Introduction To CSS

Introduction To CSS

Cascading Style Sheets which is in a better way known as CSS, is a very simple designed process which is used for making the web pages a lot more presentable. CSS allows you to put styles to customize your web pages. The best part about making use of this styling feature is that the CSS is independent of the HTML way of creating web pages. The basic difference between the Hypertext Markup Language and the Cascading Style Sheets is that the former is mainly known to provide the structural way of the landscape to the web page while the former is meant to provide a powerful color coding and styling techniques. It is used to control the layout of more than one web page all at once. All the external stylesheets are stored in the form of CSS files.

Main Components of CSS

In the Above Section, we have studied about Introduction to CSS, So now we are going ahead with the main components of CSS are as below:

1. Easily maintainable: If you are intended to make any global change, simply change the styling and you can see all other elements in all other webpages getting automatically updated.

2. CSS is time-saving: You can just write the script once and reuse the same sheet as much time as you want.

3. Superior styles to native front end: CSS has comparatively a much wider array of attributes and list if compared to HTML. Therefore the HTML page can have a brighter look and feel if compared to the normal HTML attributes.

4. Ease with Search Engines: CSS is considered as a very convenient and an easy to read styling sheet. This means, that the search engines don’t have to put in a lot of efforts in trying to read the text.

5. Efficient cache storing: CSS can be used to store the web applications locally with the help of offline cache mechanism which can be used to view the offline websites.

Characteristics of CSS

As we discussed the introduction to CSS and Its component. now we are going to learn about the characteristics of CSS. The major characteristics of CSS include styling rules which are interpreted by the client browser and applied to various elements in your document. Major characteristics include:

1. A style rule consists of a selector component and a declaration block component.
2. The selector is used to point to the HTML component which you want to get styled.
3. Inside the declaration block, one or more declarations are contained along with semicolons.
4. Every declaration which is put has a CSS property name, a semicolon, and a value. For example, color is the property and the value is red in color. Font size is the property and the 15px is the value.
5. CSS declaration ends with a semicolon and these blocks are surrounded by curly braces.
6. CSS selectors are the ones which are used to find HTML elements which are based on the element name, id, attribute, class and more.
7. One unique element will be selected by the ID of an element.
8. If you wish to select the particular element with a specific id, the # function along with the id attribute should be used.
9. If you wish to select the elements with a specific class, the period character along with the name class should be written.
10. Universal selector: If you are not interested in choosing the elements of a certain type, the universal selector simply matches with the element name.
11. Element selector: These selectors choose the element based on the element name.
12. Descendent selector: When a particular element lies inside another element, then it is called as the descendent selector.
13. ID selector: This selector uses the id of the HTML element so that a specific element could be selected.
14. Class selectors: It selects the element with a specific class attribute.
15. Grouping selectors: It will be a good option to group the selectors so as to minimize the code. Each selector along with a comma should be used to group the selectors.

Applications of CSS

After learning the Introduction to CSS and the characteristics of CSS we are going to learn the application of CSS. There are three ways of HTML accessing CSS:

1. Inline:

An inline style sheet is only used to affect the tag it is in. This essentially means that the small details on the page can be changed without changing the overall layout of the page or everything on the page. This is advantageous as if you had everything on the external pages, then you would be required to add additional tags to change details. Inline overrules external which means that the small details can be changed. It also overrules the internal.

2. Internal:

The internal would only be used when you wanted to add a small change in the single tag. This is because inline only affects the one tag that is contained within it whereas the internal styling is put on the head of the HTML document. This means that if you wish to customize the page, all the required changes would be seen by just scrolling. The internal styling is placed inside the tags. Comparatively, this looks neater, simple, elegant and organized because of the separate styling and tagging.

3. External

External stylesheets are used to allow people to format and recreate their webpages on an entirely different document. This effectively means that you can have two or more workplaces, as more than one stylesheet can be embedded inside the document thereby providing you a much cleaner workspace. The stylesheet would be easily accessible in this case which is a huge advantage but on the other hand, any changes done in the external sheet would affect all the parent sheets it is linked to.

Advantages And Disadvantages Of CSS:

Advantages of CSS

1. Device Compatibility
2. Faster website speed
3. Easily maintainable
4. Consistent and spontaneous changes
5. Ability to re-position
6. Enhances search engine capabilities to crawl the web pages

Disadvantages of CSS

1. Cross-browser related issues
2. Vulnerable
3. Issues due to multiple levels
4. Lack of security
5. Fragmentation

Conclusion – Introduction to CSS

CSS gives the power to the web designer so that extensive changes could be given to the web layout of all pages in a single website by making use of just a single file. It helps in designing light and a creative website with high responsiveness and which impresses the audience when displayed. Therefore, it is an integral part of the websites today which should not be overlooked.

Recommended Articles

This has been a guide on Introduction to CSS. Here we have discussed the main components, characteristics, advantages, and disadvantages of CSS. You may also look at the following articles to learn more –

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