CSS Essay

Introduction

Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, is a useful tool to enhance web pages. It was created by the World Wide Web Consortium. In CSS, a style is a group of definitions of colors, sizes, etc. A selector activates a certain style.

Advantages and Disadvantages

CSS has many advantages. With CCS, the user can define the look of an entire site in one file, change an entire site easily, redefine HTML tags, shorten coding, create layers, and position content accurately. Disadvantages of CSS are that not all browsers support it and the results look different on different browsers.

Ways CSS Can Be Used

CSS can be placed at three different levels. The level that has the hightest priority is directly inside an HTML tag. The next level is in the head section of an HTML document where the style definitions are enclosed in style tags. The last level is in an external style sheet.

The advantages of internal style sheets include more flexibility and convenience. The advantages of external style sheets include faster loading and control of an entire site in one file. However, external style sheets have less flexibility. Web designers use external style sheets using link tags in their web pages.

There are three kinds of CSS selectors. HTML, or tag, selectors redefine an entire HTML tag. Class selectors redefine HTML tags with the class added in it. ID selectors redefine HTML tags with a unique ID. Selectors can be grouped to share the same style definitions. Context dependent selectors only work in certain contexts.

Things CCS Can Do

CSS can change many elements on a web page. It can easily change the font, weight, size, background, and color of text. It can position and layer elements with precision. CSS can fill the background with color and images. Different links can have different appearances. CSS changes HTML elements from their default option.

Summary

CSS is very powerful in web design. It allows users to have more flexibility in customizing their web pages. Entire web sites can have the same appearance by using external style sheets. CSS can change the properties of the HTML tags that the user selects. This leads to a unique style for everyone's web pages.
© 2005 Toby Hsieh