Specifications are generally not written to be learnt from directly, at least unless you're a field expert. In fact, the CSS specs are mostly far more readable than, say, the ECMAScript specifications.
The problem is the quick win, beloved by us all, and especially those used to HTML. The ultimate genius of HTML is it low barrier to entry, Write "Hello World" in a text editor, save it, open it in a browser and it displays that text. Add <!DOCTYPE html><title>My Page</title> before it and it'll even pass a validator. Hey, I'm a web developer, me!
So the desire for the quick win in CSS for beginners, and the consequent need for tutorial writers to supply it, means that the fundamentals of CSS get totally skipped by beginners. While most CSS writers would benefit for a proper grounding in the concepts that underpin CSS (I know I did), obtaining it is a challenging exercise, and I only got there by reading and re-reading the CSS 2.1 spec many times. There's definitely a gap for a reader-friendly explanation of CSS concepts, but would anyone read it?
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Well yep, that's true. "Official docs" are crap for a beginner. I think the entry threshold is really high because of that :(
Specifications are generally not written to be learnt from directly, at least unless you're a field expert. In fact, the CSS specs are mostly far more readable than, say, the ECMAScript specifications.
The problem is the quick win, beloved by us all, and especially those used to HTML. The ultimate genius of HTML is it low barrier to entry, Write "Hello World" in a text editor, save it, open it in a browser and it displays that text. Add
<!DOCTYPE html><title>My Page</title>before it and it'll even pass a validator. Hey, I'm a web developer, me!So the desire for the quick win in CSS for beginners, and the consequent need for tutorial writers to supply it, means that the fundamentals of CSS get totally skipped by beginners. While most CSS writers would benefit for a proper grounding in the concepts that underpin CSS (I know I did), obtaining it is a challenging exercise, and I only got there by reading and re-reading the CSS 2.1 spec many times. There's definitely a gap for a reader-friendly explanation of CSS concepts, but would anyone read it?