns". Eric Meyers book might... Personally I hate the style "Pro CSS and HTML Design Patterns" is written in, but its still the most effective guide to CSS that I have found.
I wrote an overall intro guide including some good CSS links elsewhere (see the comments too)... might be useful.