Introduction to CSS
Cascading Style Sheets is known as CSS, handle webpage look and feel. Using CSS, you can control the text color, font style, the distance between paragraphs, the sizing and displaying of columns, the use of background images or colors, layout designs, display variations for different devices and screen sizes, and a range of other effects. CSS is simple to learn and to understand, but it controls the submission of an HTML document powerfully. CSS is usually combined with the HTML or XHTML markup languages.
What is CSS?
You must have seen web pages on the internet. For instance, when you open Facebook, you get an interactive screen where you can see the images, play the video, write comments, and do several activities. Well, my friend, it is what we call a web page. So, to create a web page, we need HTML, a markup language used to create a structure of the web page.
The limitation with HTML is, we can only give shape and size to the web page but cannot make it look attractive, and here is the place where it comes in. It stands for Cascading Style Sheet that allows us to utilize different attributes in order to make the web page look beautiful, attractive, or professional. Changing the structure of the tables or divisions, coloring the text, setting margin and padding, choosing text font are a few things that we can do with the help of this.
This may be defined as the style sheet language that is used to modify the look or structure of the web page. In very simple terms, this is the language that is used to decorate the web page. The web page usually consists of the structure, design, and client site functionality. HTML provides the structure, the client site functionality is provided by a scripting language called JavaScript, and the design is provided by CSS.
The current version of CSS is CSS 4, which was released back on 24 March 2017. The latest version faster than the last version, which was CSS 3. It could not be used alone and must be integrated with HTML to implement its effect. Based on the way of integration of it with HTML, it had three types: Inline, Internal, and External. In Inline, the codes have to be written in the same line; in internal, the codes have to be defined between style tag inside the head tag and an external, the file has to be connected with the HTML page.
How does CSS make Working so Easy?
The cascading style sheet makes the web page interaction a bit easier. It allows us to design the web page to offer a good user experience and allow the user to navigate thing easily. Moreover, it portraits the web page in something decent, which could not be done with merely HTML. In addition to its benefit, it makes the page a bit heavier, but on the other hand, it could also be used accordingly to manage the web page size.
On the one hand, where it offers the ease of work to the users, on another hand, it also provides the ease of implementation to the web designers. Based on how many CSS codes you need to add, you can choose among the inline, internal and external CSS style. With every mode of styling, it offers a very easy mechanism to introduce style on the web page.
What can you do with CSS?
Below are a few points that show the capabilities of CSS.
1. Modifying web page structure
We can change the shape of the table and divs that gives the structure to the web page. It offers the attributes that could be used to curve the vertices of the rectangle and do a lot of such things.
2. Working with font
It allows us to change the font and the color of the text. We can choose either of the colors by merely writing its name in the corresponding attribute. In simple words, it can decorate the texts as well.
3. Improves user experience
By using the cascading style, sheet developer can enhance the quality of web page that will eventually end up with an amazing user experience. It also makes navigation easy for users.
4. Create good effects
By using CSS, one can implement the effects like shadow effect, which makes the things look very attractive. The shadow generation could take part in the structure and the other elements like text as well.
Working with CSS
Here comes the most useful and crucial section, which will give us an idea about how actually we can work with CSS or implement it or integrate the web page with it.
Here we will see how to work with a different type of styling.
1. Inline CSS
In inline CSS, we put the CSS codes in one line along with the HTML tag. Usually, we use the inline CSS when we have to use that format only once or if the formatting needs just a few attributes to be added. Though it is not used very frequently in actual web development, we are supposed to learn everything.
Input:
Output:
- Here is the image for the input; you will be able to see that the codes are written in Lavender color and also present along with the HTML code.
- To provide margin to the heading from left margin-left attribute has been used, and 50 PX is the value of the attribute that defined how long the margin should be.
- To change the color of the heading, the color attribute has been used. Red is the value of the attribute that made the heading looks red.
2. Internal CSS
The cascading style sheet is said to be internal when the features have been assigned to any tag so that wherever the tag is defined, it will by default inherit all the features that are assigned to that tag. To introduce internal, the CSS code has to be written between style tag in the head section.
