Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with stylesheets

Web Design Sans Style Sheets

echo target — Thu, 22 May 2008 13:43:05 -0800

Any tips on web design WITHOUT style sheets? Yes, I know that's crazy talk. I work for a state government agency, and I'm in charge of trying to make our website usable and worth using, neither of which it is now. I'll be working under strict bureaucratic requirements. Essentially, I have nothing to work with but HTML. There is a style sheet, but it does nothing but set a few text properties, and I don't have the ability to change it or add on to it. It's guarded like a Grail.

I know people built pages with nothing more than HTML in the Dark Ages, but that was before I got into web design. I don't know the tricks and techniques of the era.

Does anyone remember their old tricks?

How can I strip out extraneous CSS rules from my stylesheets?

jeremias — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 09:54:49 -0800

How can I strip out extraneous CSS rules from my stylesheets? I've got an external css file that I've modified quite extensively and it's also quite long. I would like to compare the rules in the css file with the div and class tags that I've added in my html and then discard all the css rules that don't apply. So this isn't CSS optimizing like CSS Tidy . . .

Is there anything either on or offline that will allow me to do this?

Help moving TypePad to Movable Type?

apetpsychic — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 15:50:24 -0800

I am looking to switch my blog to TypePad a hosted Movable Type, but am having problems transferring the style sheet. Any tips for moving templates and stylesheets from TypePad into Movable Type? I thought I could just plus the code in from one to the other, but while it gets the basic elements (font, colors) right, it screws up the (really simple, two-column) layout.

CSS Help!

Al_Truist — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 11:54:26 -0800

CSS help: If I have an element that contains two other elements that add up to less width than the container element, should the container element's background color not be visible between those elements? I have an element called #container that is 400px wide. Inside that I have two elements, one 100px wide and one 200px wide. The first is floated left, the second floated right. In between these boxes is 100 px. For me, on all browsers, that space is appearing transparent, rather than the specified background color for #container. Why?

Help me debug this simple CSS problem before I put my head through the monitor!!

anastasiav — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 08:54:07 -0800

IHateCSSFilter: Help me figure out how to fix my website so that the left margin isn't smashed up against the left margin anymore.... I did not write the original CSS for the site, because I've never been able to master CSS, and this is a perfect example of why. I'm sorry if I can't explain this well, but trying to work in CSS always makes my eyes bleed and me want to tear my hair out, despite years of trying to learn how it works.

After having redesigned the site (back in July), I have a bug in it that I can't fix and its driving me crazy - so crazy that I can't look at the site, so I never update it.

I know that changing the pix number in the body margin attribute should fix this, but it doesn't seem to, and I can't figure out why. I know that my main page calls its CSS from a file called "styles-site.css" but changing the margin pix attribute in the styles-site.css file doesn't seem to change anything in the formatting of the site -- or, rather, it does, until I rebuild the site in MT, and then it goes back to 0px for the left margin, and I cannot figure out what it is about rebuilding that is overrding the styles-site.css file.

Can you help me? I'm losing my mind over this.

and please give me answers like I'm your grandmother. I'm apparently too stupid to be any good at anything other than simple html, even after years and years of trying.

Question number 13772

killdevil — Sat, 08 Jan 2005 08:10:08 -0800

CSSFilter: I'm a long-time Web wonk looking to become a CSS maven - my next gig is the development and implementation of a completely modern, table-less design for a fairly big company.

What learning resources out there (on the Web, in print, or otherwise) are the best for someone looking to master the techniques espoused by places like the CSS Zen Garden? What new tools should I consider using? One thing I'm having trouble with in particular: how does the designer mock up a fully CSS/XHTML design? It seems more counterintuitive than the old process of design -> cut-up into table-based layout.

Question number 8917

taz — Fri, 23 Jul 2004 04:53:51 -0800

Hey, CSS Cowboys - spacer help needed! Look here. This is a simple box with three different backgrounds in three fields with no content; the first two need to be exactly 100 pixels tall, and the last one needs to be 200 pixels tall. I am making this happen with transparent spacer .gifs, but I want to eliminate them, if possible. I've tried a couple of things (spacer tag, fer example) that work in Mozilla but not IE; and a couple of things that work in IE (span tags with height declaration, fer example) but not in Mozilla. Padding doesn't work well in either for exact spacing. Can you help me conquer space, the final frontier?

Question number 6088

twine42 — Fri, 26 Mar 2004 03:06:47 -0800

CSS - Does anyone know how to get me around an IE style sheet problem? Mozilla shows the right text box correctly while IE goes off and does it's own thing. Any suggestions?

Question number 4792

will — Wed, 21 Jan 2004 05:12:58 -0800

Anyone know a quick and simple way to convert opml files into html? I've found two good XSLT stylesheets, but the W3C XSLT Service seems to be fudging the links.