3. Checklist for the CSS Tutorial

Before we begin, lets make sure that we have all the tools we'll need to develop the style sheet.

The Browser

Firstly, you'll need a browser that handles style sheets. Microsoft Internet Explorer 4, though far from perfect, does an adequate job for the purposes of this tutorial.Netscape Navigator 4 is not quite so good, but should pass muster. Opera 3.5 does a fine job, considering that this is their first release which attempts to provide support for style sheets. It's Windows only, while the others are available on most platforms.

If you are developing with style sheets, you'll need at least IE4 and Navigator 4, as these are the common platforms which support style sheets. As you progress in your knowledge of style sheets, you'll learn that each have their, well, quirks, to put it kindly. Just because something looks and feels fine in one, doesn't mean that it will even appear in the other.

The Style Sheet Tool

We already know that a style sheet is simply a text file. So, any old word processor or text editor will do the job for developing style sheets.
There are some dedicated tools for developing style sheets, one of which, Style Master, I develop. This is available for the Mac, and Windows (95/98/NT).

Others for the Mac include Cascade, and HexWeb CSS Edit. Others for Windows include CoffeeCup, and StyleMaker.

You might find one of these helps make life easier as you develop style sheets.

The Web Development Tool

You probably already have one of these right? No matter how you develop your style sheet, you are going to have to have access to the actual HTML code. Now don't panic. Even if you've never looked at that stuff, we'll be doing only some very straightforward things that won't hurt a bit.

One thing to keep in mind is that some older WYSIWYG type tools, like Home Page 2 from Apple or FileMaker Inc., I'm not sure who at this stage, will not like a couple of the things we are going to do, so if you use Home Page, it might be an idea to upgrade to the latest version.
Other tools might have similar problems with HTML that they don't recognize.

That's all we'll need.

So, if you've got all the above, it's time to begin.

Next

Next we will create our first style sheet. Ready?