Input:
Output:
- Here we applied the same attributes in the h1 tag that we had done in the example of inline CSS. The only difference is in the way it has been defined on the web page.
- To implement internal, this code is written between <style> </style>.
- h1 { attributes..} means whatever the attributes are; those will be applied automatically to all the texts were written between the h1 tag.
3. External CSS
It is called external because, in this type, a CSS file has to be created, which is then linked with the web page to introduce the feature of the defined tags. It makes the size of the main web page very light as no CSS codes are required to be written on that web page. All the code will be contained in a separate CSS file which will be linked to that web page.
HTML File Input:
CSS File Input:
Output:
- Here we have created a separate file named test.css, which is linked to the main HTML page using the link tag, and its real and style attribute.
- The attributes have been defined for the h1 tag in the CSS file.
- After the CSS file is successfully linked with the HTML file, it inherited the features of an h1 tag from the test.css file.
Advantages
It adds the decency to the web page. It makes the web page a better interaction platform where users can feel comfortable working with the web application. There are a lot of things that could be achieved by using CSS. We will watch out for some of the common benefits of CSS that makes it a very crucial part of web designing or, specifically, UI development.
- Simplifies user interface: Sometimes the web page that is designed merely using HTML looks very horrible to work with. Adds the amaze to the web page and make it look cool and simple so that the user can focus on their work.
- Decorate the web page: The cascading style sheet language is used for the decoration of the web page so that it could look decent. There are several attributes in the CSS that can be used collectively to design the web page.
- Customize the web page layout: It has various attributes that work with the structure of the web page and make it the way the developer wants. It allows the web designers to customize the application interface so that it could fit the desired domain.
- Easy to integrate: Through this provides us with a lot of benefits, it’s not even a bit tough to integrate CSS with HTML. There are various ways to introduce CSS on the web page, and either could be used very easily.
- Easy coding: We already understood that CSS is not a programming language but a styling language. There are fixed and limited numbers of attributes that one has to remember that make CSS coding really very easy.
Required Skills
Given below are the required skills:
- It is very important to understand what kind of skill set we need to work with it. Well, by this section, we have some idea about what we are going to need in order to code in CSS. But again, we will be going through the skills that can help us in CSS coding.
- As already discussed, CSS is not a programming language, so it’s clear that logic won’t be required here, but yes, it has some set of attributes that are supposed to be remembered. Based on the requirement, you will able to adjust the values for the corresponding attribute, but before we add values to any attribute, we must know what kind of values it accepts.
- To code in this, we should have an understanding of HTML, as CSS is all about integrating it nicely with the layout provided by HTML so that a decent web page could be generated. So that the major skills that we will need to code in CSS.
Scope
It is an evergreen styling language that let us design the web page. We all know that the internet is a big thing in the contemporary period and will keep on growing. As the internet is mainly about accessing the information that is provided by websites, the web designer will keep on getting several opportunities. In addition to be a web designer, one can also grow their career in user interface development.
Who is the right audience for learning CSS technologies?
It is very obvious that anyone who is keen to learn anything could be the best audience but to be more specific, the students having web designing in their subjects could learn CSS. At the professional level, it’s a must technology for the web designers. I have seen many people who always wanted to make their own website so they could also be the best audience for this tutorial or the CSS technology.
How will this technology help you in career growth?
This plays a vital role in web designing. With the exponential increase in internet users, the number of websites is also supposed to be increased. And if the demand is increasing, the opportunities and growth will definitely come vigorously. In the next few years, the number of a web designer is supposed to increase rapidly.
Also, people who work as web designer in any organization becomes very proficient in this technology and usually do the freelancing work as well. Online platforms like Freelancer.com, upwork.com and so on connect the freelancers to the person who wants to hire the freelancers. Web designing is something that could be done remotely as well, so there is a huge chance of getting projects from abroad.
Conclusion
It is the best and crucial part of web designing. It allows the developer to make the web page look much better than it could be made just by using merely HTML. It is the styling language that is capable of working with the structure of the web page and can add various features to the tags to make things look good. It has always been the best among several technologies and will sustain itself in its position for longer.
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