How to Master CSS?

This is a complete guide to Master CSS

CSS Curriculum & Resources
Best tips to master CSS
How to make money with CSS?
CSS vs CSS Frameworks Debate
Lots more ...

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Do you want to learn how to master CSS? Maybe you know the fundamentals but want to go deeper. Perhaps you've dabbled in styling websites and want to take it to the next level.

An expert in any field is someone who has spent the time and effort to learn every nook and cranny of that subject so that they can tackle any challenge with ease. If you want to become a CSS expert, keep reading to learn everything you need to know about CSS mastery and becoming an expert.

Experienced Developer Insight by Fredrik Christenson

CSS is one of those technologies that will take you 5 mins to learn & it will take you years and years and years to master

Some people never master it & I can say I'm not some sort of Ninja but I have spent a very good amount of time with CSS when it comes to best practices, architecture, scalability, tips and so on.

This guide is highly subjective and you can come up with your own guide and recommendation.

Why Should You Learn to Master CSS?

CSS is the foundation of every website. CSS is what makes everything work, from the most basic blog to the most complex eCommerce store. You must understand CSS and how to use it if you want to be a successful web designer.

This is especially true in today's web design world, where more and more designers are gravitating toward front-end-only tools that necessitate a thorough understanding of CSS.

Unlike many other design skills, mastering CSS can be useful in a variety of industries. It can not only help you build websites and applications, but it can also teach you how to create mockups and visual concepts. To create your designs and mockups, all you need is a computer, core understanding of css and a code editor.

What does it take to master CSS?

There are no shortcuts to becoming a CSS master. What you do, how you go about it, and the time it takes to master CSS all depend on you. That’s why there is no absolute right path to mastering CSS.

If you want to master CSS, you need to spend time practicing. You need to spend hours reading articles, watching tutorials, and trying new things. You need to challenge yourself and keep practicing until you get things right.

Also, you need to be consistent. You need to practice every day, and you need to keep pushing yourself. Mastering anything takes time, even if you’re learning at a quicker rate than other people.

The path to CSS mastery is a long journey that is different for everyone. How long it takes to become a CSS master will depend on your skill level when you start. It will also depend on your learning style and what works best for you.

There is no single path to mastering CSS. Instead, there are many points that you can choose to go down on the journey to CSS mastery.

There are a few essential steps that you need to take before you can start mastering CSS. First, you need to understand what CSS is and how it works. You can’t master something if you don’t know the basics. Before you can truly master CSS, you need to understand its origins and how it came to be. You need to know about its history, who created it, and why it was developed. You also need to understand the various limitations of CSS, and how to deal with them. This will help you better understand how to use CSS in the real world.?

I understand the fundamentals of CSS, but I'd like to know what the core skills are that I should learn and improve on.

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Tips to Master CSS

1. Give respect to the CSS, the way it is structured. In other words, don't forget the CSS is a global namespace.

2. Use BEM or utility class naming convention

3. How cascade work?

4. specificity rules

5. reset

6. normalization

7. Learn CSS pre-processor like SASS or post CSS for better project setup and extra features.

The above tips are not about making sites prettier, though making things nice is a good thing. Instead, the above tips help you maintain CSS projects for a longer period of time.

Making things prettier and nicer, you will learn but having long term maintenance is the key factor.

Things you should know about learning structure

Learn which is relevant
You don't need to dive deeper into every topic. There are certain things you should have surface knowledge that's it.
Dig more about core concepts
To learn fast, do that thing a lot
Don't change what works for you

The best way to obtain knowledge is from an experienced professional in that field. "Life is a Reflection," according to me - this is a general quote from which anyone can derive a different interpretation.

In my opinion, we create things on top of existing things or we create the same thing in a different way. "The Web as a Whole is Re-Creation."

"With the little mind, no one can comprehend the knowledge that exists within the universe."

Are you feeling painful to learn CSS?

Well, learning css is not painful but writing good maintainable css code is challenging.

Consider, few tips below to reduce your css pain

* How does the cascade work?

* What is css specificity?

Next, learn Responsive Design Layouts

* Media queries

* Positioning

* Relative units such as %, em, rem

* Mobile first

* Flexbox & Grid

When you understand how the above things work, move on to architecture part. I recommend BEM or utility first architecture.

From then it's all about putting into practice.

The best way to practice it, take an arbitrary website & make static version of the page using html & css.At first, don't worry about making it work just copy paste the html & css code & focus on css part.

After that, try making same website without checking browser developer tools, write all the css and when you are done see how you did.

Is CSS the biggest issue in Front-end development?

No, it's not the biggest issue but it's one of the part of issue in whole frontend development stack.

CSS is one of the layer in Front-end development.If you don't write maintanable css then css can be the biggest issue.

Biggest issue in Front-end development stack

The major issue in front-end development is to: how to take care a codebase for a long period of time.

The issue is not making a nice looking and responsive page because anyone with skills can do that, but maintaining code for the long run and best practices in the frontend, which is why companies hire senior developers to look over their codebase and train their juniors to adopt best practices, for example, they may hire just to fix their frontend code.

The issue is not the quality of the software, but rather how to maintain the code in a sustainable way over time, such as adding or removing features without breaking the entire codebase.

