The title says it all. For me, I could learn a lot more - but I feel like I know enough to get by. How much do you guys know about HTML and CSS?

HTML - I teach it
CSS - Enough to hate it.

Originally Posted by marketingman100

CSS - Enough to hate it.

To each his own. Keep your tables, but don't go throwing dirt on CSS.


As far as how much you really need to know... It all depends on how much you want to do.

I know enough HTML to do pretty well for myself. You *really* just need to know div, span, img, a, iframe, meta (debatable), table (preferably not for layout), field, input, and textarea. There may be a few I left out, but those are the most common ones I use.

And for CSS... Well, I learn new things on almost every project. There's tons you can do with it. Try new things, test out new attributes. It'll help you find the best way to do stuff.

Live and learn: try making new designs. Try something really hard. You'll learn a ton, and you'll either give up on it and have learned some new things or actually finish it and feel really smart and accomplished

HTH,
~Trey

HTML is simple. I learned pretty much everything there is to know, and would recommend everyone to do the same. I learned most of CSS too. The hardest part is making it work in an efficient manner with valid code. It takes imagination and determination.

Anyway, I would learn everything I could it would help you out a lot.

bigcat1967,

How much HTML and CSS do you really need to know? It’s a fantastic question, I really like this question. According to quality of html and css forums, you need to know anything. Just you need to do is to ask questions at these forums.

Most of us just trying hard to answer your question at a proper way, to be useful for you. Just kidding.

It’s enough to know just basic html and css, and appearance of your web pages and site will be good enough.

If you would like to have doctype strict, tableles layout design and your html markup to be validated 100%, you have to learn much more.

Originally Posted by treyk4

To each his own. Keep your tables, but don't go throwing dirt on CSS.~Trey

Whatcha goina do Trey, report me to the CSS police.

The more you know about html and css the better. I think, if you want to call yourself a web designer, than you need to know your stuff. Image a tailer know nothing or just the fundamentels about clothing.
CSS is definitivly important (I wouldn't believe saying this by myself 3 years ago) because having the style description divided from the content is so important, especially for search engines!

Originally Posted by Pixel King

...having the style description divided from the content is so important, especially for search engines!

I disagree with this statement. Although I'm a big advocate of separating style, markup, and behavior, search engines definitely don't care how you style your page, or what you use to lay-out your site.

You can get by with minimal knowledge of CSS but, IMO, I have saved myself a lot of time "fixing" things after a site was done rather than understanding and avoiding the problems in the first place.

If someone is able to charge clients for 3 hours of time because they weren't sure about how to fix something in CSS, then by all means, keep struggling and getting paid for it.

This is a good question so I would say to just keep learning CSS. Any time you get a few minutes, read up on it. Subscribe to blogs like http://css-tricks.com/ or others and you'll see that a few minutes a day can really make a difference. It not only helps cut back on repair time(IE 6 if you bother), it allows you more creative control over how your site is presented.

Also realize that many javascript(or frameworks like jQuery) neat techniques require a good deal of CSS knowledge to really customize.

Finally, if you are thinking of designing Wordpress themes (or many other CMS's), you'll really be glad to have a good grasp of CSS, cuz they've got an endless amount of classes!

Hope this helped!

PS - if there really were CSS police, I'd have been locked up years ago! Ha!

Originally Posted by racer x

Also realize that many javascript(or frameworks like jQuery) neat techniques require a good deal of CSS knowledge to really customize.

And it's not just for the libraries, but in the not so far future, you will be able to leverage your knowledge of CSS in raw javascript:

var nodeList = document.querySelectorAll("div#main>ul li a");
for(var i = 0; i < nodeList.length; i++) {
//iterate over the array
}

In the above example, each item in the variable nodeList will be an A element inside a LI that is inside of a UL that is an immediate child of a DIV with an ID of "main".

querySelectorAll already works in IE8, FF3.5+, Safari 3.1+, Chrome 1.0+, and is slated for Opera 10.

The difference between the JavaScript engines and the libraries, is that querySelectorAll() relies on the browser's native CSS support, while selectors such as the one run by Sizzle (jQuery's recent selector engine upgrade) have no such restriction.

What it comes down to is what level of web designer do you want to be?

HTML/XHTML you should have memorized and understand completely.
CSS will eventually be as crucial though right now I see it as a fledgling
that still needs perfection.

If you decide you want to do moderate to high end sites, you are going to have to learn additional things like Javascript, Perl, MySQl, PHP, and on it goes.

Personally, I never use Javascript in new designs. Though i do know how to fix something that is broken in a client's site if they used Javascript before I acquired their business. The same goes with PHP and MYSQL though I am now learning both for my personal sites and new sites I want to create that are database driven.

The more you know, the more you will make.

I will make one other suggestion that others here should concur with. You also need to learn about business and multiple fields. thanks to my background and experience, I can walk comfortably into almost any scenario. I know something about dozens of industries. Not too many coders can say that. That ability helps
me understand quickly exactly what the customer wants to do whether it is something technical or something marketing related.

If all you want to do is code web pages, extra side skills don'tmatter much, but if you wantto be a full service consultant to your customers, the more you know
themore opportunity you will have to earn a buck.

They are both very limited languages, and with a few months of teaching yourself HTML and CSS to style you will know almost everything you need; I suggest getting DreamWeaver, but not using the Design section of it. The reason of this is because it suggests things.

BACKGROUND-REPEAT: (REPEAT | REPEAT -Y | REPEAT -X | NO REPEAT)

They are both very limited languages

They are NOT "languages"!!!

with a few months of teaching yourself HTML and CSS to style you will know almost everything you need

You will know the BASICS, but you will not truly KNOW either, especially CSS, until you've used it extensively for quite some time.

BACKGROUND-REPEAT: (REPEAT | REPEAT -Y | REPEAT -X | NO REPEAT)

Dreamweaver is far from the only program that provides this sort of help/suggestions.

They are both very limited, and with extensive work with them you should know what you would need to know for creating something, and using Dreamweaver will suggest you what is possible to use.

I believe the distinction LnR was making is that HTML, though it has language in its name, is not a language in the traditional definition; ie a programming language such as Perl. And we already know your opinion on CSS. What's that phrase I recall that involves a deceased equine? Really, just because you don't see much use for CSS doesn't mean that those of us who learned to code for THIS century can't use it and use it well.

@KellyAX -- Not using Dreamweaver in design mode is a good choice, but for different reasons than you give. If you create something in design mode in DW, then try to see what code it puts out as an example of good HTML and CSS, you're already shooting yourself in the foot. DW nails everything down in the CSS with absolute positioning for one, a really bad choice. Fluid layouts, with floats and clears that use the natural document flow are a far sight better. Some examples of pages to learn from by deconstructing them can be found at CSS Zen Garden, or CSSPlay for menus, among others.

tim