CSS and XHTML, Introduction to

A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

All courses run for six weeks, with a two-week grace period at the end. Two lessons are released each week for the six-week duration of the course. You do not have to be present when lessons are released. You will have access to all lessons until the course ends. However, the interactive discussion area that accompanies each lesson will automatically close two weeks after the lesson is released. As such, we strongly recommend that you complete each lesson within two weeks of its release.

The final exam will be released on the same day as the last lesson. Once the final exam has been released, you will have two weeks to complete all of your course work, including the final exam.

Lesson 1
In this first lesson, you'll discover why traditional HTML is headed for the history books, and why CSS and XHTML are the wave of the future. You'll learn how to painlessly transition your existing HTML skills to XHTML. And you'll create tools and templates to help you spend less time typing and correcting errors, and more time creating.

Lesson 2
Today, you'll grow to appreciate the beauty and practicality of using CSS to style your entire Web site. You'll discover how CSS lets you create design elements that give your site a consistent look and feel, and a unique identity. And if you ever decide to change something, you won't have to go digging through all the pages you've already created?you just change the CSS style in your style sheet. Then all existing pages and future pages will use the style automatically.

Lesson 3
After reading today's lesson, you'll understand how XHTML focuses on the structure of your document while CSS focuses on its style. You'll learn specific tags and techniques for defining and styling headings, paragraphs, lists, special characters, and more. You'll come away knowing how to use CSS to specify fonts, colors, and alignments for all of your textual design elements.

Lesson 4
Nothing jazzes up a Web site like a few good pictures! Today, you'll discover all there is to know about putting pictures in Web pages. You'll learn to use pictures as hyperlinks, background textures, and patterns. You'll even replace the bland little dots in bulleted lists with your own custom bullets.

Lesson 5
In this lesson, you'll learn how to use XHTML to create tables and CSS to style them. First, you'll create a table that shows thumbnail images of your favorite pictures. Then you'll discover how to let users click a thumbnail to see a larger version of the picture and, if they like, download it to their own computers.

Lesson 6
Hyperlinks are the key to successful Web publishing. Today, you'll learn to create hyperlinks the XHTML way and how to use CSS to style them. You'll find out how to convert any text or picture to a link to other pages or to a section within your own page. You'll also create Contact Me links that let people send you an e-mail with a simple mouse click.

Lesson 7
In this lesson, we'll go deep into the CSS box model to take a close look at the fine art of creating and styling borders. We'll discuss placing boxed elements on your page and precisely controlling the margins and space inside and outside those boxes. These are must-know skills for any serious Web developer!

Lesson 8
Page headers and footers help give your site a consistent look and feel and a unique identity. In traditional HTML, developers used tables to create these elements. But they could never predict how a page would look in different Web browsers nor be confident that search engines would index their pages correctly. Today, you'll take your first step toward using CSS Page Layout techniques to create headers and footers that show on every page in your site.

Lesson 9
You've probably noticed that many Web sites divide their content into two or three columns. The left or right column (or both) can act as a sidebar for navigation links, ads, or other content. In this lesson, you'll master modern CSS Page Layout methods for creating modern multicolumn page layouts without the use of tables.

Lesson 10
Today, we'll untangle the mysteries of CSS static, relative, absolute, and fixed positioning. You'll discover how to use these tools and techniques to gain precise control over the placement of elements on your page. You'll also discover some of the secrets behind what's really going on behind the scenes when a Web browser displays your page.

Lesson 11
In this lesson, you'll discover the modern XHTML way to add audio and video to your Web pages. You'll find out how to enable users to download media files and also how you can embed those files in your pages like they do on You Tube and Google Video. We'll go over the exact tags you need to embed MIDI, Wave, MP3, MPEG, QuickTime, WMV, and Flash content in the Web pages you create.

Lesson 12
In this final lesson, we'll cover how to use online services to rapidly debug, fix, and format the pages you create. You'll learn how to validate your pages against modern CSS and XHTML standards?enabling you to display the coveted W3C-approved CSS and XHTML logos on them. After today, you'll know how to create a fully standards-compliant Web site that's ready for publication.