CSS Introduction

Here we will show one HTML page displayed with four different stylesheets. Click on the «Stylesheet 1», «Stylesheet 2», «Stylesheet 3», «Stylesheet 4» links below to see the different styles:

Why Use CSS?

CSS is used to define styles for your web pages, including the design, layout and variations in display for different devices and screen sizes.

CSS Example

body <
background-color: lightblue;
>

h1 color: white;
text-align: center;
>

p font-family: verdana;
font-size: 20px;
>

CSS Solved a Big Problem

HTML was NEVER intended to contain tags for formatting a web page!

HTML was created to describe the content of a web page, like:

This is a heading

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.

To solve this problem, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) created CSS.

CSS removed the style formatting from the HTML page!

If you don’t know what HTML is, we suggest that you read our HTML Tutorial.

CSS Saves a Lot of Work!

The style definitions are normally saved in external .css files.

With an external stylesheet file, you can change the look of an entire website by changing just one file!

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CSS first steps overview

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is used to style and lay out web pages — for example, to alter the font, color, size, and spacing of your content, split it into multiple columns, or add animations and other decorative features. This module provides a gentle beginning to your path towards CSS mastery with the basics of how it works, what the syntax looks like, and how you can start using it to add styling to HTML.

Looking to become a front-end web developer?

We have put together a course that includes all the essential information you need to work towards your goal.

Prerequisites

Before starting this module, you should have:

1. Basic familiarity with using computers and using the Web passively (i.e. looking at it, consuming the content.)
2. A basic work environment set up, as detailed in Installing basic software, and an understanding of how to create and manage files, as detailed in Dealing with files.
3. Basic familiarity with HTML, as discussed in the Introduction to HTML module.

Note: If you are working on a computer/tablet/other device where you don’t have the ability to create your own files, you could try out (most of) the code examples in an online coding program such as JSBin or Glitch.

Guides

This module contains the following articles, which will take you through all the basic theory of CSS, and provide opportunities for you to test out some skills.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) allows you to create great-looking web pages, but how does it work under the hood? This article explains what CSS is with a simple syntax example and also covers some key terms about the language.

In this article, we will take a simple HTML document and apply CSS to it, learning some practical things about the language along the way.

Now that you have an idea about what CSS is and the basics of using it, it is time to look a little deeper into the structure of the language itself. We have already met many of the concepts discussed here; you can return to this one to recap if you find any later concepts confusing.

We have learned the basics of CSS, what it is for, and how to write simple stylesheets. In this article, we will take a look at how a browser takes CSS and HTML and turns that into a webpage.

Assessments

The following assessment will test your understanding of the CSS basics covered in the guides above.

With the things you have learned in the last few articles, you should find that you can format simple text documents using CSS to add your own style to them. This assessment gives you a chance to do that.

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HTML Styles — CSS

CSS saves a lot of work. It can control the layout of multiple web pages all at once.

CSS = Styles and Colors

What is CSS?

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is used to format the layout of a webpage.

With CSS, you can control the color, font, the size of text, the spacing between elements, how elements are positioned and laid out, what background images or background colors are to be used, different displays for different devices and screen sizes, and much more!

Tip: The word cascading means that a style applied to a parent element will also apply to all children elements within the parent. So, if you set the color of the body text to «blue», all headings, paragraphs, and other text elements within the body will also get the same color (unless you specify something else)!

Using CSS

CSS can be added to HTML documents in 3 ways:

• Inline — by using the style attribute inside HTML elements
• Internal — by using a element in the section
• External — by using a element to link to an external CSS file

The most common way to add CSS, is to keep the styles in external CSS files. However, in this tutorial we will use inline and internal styles, because this is easier to demonstrate, and easier for you to try it yourself.

Inline CSS

An inline CSS is used to apply a unique style to a single HTML element.

An inline CSS uses the style attribute of an HTML element.

The following example sets the text color of the element to blue, and the text color of the

element to red:

Example

A Blue Heading

Internal CSS

An internal CSS is used to define a style for a single HTML page.

An internal CSS is defined in the section of an HTML page, within a element.

The following example sets the text color of ALL the elements (on that page) to blue, and the text color of ALL the

elements to red. In addition, the page will be displayed with a «powderblue» background color:

Example

This is a heading

This is a paragraph.

External CSS

An external style sheet is used to define the style for many HTML pages.

To use an external style sheet, add a link to it in the section of each HTML page:

Example

This is a heading

This is a paragraph.

The external style sheet can be written in any text editor. The file must not contain any HTML code, and must be saved with a .css extension.

Here is what the «styles.css» file looks like:

«styles.css»:

Tip: With an external style sheet, you can change the look of an entire web site, by changing one file!

CSS Colors, Fonts and Sizes

Here, we will demonstrate some commonly used CSS properties. You will learn more about them later.

The CSS color property defines the text color to be used.

The CSS font-family property defines the font to be used.

The CSS font-size property defines the text size to be used.

Example

Use of CSS color, font-family and font-size properties:

This is a heading

This is a paragraph.

CSS Border

The CSS border property defines a border around an HTML element.

Tip: You can define a border for nearly all HTML elements.

Example

Use of CSS border property:

CSS Padding

The CSS padding property defines a padding (space) between the text and the border.

Example

Use of CSS border and padding properties:

CSS Margin

The CSS margin property defines a margin (space) outside the border.

Example

Use of CSS border and margin properties:

Link to External CSS

External style sheets can be referenced with a full URL or with a path relative to the current web page.

Example

This example uses a full URL to link to a style sheet:

Example

This example links to a style sheet located in the html folder on the current web site:

Example

This example links to a style sheet located in the same folder as the current page:

You can read more about file paths in the chapter HTML File Paths.

Chapter Summary

• Use the HTML style attribute for inline styling
• Use the HTML element to define internal CSS
• Use the HTML element to refer to an external CSS file
• Use the HTML element to store and elements
• Use the CSS color property for text colors
• Use the CSS font-family property for text fonts
• Use the CSS font-size property for text sizes
• Use the CSS border property for borders
• Use the CSS padding property for space inside the border
• Use the CSS margin property for space outside the border

Tip: You can learn much more about CSS in our CSS Tutorial.

HTML Exercises

HTML Style Tags

Tag	Description
	Defines style information for an HTML document
	Defines a link between a document and an external resource

For a complete list of all available HTML tags, visit our HTML Tag Reference.

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