CSS layout

Hi guys,

I'm not sure if this is the correct forum to post in, as you can probably see I'm new around here.

I have googled and read a tonne of articles on css and what the best layout is to use. As a beginner in CSS I was wondering if any one would like to offer their opinions? I'm trying to ensure that the site I'm working on is compatible with 98% of the main web browsers people use e.g. IE, Firefox, Chrome etc and I'm not sure what the easiest/best option would be.

Should I be attempting a relative layout, using percentages for widths etc and ems for text size, use pixels or a mixture of both?

Hope this has made sense! I think I am just to the point where I am over-thinking what I'm doing.

Cheers

Personally i use percentages and pixels for my layouts only because i have never really gotten the grasp of ems. 2 column layouts are going to be your best bet starting out, they're easier to code and they still look good. No matter what you do though with css you're always going to run into problems with Internet Explorer, its a crap browser that all Windows users have and 75% of the people who run windows use IE so sometimes you're going to have to find the hacks for ie and make ie specific style sheets... Every designer should know how to make their sites cross browser compatible, it sucks but we have to do it to prove our skills

Cheers for that! I have never really used ems until this latest project either. I started out in photoshop before I got into trying to code my own sites so I'm definately more comfortable with pixels. It's good to see that it's ok to use pixels and percentages from a design point of view as well. I'm currently studying through uni and have about 3 different tutors who contradict each other constantly on this. Unfortunately for me, any projects I use for uni work have to be IE compatible without hacks ... doh! Your post was really useful, so thank you very much for the advice.

Cheers

Kate

Anytime. When i was in school we had to make our sites IE compatable as well... sucked as i used firefox XD

I always use pixels to size everything including fonts.

if you're going to make a printer friendly version though i would suggest using point values for font size.

i usuallly use a fixed width for wrapper like 980px but percentage on
all inner div.

so when you main wrapper extend to 1000px or so the inner div also follow or adjust fit them.

Exercises, tests, prototypes - use percentages, ems, pixels, whichever suit the project more.

Commercial work - use pixels only, until you learn css,
then start using ems for text column width, and so on.