http://www.glish.com/css/9.asp
I usually block out my desired page look into large "containers", and work from there, link there shows an example of displaying two containers side-by-side, which in your case, lefty can be rezised down and be used as your sidebar, and right can be all your content.
It took some messing around in other people's codes before I learned how some techniques are used, and applied them to my own little site.
That's the beauty of it, makes it easy to have skins and the sorts, or modify minute details, or fix compatibility issues with browsers more efficiently.
That and the fact it's a craaaaapload neater code-wise than using a bunch of nested tables in plain' HTML.
Just a small recommendation though, don't learn CSS using Internet Explorer as the preview-device, because odds are, the page will look completely broken in every other browser.
I usually block out my desired page look into large "containers", and work from there, link there shows an example of displaying two containers side-by-side, which in your case, lefty can be rezised down and be used as your sidebar, and right can be all your content.
It took some messing around in other people's codes before I learned how some techniques are used, and applied them to my own little site.
It doesn't look any better than html to me, besides being able to change multiple pages at once.
That's the beauty of it, makes it easy to have skins and the sorts, or modify minute details, or fix compatibility issues with browsers more efficiently.
That and the fact it's a craaaaapload neater code-wise than using a bunch of nested tables in plain' HTML.
Just a small recommendation though, don't learn CSS using Internet Explorer as the preview-device, because odds are, the page will look completely broken in every other browser.