Frontend dev don’t think long term healthy project, they don’t think about:

* Performance

* Naming convention

* Testability

* How many dependencies I have to maintain

And the solution is, keep the code maintainable over time.

write the code with other people’s minds. Yes, it makes sense to you but who’s gonna take care of it after you. Your colleague yes.

Learn & practice above tips that will help you to write scalable css code.

The main issue with the frontend is sustainability over time. The frontend is more tech-death a hundred times worse in general at least what I have seen than it is in the backend world.

Browser Compatibility Issue

Is it possible to create a website that supports all browsers? Find from experienced programmer by Fredrik Christenson from his channel

What is vanilla CSS & CSS Frameworks?

Vanilla CSS - pure css without frameworks & liabraries is a style sheet language that is used for laying out and formatting HTML documents in a manner consistent with the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) style sheet standard, CSS. Vanilla CSS is the original CSS style sheet language and is the most widely used style sheet language.

CSS Frameworks are the css code written by somebody else in specific paradigm to make development faster.

CSS frameworks are a great way to organize and structure your CSS. Frameworks offer conventions for naming and formatting your CSS rules, and they can help you to more easily maintain your styles.

Some popular CSS frameworks include Foundation, Bootstrap, Tailwind and Skeleton.

When using a CSS framework, you should generally only include the files that are specific to that framework. For example, if you're using Foundation, you would include the foundation.css file, but you wouldn't include the style.css file.

CSS vs CSS Frameworks

Beginner should stick to css at first.
You'll lack fundamental of CSS, if you directly learn any CSS Frameworks.
Frameworks like Tailwindcss classes placed directly in html markup which makes html file more verbose & untidy.
Bootstrap or Tailwindcss framework break the "separation of concern" coding principle.
Core CSS Knowledge can help you to create new awesome CSS Framework wherese CSS Frameworks itself built on pure(vanilla) CSS. So CSS Framwork can't give you how things work under the hood. Core CSS skills can help you to create new style guide for your team.easeCSS is custom css framwork based on core css skills.
By default Backend Developers love CSS Frameworks to get instant UI on their page because for backend devs, UI doesn't matter much so they just copy paste from css framework docs.
Some CSS Framework like Foundation is designed for email template development wherese CSS can't do that because email development don't support modern css like flexbox & grid also there is cross browser compatability issue.
CSS framework is best when you don't want any customization like backend dev.
Adding your own css code in css framework need some manually setup to customize it.
CSS Frameworks like tailwindcss provide the consistent approach of doing things that hepls team to stay on the same practice wherese css best practice differs in every company.
Putting css classes directly in html markup makes debugging difficult.
CSS Frameworks saves a lot of time by throwing a bunch of classes in html markup.
You don't need to worry about cross browser compatability in css frameworks wherese you need to take care a lot of browser compatability while writing pure css code.
By default css frameworks provide best code optimization.
CSS Frameworks like tailwindcss is awesome.Vanilla css can be really messy sometimes & vice versa.

Note: Consider the above points & choose what's best for your project

Reason to Ignore CSS Frameworks

What you can do with framework can also be achieve through css which helps not to use framework.

Learn Modern CSS - Flexbox & Grid
Learn Best practices - BEM or utility-first approach
CSS has separation of concern coding standard
Debugging & maintanance is easy because of separate css file
Use pre-processor like SASS or LESS for better structure
Create your own style guide with utility first approach or use exisiting guide of google
Learn core css skills to build next css framework

Reason to ignore Vanilla CSS

Actually, pros of css frameworks make to ignore vanilla css.

By default code optimization is not there
Require you to manually take care a cross browser compatability
Hard to provide unique css classname
Best practices differs
Not best choice for backend developers

Reason to choose css framework - Tailwindcss

Actually, cons of css helps to choose css framework.

Best code optimization capability by default
Support of cross browser compatability
Fast UI development
Helpful plugins & advance features are available
Best for backend devs for fast prototype

Which is the best CSS framework?

The short answer is Tailwindcss.

Choosing the best CSS framework is not a straightforward task. There are many frameworks out there that are competing with each other. Some of them are more popular than others and some of them have more features than others.

There are many CSS frameworks available in the market today. So which one is best?

The answer to this question largely depends on the project requirements and needs. For instance, if you need a framework that is lightweight, more features & functionality, fast & highly customizable, then Tailwindcss would be the best option.

But if your project don't need much customization, then Bootstrap would be the best choice.

Note: If you have been using bootstrap or any other then continue using it. Switching from one framework to another is not a condition. We have a lot of frameworks that does same thing.

Resources, What to Learn & How to Learn CSS

On the Web:

* text
* colors
* images
* videos
*animation
* shapes

Note: The above list are common things that you'll find on the web in a different or more interactive way like text can be a link, bold, italic and so on. Recognizing which is text, video or image on the web is the first part in web development.

When you visit web page, you should know which type of element is on web page.

Networking

Who maintains CSS?

What is internet, web, and network?

Web browser introduction

Who owns the internet?

HTTP and SSL?

IP vs Local Network

Proxy & Cookies

What are Domain and Hosting?

What is URL and how the website loads in our browser?

What are clients and servers?

What is a peer-to-peer connection?

Code Editors

what is an extension/plugin?

what is a file extension?

Editor vs Code Editor?

Code editor vs IDE

VS Code

Atom

Bracket

Notepad++
Cloud Editor like Codepen

HTML

overview of html

use case

learn semantic tags

html-5 structure

elements