CSS - by IdeaScale

CSS

Revise

I know Maxine is always looking for suggestions for presentations on CSS. So here are couple of topics I would of liked to seen last year. So they are no longer bleeding edge and now targeted at the other 90%.

1. Advanced CSS layouts, Kevin Yank has already covered this with "Everything you know about CSS is wrong" suggestion.

2. CSS frameworks, what they are, why you should use them, which are the better ones.

3. Progressive enhancement with CSS2/3. Features you can use now, to enhance your design for modern browsers, without breaking old browsers. RGBa, @font-face, border-radius, border-image, text-shadow etc.

2 or 3 could either be full 50 minutes presentations, 50 minute panels, 25 minute quick fire presentations (with lots of links to resources) or all could be combined into a full day workshop "Advanced CSS Skills" with the addition of a couple of additional topics like:

Typography: Font stacks, type scales
Grids: Why you use them, how to use them (tied to CSS frameworks).
The final session should probably be bring us your CSS problems and we will find a solution.

Idea # 62Presentation Ideas

Comments

Nick this is a great overview of what would be the useful type of content to cover in a session on CSS.
Further ideas from others much appreciated as well!

Maxine any chance of changing the topic of this post to "Advanced CSS"? Because that is what it about.

The suggestions are based on what I spent time learning last year. I would be willing to present on Progressive enhancement, there are others better for the other topics.

Nice topic Nick.

If a workshop is done, it really needs to be hands on, no standing up lecturing in this.

I get the feeling that a lot more Advanced and Bleeding Edge skills are going to be added to this list before the conference. Such as CSS animation, gradients etc. This is an area I have been quietly pushing, but would like to see what others are doing to.

I guess we are bored with CSS2 etc and tired of the wait for CSS3.

CSS transformations, transitions, animations, gradients, shadows (box and text), selectors and more I would expect in "Progressive enhancement with CSS 2 & 3".

Even as a 50 minute presentation "Progressive enhancement with CSS 2 & 3" would be pretty quick fire, with only a few minutes per property, ie demo, brief explanation, known issues, links to resources then on to the next property.

Even as part of an advanced CSS workshop, a 2 hour "Progressive enhancement with CSS 2 & 3" section. Would only allow a max of 10 or 15 minutes per major property and 5 minutes on lesser ones. No really enough time for a lot of hands on.

That would mean you need a whole day "Progressive enhancement with CSS 2 & 3" workshop to get a decent hands on experience. Personally I would hard time justifying a full day session on properties only supported by a limited number of browsers. Probably more suited for WDS10, with the release of IE9 due.

@Nick - true, but some of the properties have in general been done previously, you could gloss over them and move onto the sexy stuff.

If you sold it as a pushing the edge workshop you can then get to play more.

It's just people don't learn that well if you lecture them - they have to interact.

The progressive enhancement in general maybe just stating the obvious. Its a bit like Javascript you can't do all the progressive enhancement in even a day workshop, you need 20+ hours. But you can at least select out the interesting ones. The total fails can be sidestepped, just being noted.

So are you shooting down the workshop in favour of a speaker session, that you seem to shooting down too. As it's all IE9 (maybe) CSS properties.

Still think even just touching a few sexy new properties would be good.

In reality you need the presenter to be up to the minute on what's coming down from CSS3 WG.

My preference for a CSS3 presentation over CSS3 workshop, probably comes down to what I expect to get from a presentation or workshop.

With a presentation, I want to see new and interesting things, that might not be relevant right now, but get me excited so I go away and do more research/experimenting and be ready.

With a workshop, I expect to leave the session with skills I can use right now. A whole day on CSS 3, particularly the cutting edge of CSS transformations, transitions, animations and gradients which only currently work in webkit nightly's and maybe Safari 4 beta is not something I see as practical right now.

In 8 months time, if these CSS3 properties are supported in Firefox 4, Safari 4, Opera 10 and Chrome 2, with IE9 on the horizon then yes.

My idea for an advanced CSS workshop is not for the top 5% of CSS coders (like you or me) but to put the less skilled/experienced CSS coders on the path of becoming a CSS ninja.

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