Water in a Garden: The Style and Substance of Cascading Style Sheets
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Event description
The way some hypermedia object, like a Web page, presents itself is encoded using a language called Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). While CSS is one of the modern Web’s most powerful features, it’s also one of its most misunderstood and misused inventions. In this workshop, you’ll learn important CSS fundamentals that are often missing from most tutorials, like how to understand the concept of document flow, as well as gain insight into the equations and rendering algorithms that determine things like a CSS box’s size, position, and more that are at work behind the scenes in every stylesheet. We’ll also touch on how CSS can be used in contexts beyond HTML including print and mobile app styling, and how to use some more advanced features like media and feature queries, modern layout modules, and other CSS capabilities.
Workshop Description
All physical mediums like print, music, or film can be beautiful, but they will always be constrained by the fact of their analog nature. Digital media—and specifically hypermedia—is different. It can change both its form and its function, simultaneously presenting itself as any one or a combination of multimedia formats without changing its underlying structure. The humble Web page is a good example: it can stretch to fit your screen when viewed in a Web browser, lay itself out on a page to prepare for being printed, and even embed voice cues so it can be more easily listened to when read aloud. All of this is done using a language called Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), one of the most powerful, and most often misused, features of the modern Web.
Although the CSS language itself is decades old now, its origins are even older. Rooted in the idea that form and function can simultaneously coexist in a multitude of different arrangements, CSS makes it possible for a single well-formed digital object to appear in the “best” way to any given viewer (or reader, or listener). This is a radical departure from physical media, like paper, and it requires an equally radical departure from some traditional graphic design paradigms that demands we spend an equal amount of time exploring philosophical issues like “the eye of the beholder” as it demands that we familiarize ourselves with technical implementation details such as the mathematical equations determining when, where, and how to draw specific shapes or colors.
This workshop builds on the concepts of hypertext introduced in Tech Learning Collective’s “The Web as a Language” workshop by speaking of fundamental CSS concepts often omitted from other tutorials, such as “User Agents,” document flow, and rendering contexts. You’ll learn how both the design and the function of your digital creations can benefit from approaching hypermedia more fluidly, so you can work with the CSS rendering engine in most modern graphical programming environments rather than fighting against it. Like water, your Web pages, apps, and other hypertextual creations will be able to flow seamlessly into vessels of any shape, Operating System, or Web Browser vendor.
As this is a remote/online-only event, there is no physical class space, but attendance is still limited to 15 students, so purchase your ticket now to reserve your spot.
To participate in our webinars, you will need access to a modern Web browser such as an up-to-date copy of Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome. You will also need a reliable Internet connection. We recommend disabling Wi-Fi and plugging your computer in to a hard-wired Ethernet network cable for the duration of the webinar, if possible.
If you would like to share your video screen or appear on camera, you will need to have and activate your own camera, such as the one built-in to many modern laptops. Similarly, to speak with the rest of the webinar participants, you will need a microphone. If you do choose to activate your microphone, we ask that you please plug in headphones/ear buds or use a headset in order to help reduce audio feedback loops that can degrade the webinar experience for other participants.
Please refer to our workshops and webinars FAQ for additional tips and advice before you join the video conference.
As with all Tech Learning Collective events, racism, queerphobia, transphobia, sexism, “brogrammer,” “manarchist,” or any kind of similarly awful behavior will result in immediate removal from class without a refund. Please refer to our lightweight social rules for details on our strictly enforced no-tolerance policy against bigotry of any kind.
About Tech Learning Collective
Tech Learning Collective is an apprenticeship-based technology school that trains politically self-motivated individuals in the arts of hypermedia, Information Technology, and radical political practice. We offer unparalleled free, by-donation, and low-cost computer classes on topics ranging from fundamental computer literacy to the same offensive computer hacking techniques used by national intelligence agencies and military powers (cyber armies). For more information and to enroll, visit TechLearningCollective.com.
Performances by
- New York NY United States
Presented by
- New York NY United States