Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a fancy term for a document that works along side a web page to tell the computer how content is to be displayed. Cascading Style Sheets are a huge step forward from traditional HTML web page writing in that when a person uses CSS the formatting and layout of things on the page are controlled not by statements in the web page file but instead by options set in the CSS file. The two pieces are both required in order for a web page to display properly. At first glance this may seem to make things more difficult to write but in the long run, using CSS makes writing cohesive, attractive web sites much easier.
What Does A CSS File Do?
CSS files contain options for displaying elements on a page. In traditional HTML the size and font face of text was controlled with a statement such as:
font size="4"
Having to write such size options into each individual section of the web page made the page larger and load slower. It also had the problem that changing making changes to one page of a site often meant going through all of the other pages as well to make even minor changes to the site template or layout. CSS solves this problem by removing these formatting options from the HTML file. The CSS file with the formatting information is then linked to all of the site's pages through a statement in the page's header. When a designer decides to change the font size or color of a part of the template he or she can change all of the pages on the entire site by making a change in the CSS file.
What Does A CSS File Do?
CSS files contain options for displaying elements on a page. In traditional HTML the size and font face of text was controlled with a statement such as:
font size="4"
Having to write such size options into each individual section of the web page made the page larger and load slower. It also had the problem that changing making changes to one page of a site often meant going through all of the other pages as well to make even minor changes to the site template or layout. CSS solves this problem by removing these formatting options from the HTML file. The CSS file with the formatting information is then linked to all of the site's pages through a statement in the page's header. When a designer decides to change the font size or color of a part of the template he or she can change all of the pages on the entire site by making a change in the CSS file.
