For the last few days dense13.com has been down due to moving to a new server, but it's online again.

I keep working on the CSS course (catalan version), but at a slow rhythm. I hope I can give english readers some good news sometime in the future.

Hi! For the english readers of WeC I have good news and bad news. The good news are that I've finally started working on Section 4: 'CSS Positioning'. The bad news, unfortunately, that the catalan version goes first, which means that if you can only read the english one you'll have to wait some more (I'll try to keep the waiting short, but I'm afraid it might still be quite a long one).

Anyway, if you're curious to see the table of contents for Section 4 feel free to check it out in the catalan version (I'm sure you can easily understand most of it).

I couldn't stand any longer seeing the sad previous post, so I've decided to get back to work. The idea is to continue (and finish?) the CSS course, and then translate it to english. As a start, I've corrected a few coding errors that caused the site to not validate as XHTML Strict - terrible, I know! :) Now everything should be correct. More news to come in the near future...

Oops, no updates in three months, and what's worse, no progress with the fourth section of the CSS course, nothing new in weC, no new skins for the course... The truth is that February has made my life much busier and I've had to stop working on weC. I'm sure in the future I'll be able to find some time for it again.

In the meanwhile you might want to visit Mycle's web page, where we've opened a new section: 'Instant compositions'. Every two weeks there will be a new piece in mp3, composed and played by Mycle at the moment. Even if I weren't so much related to his web site, I would still recommend that you check it out! And they are free downloads, what are you waiting for?

I've been rewriting a lot of php code to improve session handling. Although this might not sound very exciting for the visitor, it provides the following improvements: now you can change the language (catalan/english) at any time from the CSS course, and you can bookmark or link to any chapter of the course instead of having to go through the index page first.

Why not beginning this year by looking at the old things from a different perspective? More than luck, health or happiness, I want to be really open to what happens around me, and fully love and enjoy every minute instead of hoping that my expectations make me happy.

So as a small symbolic contribution, I want to offer you the possibility to change the way you read the CSS course. From now on there is a new box in the top menu, entitled 'Change skin', with which you can choose among different skins for the course. Right now there are only two, the original blue style, plus an alternative you'll have to see for yourself :), but I will add new skins as I have time. Comments are really welcome!

Let's all enjoy a wonderful new year!

I hope you all had a great Christmas day with your family and friends. With a little free time here and there I've been able to do some modifications to the style sheets of the CSS course. Now the navigation buttons have a little bit of color for the mouseover state. Who needs images when we have CSS?

There are also some accessibility improvements: navigation buttons have more contrast, they use relative fonts (now the whole navigation menu resizes according to the font size - try changing it in your browser!), and I've added the 'title' attribute to describe their destination. Plus the course can now be read in NS4, without style sheets, though. Actually my intention was to make some bigger changes, but there are still a few things to polish, so you'll have to wait a bit more.

CSS Course: start page

Happy 2002 ending, see you next year!

Don't you think that design is not against web standards? For example, don't you think that the design of the W3C homepage is not as attractive as it could (should?) be? Well, now you can DO something about it, by joining the competition at WThremix. The W3C has recently redesigned, moving from a table-based layout to a CSS-layout much more accessible and according to current standards. But again they forgot about the aesthetics. Right, information is the key, but why not make it also attractive? This is the idea behind this contest; redesign W3C's web site using XHTML Strict and CSS, but make it nice and beautiful! - remember of course that navigation and content organization are still the main aspects to have in mind. If you are interested, go to WThremix and read all the details. You can join the ongoing discussion about the contest as well.

At last! The whole translation is now finished! Big thanks go to Kristy Verenga for her thorough revision. All four sections are ready, and now you have no excuse to start mastering CSS!

What's next? I've already done some work on Section 4 (CSS positioning), but this will definitely require time. I have to write it in Catalan, then translate it, and then review it. So I'm afraid you'll have to be patient, unless you're planning to learn Catalan soon. ;)

Please forgive these two months without news, I've been quite busy finishing the translation. Another project I've been involved with is Mycle Heupel's web site (the last improvement is the possibility to add your thoughts in the news section). If you want to check it out, I'd suggest that you visit the 'creativity' section (with samples of his artwork and music), the 'ddt' (a daily changing short-shaking-intense text) and the 'consciousness' section. Don't miss the long list of interesting links either.

Section 2 is now ready, covering CSS selectors. Well, to be honest only the main ones, CSS2 selectors are not yet ready, not even in the catalan version.

Section 3 will probably take more time to translate, although I've already been working on the first chapters. Hopefully in two or three weeks I'll have found the time to finish the whole thing. Come soon to check if there has been any progress.

The translation of the CSS Course continues, and now you can already read Section 1: First steps. This is an introduction to the CSS syntax, covering the different elements of a style sheet and the way to associate style sheets to HTML documents. Finally you'll find a slightly more theoretic but brief discussion about parent and child elements and inheritance.

Section 2 will be uploaded next weekend, and Section 3 should come relatively soon after that. In the meanwhile, enjoy the 'first steps', and feel free to send any comments.

It's been hard work. Translating all this to English wasn't an easy task, but hopefully it was worth the effort, so...

Welcome to weC!

weC was born not long ago (June 2002), as a web page dedicated to web design... in Catalan. In case you were wondering, this is the language we speak in Catalunya, a region in the north-east of Spain. A language not spoken by many people, I know. Which means: not too many visitors for my web page, definitely. What the heck, let's do it anyway! And there I was, writing a CSS course, learning XHTML and doing some Photoshop work.

But the CSS course turned out to be quite extensive, and possibly interesting for other people, and my plans for this site became a bit more serious. So I made the decision: if I want to offer my work to a larger number of people I have to work on an english translation. And I did! There's still much more to do, but I couldn't wait to upload what I have so far (in fact you can only read the course presentation and Section 0 right now). Please feel free to take a look at what you want. I ask for your patience while I work on the rest of the translation.

Let me introduce you to what you can find at weC. Well, to be honest, not too much for now. The most important part of this site is the 'CSS2 Course: CSS en català'. You can read about it in the course presentation. Keep in mind that the english translation is a work in progress, but it will probably be finished soon. You can also check the 'Links' section, with links about all sorts of web-related subjects.

Dense13.com wouldn't exist if Tim Roberts (Wiseguysonly.com) hadn't run his CSS contest; I'd like to thank him for all the help and nice talk since then. I also want to thank Kristy for her invaluable help with this translation.

Any comments or suggestions or critizisms or any other thing you want to say will be really appreciated. Please contact me at wec@dense13.com. I hope that you all enjoy the time you spend at weC, and that you find some interesting things as well. Once again, welcome!

Gonzalo