Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

Jermaine Gonzalez
123Triad: Web Design & SEO Company

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is the code that styles web pages. It is a style sheet language often used to describe the look and format of a document that is written in a markup language. Even though it is often overlooked by many amateur web designers, it is a fairly common application that is used to style web pages that may be written in XHTML or HTML. However, CSS is applicable in any kind of XML document.

Some of the things that are often overlooked when it comes to CSS are the differences that are present between inline styles, external style sheets and embedded style sheets. The primary job of CSS is to separate the content in a document from the presentation of the document. This may include elements such as the layout, colors and fonts. This separation makes it easier to access the content, improves flexibility, makes it possible for multiple pages to have the same formatting, reduces complexity and slows the user to have control when specifying characteristics for presentation.

CSS also makes it possible for the same markup page to be presented in different styles for various rendering methods for instance in print, by voice etc. the author of the document is responsible for linking the document to a CSS style sheet but readers of the document can use a different style sheet if they so choose. Specifications of the CSS are maintained by the (W3C); the World Wide Web Consortium.

Syntax

CSS has a syntax that is very simple and it uses a specific number of English words for specification of the different style properties. A style sheet will normally consist of a list of rules. Selectors and a declaration block are contained in each rule or rule set. The elements that a certain style applies to are declared by selectors.

Use of CSS

CSS has simplified HTML markup. It has made it possible to move information like fonts, colors, borders, sizes among others to a separate style sheet. There is now structural defining using HTML of elements like Headings (h1 elements), sub-headings and sub-sub headings. Whether one is printing or working on the screen, one has a presentational choice for elements like the font, size, color etc.

One of the common mistakes made by amateurs in this field is the use of embedded or inline style sheets as opposed to external style sheets. This is mainly because of editors that allow creation of web pages using the drag and drop interface. Doing this makes it more difficult for learners to discover how to code by hand.

Inline and embedded style sheets are found in XHTML documents in the head and body sections. In contrast, external style sheets are a completely separate document. They all perform the same functions but instructions on styling and presentation in external style sheets are linked from an XHTML document as opposed to being contained in the document itself. Having these three styles to choose from gives variety to web designers’ flexibility. However, external style sheets are the most commonly used.

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