Formatting Webpages - Learning CSS

This is the first page I have designed using CSS. While I understood the basic concept of CSS, I was clueless as to how to create them. To help me get started I looked at the free webpage templates from Bravenet. By viewing the CSS file that was provided I was able to see the various classes and see how they are used to create a variety of layouts. Simple definitions are provided as comments within the code (i.e. "these are the font styles for the links that appear on your web page"), and I found it very helpful to be able see these definitions, edit that specific part of the code, and then preview it to see what the outcome looked like. I then used it as a blueprint to produce a very basic design that I liked.

I also found this website to be very helpful. Again, I like how the CSS code is provided and you can edit it and immediately see the results. Another website provided on our Tech 575 website was helpful as well. It has a list of command definitions that is very useful and the explanations are easy to understand. One more reference that I used was a book called "Learn HTML in a Weekend" which has an appendix on CSS that provides info and definitions. However, I found the web resources to be more useful as it was much easier for me to understand CSS by getting into it hands-on, rather than just reading it in a book. Judging from all the info on the internet about CSS, there is a lot to learn! I think this would have been a nice layout for my e-portfolio, and using CSS would have saved me a lot of copying and pasting!