CSS is a style sheet that determines the appearance and feel of web pages. Using CSS, you can control text color, font style, paragraph spacing, column sizing, display variations, display variations for different devices and screen sizes, and more. CSS is easy to learn and understand, but it controls HTML documents powerfully. The CSS markup language is usually combined with HTML or XHTML.
What is CSS?
There is no doubt that you have seen web pages on the internet. As an example, when you open Facebook, you get an interactive screen with images, videos, comments, and more. The page you’re looking at is what’s known as a web page. To create a web page, we need HTML, a markup language used to create the structure of the page.
The limitation of HTML is that it can only be used to give web pages shape and size, but it cannot be used to make them look attractive. A Cascading Style Sheet allows us to make a web page look beautiful, attractive, or professional by utilizing different attributes. With the help of this tool, we can change the structure of the tables or divisions, color the text, set margins and padding, and choose text font.
The style sheet language modifies the look and structure of a web page in a very simple way. A web developer uses this language to decorate a website. Structure, design, and functionality of the client site are typically included on the web page. CSS provides the design, JavaScript provides the functionality, and HTML provides the structure.
See More: What is HTML – Exploring Advanced HTML Techniques
How Does CSS Work
After loading and parsing, HTML information and CSS style are combined in two stages. First, the browser converts them into Document Object Models (DOM). A browser will display content once the DOM, which represents the content and style of the page in memory, is ready.
Once the HTML document has been parsed, the code is placed in a DOM. It describes the entire website, including siblings, parents, and kids. It divides the header links that contain CSS files when parsing. After being split, the CSS files are loaded in the next phase. When CSS files are loaded, they are parsed; however, there is a slight variation from how HTML files are parsed.
CSS files are processed in two steps, which are a little more complex. The first phase involves resolving conflicts between CSS declarations, typically cascading.The process of combining multiple CSS files and resolving inconsistencies between different rules and declarations applied to the same element is what it entails. The second stage is the processing of final CSS values.
Types of CSS (Cascading Style Sheet)
The three types of CSS are as follows:
- Inline CSS: Inline CSS includes the CSS property in the body section attached to the element. A style attribute specifies this kind of style within an HTML tag.
- Internal or embedded CSS: Embedded CSS allows HTML documents to be styled uniquely. The CSS rule set should be contained in the head section of the HTML file, within the style tag within the header section.
- External CSS consists of separate CSS files that contain only style properties using tag attributes (for example, class, id, heading, …) Each CSS property is stored in a separate file with the extension .css and should be linked to the HTML document. For each element, style can only be set once and will apply across all web pages.
The benefits of CSS
Separating content code from style code has multiple benefits. A few of these are:
- Developers can save huge amounts of time and avoid mistakes by applying the same CSS styling to different pages and page elements across a website. Changing a site-wide style requires just a few lines of code.
- A lot more styling options are available with CSS than with HTML; you can do a lot more than HTML permits. You can customize a website exactly to your liking with a clear vision, CSS expertise, and some patience.
- A developer or designer can understand the styling for any website by looking at the CSS files since CSS is a uniform language for styling web pages.
- Performance is improved: CSS reduces the amount of repetitive styling code. By reducing code, you’re able to create smaller files, and smaller files are faster to load.
History of CSS
Only basic styling options were available in HTML, including bold and italic text, and the layout and positioning of elements were difficult to control. In 1996, the first CSS version was introduced by Hkon Wium Lie, a researcher at CERN.
The original CSS specification, CSS1, was designed to separate presentation from content on a web page. As a result of this separation, it was easier to manage and update the appearance of a website, and designers could create more complex layouts and designs.
CSS continued to evolve and improve in the years that followed. A new layout option, positioning and floating, was added to CSS2 in 1998, as well as new styling options such as background images and borders. However, CSS really began to take off with CSS3 in 1999. In CSS3, a number of new features and capabilities were introduced, including media queries, animations, and transitions. A responsive, interactive, and visually stunning website was possible with these new tools, which were previously impossible with HTML alone.
CSS continues to evolve, adding new features and capabilities with each new version. A number of CSS preprocessors have also emerged, making it easier to create complex stylesheets and manage them.
Final thoughts
CSS is one of the most important aspects of web design. Developers can customize the appearance of web pages beyond that possible with HTML alone. It works with the structure of the web page and adds various tag features to create visually appealing elements. In the long run, it will remain one of the top technologies.