Why isn't there a program that lets you block off areas on a visual layout image and then you can tell it what it is and let it generate browser compliant code for you?

I believe there are apps that let you do that: Frontpage used to be popular.

However, people tend to resize their browser windows, have different screen sizes, browse the web on smartphones, increase the size of text in their browsers, change default fonts, have computers without the font you specified installed... all of which can cause problems if you've specified particular areas.

Also you have the problem of separating style and content. If your corporate logo changes or the colours change, you don't want to have to go through hundreds or thousands of pages on your site and change them everywhere.

But I don't do much front-end stuff anymore and I've never got the hang of CSS, so I'm no help at all...

For what it's worth, HTML/CSS isn't programming, it's just wading through years of mire, unconventions and hacking away again again again until something works.

CSS frameworks (like the one it sounds like you've been given) can make some of this pain go away, but obviously you need to learn how the framework works first, so being dumped in the deep end like that isn't really a fair reflection on your ability.

Yeah, using CSS is not really "coding."

Seconding chrismear. The CSS "language" is a disaster of clashing "standards."

When I did freelance web programming, I came to loathe fiddling with CSS's more than anything else. Well, object-oriented javascript isn't fun either, but CSS's are the pits. If given the choice between inheriting a previous developer's CSS minefield or recreating it on my own from the ground up (on my own time, of course), I'd often choose the latter route.

If you want to learn to code web apps, I'd recommend focusing on scripting languages like php and perl for awhile. CSS is a very imprecise art that you learn over time and with much agony.

Thanks, guys. :) I think I may be stupider than you give me credit for! LOL Although, it does make sense when it's described as tweaking trial and error & dealing with bug & browser fixes all over the place, because you're right, that is really what it is!

I started with html and dreamweaver a few years ago, always as some ancillary assignment to my regular job, so it was seat of my pants, alone on the battlefield crap. I didn't like bugging the tech guys b/c they were really busy doing the real stuff, so I hacked away on my own, stealing snippets here or there of things I liked and making minor adjustments.

Still - I took a perl class back then, and was surrounded by people who'd been doing C and javascript and all kinds of other heavy duty stuff, and I felt totally over my head. By the 3rd day I was surfing because there was no hope whatsoever of catching up. I dunno - maybe I needed Programming for Dingbats or something!

I'm sure some folks really enjoy it, but it sure is painful to me! All I could think while I was talking with the designer about it, was why can't it be as easy and straightforward as the pencil and paper she's using to show me where she wants the columns, footer and header are? Why can't it be more visual, like dragging a guide line across the screen, then you can attach a tag like "header" or "content", and then just plop images & text in where you want? Like drag & drop? Or better yet, maybe a "pre-gridded" screen where you just arrange the stuff where you want and it translates everything for you, even if you cross gridlines with your content?

Maybe there is something like that, but the whole process strikes me as semi archaic or something. Definitely non human oriented. Is anyone born knowing how to write computer programs? Or is it just that some people are more left brained than others?

Perl also is a mess of a language (yell at me all you want). If you want to learn a sensible language, try C or Pascal for easy starters, just console apps to learn the basics of if/while/functions/etc, then move to Java to do GUI apps. Sensible languages, with some actual structure and reason to them, will make much more sense than CSS, HTML, or Perl. A lot is made of C being a dangerous and difficult language. It can be a little dangerous, but it's dead easy.

Why can't it be more visual, like dragging a guide line across the screen, then you can attach a tag like "header" or "content", and then just plop images & text in where you want?

It can be that simple, if you're producing content for a standard platform. See, for example, Flash. You have one authoring program, which is visual, and you deploy to a standard platform (the Flash player, running under various browsers, on various OSs).

But when you write HTML/CSS, you're writing code that has to be interpreted by several different browsers, each of which has its own slightly unique way of interpreting your code. So there's trial and error and hacksy stuff involved.

Also, HTML was never designed to be a visual language -- all this stuff has been grafted onto it over the years, so trying to do visual layout with HTML is still one huge hack. (And in my opinion, still is, even with CSS. Seriously, what were the people who designed CSS thinking? Bloody W3C living in cloud cuckoo land, etc., etc.)

I'm code-st00pid as well. I'm so lucky my current position is going away soon; my manager found me a much more suitable position for me that doesn't involve coding, reading code, understanding code or anything else code-related. I love him and want to bear his children.