Opening doors with CSS

In creating my personal page, I tried to use CSS and succeeded to some degree. However, I didn't fully understand the syntax or what an "external style sheet" was. Luckily html.net helped me out and I now have a better grasp on the basics, which will be super helpful in creating the client site! Webaim showed me why they are called cascading, which is something I had never really thought about. I think it's awesome that CSS empowers the user by giving them to the most control. The article brought up an interesting point in stating, "the idea that web developers have control over the display of their content is an illusion. The final look and feel has always been in the control of the user." Giving our users what they want and need should be the top priority, and CSS enables us to offer users more control and accessibility. 

From my limited use of CSS, I've gathered that it offers more flexibility and design choices to designers. However, seeing how it works in Dreamweaver helped me realize what it can do in terms of organizing content and opening up a plethora of new design elements and capabilities. Also, as with most things in Dreamweaver, it seems a bit easier to wrangle the CSS monster in the program than hand-coding. Also, Lesson 4 clued me in to the fact that external sheets allow a style to be applied across pages, which makes life way easier. 

Lesson 5 had some handy info on making layouts cross-browser compatible, which is awesome since I had some issues with this when creating my personal page by hand. Another really useful feature is adding sidebar and main content areas. Being able to add more content areas to a page opens up what I'll be able to do with my client page. Overall, it's comforting to just have a more rounded and comprehensive understanding of what CSS is, how it's structured, and what it can do for my pages.