Resources To Help You Improve Your CSS3 Skills

If you are a self-taught web designer you probably don’t know the full power CSS has got. When I began studying web designing on my own, I used a couple of books and videos tutorials. I learnt the basic stuffs I could do with CSS like positioning elements, add images, changing background colors using fonts (even with font, web fonts were not introduced), floating elements, applying paddings, borders and margins. They were fun and very interesting.

I was able to create elegant and good looking web pages until one day someone asked me to teach him about CSS3 transitions and animations. I got surprised and even argued with him that nothing like that existed in CSS3. He proved me wrong by searching online. I said to myself something like that existed and the books I used never taught them. So I decided to research about the things CSS3 could do. I got a lot of information which I want to share with you and the various means to help study them.

Some great things you can accomplish with CSS3 include

1. CSS transformations, transitions and animations. These aspect of CSS3 are very broad but you can learn from the resources I’m going to provide to you. You can create interesting animations and transitions with these CSS3 properties which can also be done using JavaScript.

2. Creating a responsive web design. You can build your web pages to adapt to any screen size. This saves you time and money by not building separate websites for your mobile and desktop platforms.

3. Building web layouts using grid system and flexbox.

Many more things you can learn.

Now some resource to help you study all about CSS3 include:

1. CSS3 The Missing Manual by David Sawyer McFarland

I really adore this book a lot because it has taught me a lot of things I never knew CSS3 could do. I learnt about web fonts, CSS animations, transitions and transformations, responsive design from this book. I used the 3^rd edition but the 4^th edition is out and explores more topics like flexbox, SASS (a CSS preprocessor), and skeleton (a CSS framework). The practical examples makes the book very interesting and fun to read. If you wish to improve your CSS level choose this and you will never regret making such a choice.

2. CSS3 Foundations written by Ian Lunn

This a great book I will recommend to intermediate web designer who wishes to improve his CSS level. This book does the magic by teaching you everything you need to know about CSS3. This book introduces you to the beginning of CSS in clear and concise manner. Right from the beginning you’ll learn about the various CSS selectors, adding backgrounds using CSS, animations, transitions, building webpages for different screen size and many more. Just get this book and your life as web designer will never be the same again.

3. The Book of CSS3 by Peter Gasston

I have never read a book that explains complex concepts in a clear and simple manner like this book. This has help a lot of intermediate designers to become experts in CSS3 and continues to receive good reviews on amazon. At the start of this book the author walks you through the basic introduction of CSS3 and then moves on to more advanced topics like media queries, pseudo classes and elements, text effects and typographic, web fonts, transitions, animations, 3D transformations and many more.

4. CSS Secret: Better Solutions to Everyday Web Design Problems

I just can’t describe how I felt the first time read this book, I was simply amazing to find such information in a single book like this one. This is a book most web designers wish they had. This book can help you improve your level in CSS easily. Topics like visual effects, background and borders, typography, transitions and animation are covered by the author Lea Verou. This a valuable asset any intermediate developer must invest in.

5. CSS3 Pushing the Limits by Stephen Greig

This is another book I will recommend to web designers who wants an improvement in their web designing skills. This masterpiece teaches you what you never knew you could do with CSS. Interesting topics you can learn from this book include advanced CSS selectors, background and borders, CSS3 filters and filters, transformations, transitions and animations, layouts and many more.

6. Teamtreehouse CSS3 Library

Treehouse’s CSS library offers you a wide range of video tutorials on some advanced topics in CSS3. Tutorials on topics such as CSS transitions and transforms, flexbox layout, CSS calc function, layouts, navigations, animation SVG, SASS and so many more are covered. You can sign up today and enjoy 7 days trials. Membership plans include

Basic Plan - $25/month

Pro Plan - $49/month

7. Mastering CSS

Mastering CSS is a video tutorial on O’Reilly.com. The tutor of this video course does an exceptional job by teaching what you need to know about CSS3 and how to implement them in your own web pages easily. Topics you will learn include the basic of CSS3, advanced CSS selectors, navigations and drop down menus, building responsive websites, animations and many more.

8. Lynda CSS3 Library

Another video based CSS3 tutorials I will recommend to designers is Lynda. Lynda.com’s CSS library provides you with numerous advanced CSS3 tutorials. You can watch video tutorials on web fonts, animations, transitions, SASS, flexbox, responsive designing, advanced CSS layouts, CSS grid, web typography and many other advanced tutorials. Payments plans include

Basic - $19.99/month and enjoy 10 days free trial

Premium - $29.99/month and enjoy 10 days free trial

Conclusion

Improving your skills with these resource can add more value to the work you perform. Taking full advantage of these any of these resource can help you build better and elegant websites for your clients. I will be glad to receive any suggest or comments concerning my picks of the best resource to help you as web designer.