Web Standards [The Basics Part One] - CSS

CSS, Cascading Style Sheets, is a breakthrough in Web design because it allows developers to control the style and layout of multiple Web pages all at once. As a Web developer you can define a style for each XHTML element and apply it to as many Web pages as needed. To make a global change, simply change the style, and all elements in the Web are updated automatically.

CSS design represents a new, much more powerful way to lay out websites. Traditionally, cumbersome tables have been used to present web pages. Within most site redesigns this practice is being strictly faded out to be replaced by CSS design.

What is CSS?

• CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets
• Styles define how to display XHTML elements
• Styles are normally stored in Style Sheets (external and/or internal files)
• Styles were added to HTML 4.0 to solve a problem
• External Style Sheets can save you a lot of work
• External Style Sheets are stored in CSS files
• Multiple style definitions will cascade into one

Using CSS design allows our pages to download more quickly, makes our website much easier to manage, and has numerous web usability, accessibility and search engine optimization benefits.

Benefits of CSS Design

• Faster Download Speed (reduce bandwidth costs)
• Higher Search Engine Ranking
• Flexible, and a fairly logical language, easy to use and to implement.
• Offers site-wide, rich styling.
• Keeps the structure of a document.
• Increase in reach and accessibility
• Compacts the file size by reducing HTML ‘clutter’ and
• Reduces the time spent for maintaining and changing the site.

To learn more: CSS Tutorial

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