Omniversity of Manchester

Course time: 10am - 5:30pm Saturday.

Advanced CSS will take you further in your knowledge of CSS. In this course you’ll look at a range of subjects including multi-column layouts, flexbox, advanced web font usage, CSS sprites, advanced positioning, responsive web design, CSS3 transitions, transforms and animation - and more.

This course is suitable for students and others wishing to gain new skills, as well as web designers and developers that want to update their skills to modern best practices and get a feel for what CSS3 has to offer.

What you need to be familiar with

Advanced CSS assumes that you are already familiar with HTML and CSS basics, and want to go further, learning advanced techniques to add to your web design toolkit, and becoming familiar with cutting edge CSS3 features.

If you are a beginner to CSS, we would advise you to attend our CSS Basics course first.

Learning outcomes

After completing the class, you will have learned:

• A knowledge of advanced CSS techniques
• An understanding of several CSS3 features
• A thirst to explore further, and experiment with modern technologies

Equipment you’ll need

• Yourself. Refreshments will be provided.
• A laptop of some kind. Mac, Windows or Linux is fine.
• A decent text editor - this is all you need to build web pages. We recommend:
  • Windows: Notepad++ (free), EditPad Lite (free)
  • Mac: Text Wrangler (free), Textmate (£), Coda (££), Expresso (££)
  • Linux: Bluefish, KompoZer (all free, of course)

  Note: You can use an expensive web creator tool like Dreamweaver, should you have one installed. But expect to use it to edit code, not drag and drop.

• A graphics package - we will be talking a little bit about graphics for the web, as far as different formats, and resizing images are concerned. It would make sense for you to have a graphics package available. We recommend:
  • Windows: IrfanView (free), GIMP (free), Fireworks (£££)
  • Mac: GIMP (free), ImageMagick (free), Fireworks (£££)
  • Linux: GIMP (free), ImageMagick (free)
• The latest available web browsers (all free). We'd recommend:
  • Windows: Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox, Chrome
  • Mac: Opera, Safari, Firefox, Chrome
  • Linux: Opera, Firefox, Chrome
• An FTP program, which is used to upload your web page files up to the web, so they can then be viewed by others on the web. We recommend:
  • Windows: Filezilla (free)
  • Mac: Cyberduck (free)
  • Linux: Filezilla (free)

Suggested preparatory work

• Install the software described above on your laptop
• Bring some text and images you’d like to put on a web page. It could be your CV, a short story you’ve written, information on your favourite band or pictures of your family
• Start reading up on web development. A good place to start for beginners is the Opera web standards curriculum

Costs and times

The course costs £100. You will receive an electronic copy of the teaching materials, software, and programmes. You will also receive free hosting courtesy of MadLab to test and refine your site. Lunch and refreshments are provided.

Further information

Advanced CSS course syllabus