CSS - Or Not

Sorry if this question is a bit dumb - but:

Do you have to use CSS, or is it preferred in ModX, when creating templates?

I’m still going through testing with various aspects of ModX and have been trying to create templates. I use Dreamweaver and find I can add layers and popup and all sorts of goodies easily and they seem to work well with ModX. (Once I worked out the Tags and various codes etc.)

I’ve noticed ALL of the templates I’ve been able to find, use CSS extensively, making it very cumbersome for non-CSS efficient people - like me ,to modify or use.

For example I tried to modify the standard template to be autosizing - I don’t like fixed width layouts - and ended up making a big mess of it.
I then dumped it all into Dreamweaver, removed CSS reference, played around with cells and layouts and done what I wanted to do with no real problems. As soon as I try to do with CSS then it seems to go nuts again.
Its probably just me as I don’t use CSS for more than font and colours etc and hard code everything else when I’m doing sites, but I’m trying to get the basics sorted prior to committing to modx. Its templates seem to be predominately CSS controlled.

No you don’t have to use CSS (though you should )
The beauty of MODx is that you are as free as you would be designing static web pages.

It means you can embed styles, use tables as much as you want in your html templates, though I wouldn’t recommend it
You’d loose much of MODx flexibility by not taking advantage of the clean separation between content and presentation...

My advice is : learn CSS, it won’t take you a lot of time to learn the basics and you’ll quickly get there. The benefits are well worth the efforts !

Personally, I prefer css, and most, if not all, pre made MODx templates will be css based. But if you prefer to use DW when building your templates, by all means use that. One of the nice things about MODx is that you can use whatever you are comfortable with.

You can also go there : http://www.oswd.org/ and make light adaptation to your chosen template.

Very useful to understand by exemple both how CSS works and ModX philosophy.

;)