I’m at the MIX conference as I write this, where the pre-conference boot camps are currently taking place. The actual conference doesn’t start until tomorrow, when this place will transform from a relatively idyllic (idyllic for Vegas, anyway) zone into a geek mosh pit with the population density of downtown Tokyo.
It’s still morning here in the Pacific time zone, and right now, there’s a packed room learning about HTML5 and CSS3. We’ve got a good number of people in the room who are diving into this stuff in earnest for the first time – some are coming over from the desktop dev / WinForms world, others are coming from programming on the back end – and I can see from the looks on their faces that they’re feeling a tad overwhelmed. If you’re among this crowd, let me assure you that:
a) CSS eventually does make sense, even when it sometimes does what you don’t expect (hence the “CSS is Awesome” mug, a joke that you’ll soon appreciate and that you can by at Zazzle.com),
b) CSS will make your life as a web designer / developer / whatever easier once you get the hang of it,
c) There are lots of people right here at MIX who’d be happy to answer your questions about CSS, including the Canadian Developer Evangelist team, which includes Yours Truly, John Bristowe and Fred Harper.
Later this afternoon: the jQuery boot camp!