One of the biggest stumbling blocks for me when I design websites is how to use CSS. You find yourself tweaking and tweaking a site until it gets to a state that you like, and if you aren't using good tools, this tweaking process can be more tedious than it needs to be. Thankfully (and this is going to sound like an advertisement for Chromium and maybe Chrome too for you Windows/Mac folks) you can do some really advanced CSS sandboxing using just Chromium. I was shocked by the power of the editing capabilities packed into this browser. It's so easy to change CSS options and preview instantly! Start with a good template and tweak from there.If you start off with a really good template, you probably won't have much to tweak. If you build your template from scratch without the help of fancy software like Dreamweaver, this will also save you time. Also, you'll learn a lot about how CSS works! Clear some room on your resume for the knowledge you'll gain working with CSS. Once you have a basic template down (there are many free templates floating around, the one I'm using is the WorldGroup template from www.free-css.com), you can start tweaking your CSS.
You can scroll over the tags in your HTML, and Chromium will even highlight which element they connect to with the upper portion of your screen. To tweak options,
None of these tweaks are saved, so be sure to jot down the attributes that you like for your site. This mode is really a sandbox mode, which can help you rapidly prototype and change colors on the fly. I use this mode when I'm working with customers. They'll be unhappy with a color, and I'll change it right then and there! |