*Online: Responsive Web Design CSS Layout Modules: CSS Grid Basics The New York Public Library

A style declaration contains the properties and their values, which determine how a webpage looks. The style definitions are normally saved in external .css files. When tags like , and color attributes were added to the HTML 3.2
specification, it started a nightmare for web developers. Development of large
websites, where fonts and color information were added to every single
page, became a long and expensive process.

css definition

Instead, the CSS code is used within the HTML code to alter a single element. ID selectors are used to select only a single item on a page. Like the term (“identification”) indicates, ID selectors will ONLY select the first element with a matching ID. In 2003, the CSS Zen Garden project showcased the power of CSS by demonstrating how the same HTML content could be styled in numerous creative ways without altering the underlying structure. This project emphasized the importance of separating content and presentation. External style sheets can be referenced with a full URL or with a path relative to the current web page.

Inline style

In the Introduction to HTML module, we covered what HTML is and how it is used to mark up documents. Headings will look larger than regular text, paragraphs break onto a new line and have space between them. Links are colored and underlined to distinguish them from the rest of the text. Properties are defined within selectors by defining a property and a value. They are separated with a colon and delineated with a semi-colon. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets language and is used to stylize elements written in a markup language such as HTML.

  • This post will attempt to list all common CSS terms, and what they represent in CSS code.
  • Users quickly lose interest in websites that aren’t user-friendly or well-structured.
  • Values may be keywords, such as “center” or “inherit”, or numerical values, such as 200px (200 pixels), 50vw (50 percent of the viewport width) or 80% (80 percent of the parent element’s width).
  • CSS Grid is a CSS layout module that allows you to define two-dimensional layouts based on a grid creation, an arrangement of columns and rows.

Before CSS, nearly all presentational attributes of HTML documents were contained within the HTML markup. All font colors, background styles, element alignments, borders, and sizes had to be explicitly described, often repeatedly, within the HTML. CSS lets authors move much of that information to another file, the style sheet, resulting in considerably simpler HTML. CSS comprises style rules that are interpreted by the browser and then applied to the corresponding elements in your document.

The advantages of CSS and why use it

For an overview of using color in HTML, see Applying color to HTML elements using CSS. Universal selectors are generally discouraged for performance reasons. I’m constantly what is css reminded that as developers we should be consistent in the use of our terms. This post will attempt to list all common CSS terms, and what they represent in CSS code.

css definition

Only a few lines of code are required to dictate the style on a webpage, which speeds up loading time and keeps files relatively lightweight. Lastly, it’s easy for users to learn and update, which makes global changes to style simple and quick. CSS contains rules and values that a web browser can then apply to the content of the webpage in order to correctly display its content. For example, you can use CSS to define that the body section of the page has a blue background, and that the text is displayed in white Helvetica font with a size of 18px. In contrast, website builders that use What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG) software do not require the user to enter any description code – it’s all built in to the platform.

The children will be text nodes as well as those that correlate with the elements. Each node also serves as a parent, each with children in the form of text nodes. The browser will interpret the HTML snippet above as the DOM tree below.

css definition

Combinators are selectors that establish a relationship between two or more simple selectors, such as “A is a child of B” or “A is adjacent to B”, creating a complex selector. Basic selectors are fundamental selectors; these are the most basic selectors that are frequently combined to create other, more complex selectors. CSS documents can be created in any text editor, like Text Editor in Mac or Notepad in Windows, as well as many other free or paid options that you can download.

css definition

For example, CSS lets you control some specifications centrally. This means that similar elements (such as all hyperlinks or images) within a single document can be recognized and formatted using a single command. The design instructions do not have to be in the form of an internal style sheet in the HTML document itself. If you save the CSS instructions in an external stylesheet, i.e., a separate file, this can also be used for other documents. In addition to basic display instructions relating to the colors, shapes, and typography of the HTML elements, there are now more sophisticated modules in CSS. With these you can, for example, define animations or different representations depending on the output medium.



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