Website Design Resources Pg2 » Cascading Style Sheets ( CSS )
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For those frustrated with the limited control over document presentation provided by straight HTML markup, CSS are a welcome advance in web design. They are also the official W3C standard for controlling all presentation, leaving HTML markup to indicate structure as it was designed to.
Style sheets allow web authors to apply typographic styles and spacing instructions for elements on the web page. The word cascading refers to what happens when several sources of style information vie for control over the elements on the page - style information is passed down from higher level style sheets (and from parent to child elements within a document) until it is overridden by a style command with more weight.
Style sheets offer the following advantages:
- Greater typography and layout controls.
- Style is separate from structure.
- Potentially smaller documents.
- Easier site maintenance.
- Its easy to learn.
The sole drawback to implementing style sheets remains the uneven browser support. CSS is not supported in browser versions earlier than Microsoft Internet Explorer v3.0 or Netscape Navigator v4.0. The outlook continues to improve with the release of standards-compliant browsers and as older versions of browsers are upgraded.
With an estimated 95% of web users surfing with v4.0 or higher version browsers, you can safely assume that basic styles will reach the vast majority of your audience. However, its still best to carry out testing of your web pages across various versions of each of the major browsers.
For information on CSS visit our CSS tutorial page and the following websites:
Once you've written your web site using CSS you can validate your CSS file using the W3C CSS Validation Service. You may also want to visit the CSS Validator FAQ page as it gives some useful explanations on how to fix problems.
