One of the most important functions of CSS is to change the appearance of the text and typography on a website. CSS has a standard cascade algorithm to determine which instructions take precedence. For example, you might initially define the appearance of all paragraphs and then create another CSS selector with declarations that apply to only a specific class or category of paragraphs. You could then use CSS to define the appearance of all of the team biographies by referencing this class as a selector in your rule set.īecause CSS is a cascading styling language, later declarations can replace or add onto earlier ones. These, as you’ll see below, use semicolons to isolate each directive. Here’s some basic CSS for beginners:ĬSS groups instructions into declaration blocks that are enclosed by opening and closing braces.

There are well over 100 different property types in CSS and an infinite number of possible values.Įach value-and-property pair constitutes a declaration. The second is value, which describes how a browser’s CSS engine should depict the property on a webpage. The first is property, which identifies the website feature under consideration. CSS SyntaxĬSS syntax encompasses two primary components.

Let’s review some basics you’ll need to cover as you learn CSS. It also allows for quick changes if a web designer needs to increase a site’s default text size, for example, they could enact the change in a matter of moments by editing a style sheet. This capability saves developers the trouble of defining every detail of each page manually and facilitates a more even, cohesive design. Once a style is defined in a Cascading Style Sheet, it can be applied to any page that references that CSS file. Instead, developers use CSS because it can extrapolate a specific style choice across multiple pages. That said, CSS’s main draw isn’t its ability to define basic formatting - after all, modern HTML can do that. CSS defines nearly every aspect of formatting you could think of, from determining fonts to setting table sizes and default text size.

Since then, CSS has become a standard means of determining a website’s appearance and design elements.Ĭascading Style Sheets, or CSS, is frequently used in tandem with HyperText Markup Language (HTML) to define page layouts and appearance. But even then, the technology wasn’t complete - another decade would pass before the language evolved into the iteration we use today. However, it would take another two years for Lie and his design partner, Gijsbert (Bert) Bos, to create a functional version of CSS. Lie’s original concept was well-received for its simplicity and ability to “cascade” formatting decisions out over several pages. But today, HTML usually only provides the underlying structure of a site, whereas CSS now gives developers control over their site’s design choices.Ĭascading Style Sheets (CSS) was first proposed in October 1994 by Håkon Wium Lie, a Norwegian web pioneer who was frustrated by the lack of styling options available in web development. Before CSS, web developers had to rely on HTML alone to determine visual aspects - and even then, the results weren’t great. CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is a tool that allows web developers to define layouts, adjust fonts and colors, add effects and thoroughly customize the appearance of HTML-constructed websites.

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