CSS Tutorial
CSS Tutorial
CSS Tutorial
What is CSS?
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets Styles define how to display HTML elements Styles were added to HTML 4.0 to solve a problem External Style Sheets can save a lot of work External Style Sheets are stored in CSS files
CSS Demo
An HTML document can be displayed with different styles.
CSS Syntax
A CSS rule has two main parts: a selector, and one or more declarations:
The selector is normally the HTML element you want to style. Each declaration consists of a property and a value. The property is the style attribute you want to change. Each property has a value.
CSS Example
CSS declarations always ends with a semicolon, and declaration groups are surrounded by curly brackets: p {color:red;text-align:center;} To make the CSS more readable, you can put one declaration on each line, like this:
Example
p { color:red; text-align:center; }
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CSS Comments
Comments are used to explain your code, and may help you when you edit the source code at a later date. Comments are ignored by browsers. A CSS comment begins with "/*", and ends with "*/", like this: /*This is a comment*/ p { text-align:center; /*This is another comment*/ color:black; font-family:arial; }
The id Selector
The id selector is used to specify a style for a single, unique element. The id selector uses the id attribute of the HTML element, and is defined with a "#". The style rule below will be applied to the element with id="para1":
Example
#para1 { text-align:center; color:red; }
Example
.center {text-align:center;}
You can also specify that only specific HTML elements should be affected by a class. In the example below, all p elements with class="center" will be center-aligned:
Example
p.center {text-align:center;}
Do NOT start a class name with a number! This is only supported in Internet Explorer.
When a browser reads a style sheet, it will format the document according to it.
An external style sheet can be written in any text editor. The file should not contain any html tags. Your style sheet should be saved with a .css extension. An example of a style sheet file is shown below: hr {color:sienna;} p {margin-left:20px;}
body {background-image:url("images/back40.gif");}
Do not leave spaces between the property value and the units! "margin-left:20 px" (instead of "margin-left:20px") will work in IE, but not in Firefox or Opera.
Inline Styles
An inline style loses many of the advantages of style sheets by mixing content with presentation. Use this method sparingly! To use inline styles you use the style attribute in the relevant tag. The style attribute can contain any CSS property. The example shows how to change the color and the left margin of a paragraph: <p style="color:sienna;margin-left:20px">This is a paragraph.</p>
And an internal style sheet has these properties for the h3 selector: h3 { text-align:right; font-size:20pt; }
If the page with the internal style sheet also links to the external style sheet the properties for h3 will be: color:red; text-align:right; font-size:20pt;
The color is inherited from the external style sheet and the text-alignment and the font-size is replaced by the internal style sheet.
inside an HTML element inside the head section of an HTML page in an external CSS file
Tip: Even multiple external style sheets can be referenced inside a single HTML document.
Cascading order
What style will be used when there is more than one style specified for an HTML element? Generally speaking we can say that all the styles will "cascade" into a new "virtual" style sheet by the following rules, where number four has the highest priority: 1. 2. 3. 4. Browser default External style sheet Internal style sheet (in the head section) Inline style (inside an HTML element)
So, an inline style (inside an HTML element) has the highest priority, which means that it will override a style defined inside the <head> tag, or in an external style sheet, or in a browser (a default value).
Note: If the link to the external style sheet is placed after the internal style sheet in HTML <head>, the external style sheet will override the internal style sheet!
CSS Background
CSS background properties are used to define the background effects of an element. CSS properties used for background effects:
Background Color
The background-color property specifies the background color of an element. The background color of a page is defined in the body selector:
Example
body {background-color:#b0c4de;}
name - a color name, like "red" RGB - an RGB value, like "rgb(255,0,0)" Hex - a hex value, like "#ff0000"
In the example below, the h1, p, and div elements have different background colors:
Example
h1 {background-color:#6495ed;} p {background-color:#e0ffff;} div {background-color:#b0c4de;}
Background Image
The background-image property specifies an image to use as the background of an element. By default, the image is repeated so it covers the entire element. The background image for a page can be set like this:
Example
body {background-image:url('paper.gif');}
Below is an example of a bad combination of text and background image. The text is almost not readable:
Example
body {background-image:url('bgdesert.jpg');}
Example
Body { background-image:url('gradient2.png'); }
If the image is repeated only horizontally (repeat-x), the background will look better:
Example
Body { background-image:url('gradient2.png'); background-repeat:repeat-x; }
Example
Body { background-image:url('img_tree.png'); background-repeat:no-repeat; }
In the example above, the background image is shown in the same place as the text. We want to change the position of the image, so that it does not disturb the text too much. The position of the image is specified by the background-position property:
Example
Body { background-image:url('img_tree.png'); background-repeat:no-repeat; background-position:right top; }
Example
body {background:#ffffff url('img_tree.png') no-repeat right top;}
When using the shorthand property the order of the property values are:
It does not matter if one of the property values is missing, as long as the ones that are present are in this order. how to set a fixed background image. The image will not scroll with the rest of the page.
background-attachment
Sets whether a background image is fixed or scrolls with the rest of the page Sets the background color of an element
background-color
background-image
background-position
xpos ypos inherit background-repeat Sets if/how a background image will repeat be repeated repeat-x repeat-y no-repeat inherit 1
Text Color
The color property is used to set the color of the text. The color can be specified by:
name - a color name, like "red" RGB - an RGB value, like "rgb(255,0,0)" Hex - a hex value, like "#ff0000"
Example
body {color:blue;} h1 {color:#00ff00;} h2 {color:rgb(255,0,0);}
For W3C compliant CSS: If you define the color property, you must also define the backgroundcolor property.
Text Alignment
The text-align property is used to set the horizontal alignment of a text. Text can be centered, or aligned to the left or right, or justified. When text-align is set to "justify", each line is stretched so that every line has equal width, and the left and right margins are straight (like in magazines and newspapers).
Example
h1 {text-align:center;} p.date {text-align:right;} p.main {text-align:justify;}
Text Decoration
The text-decoration property is used to set or remove decorations from text. The text-decoration property is mostly used to remove underlines from links for design purposes:
Example
a {text-decoration:none;}
Example
h1 h2 h3 h4 {text-decoration:overline;} {text-decoration:line-through;} {text-decoration:underline;} {text-decoration:blink;}
It is not recommended to underline text that is not a link, as this often confuses users.
Text Transformation
The text-transform property is used to specify uppercase and lowercase letters in a text.
It can be used to turn everything into uppercase or lowercase letters, or capitalize the first letter of each word.
Example
p.uppercase {text-transform:uppercase;} p.lowercase {text-transform:lowercase;} p.capitalize {text-transform:capitalize;}
Text Indentation
The text-indentation property is used to specify the indentation of the first line of a text.
Example
p {text-indent:50px;}
line-height
letter-spacing
text-align
center justify text-decoration Adds decoration to text none underline overline line-through blink length % none color length Controls the letters in an element none capitalize uppercase lowercase normal embed bidi-override Sets the vertical alignment of an element baseline sub super top text-top middle bottom text-bottom length % normal pre nowrap normal length 1 1
text-indent
text-shadow
text-transform
unicode-bidi
vertical-align
white-space
word-spacing
CSS Font
CSS font properties define the font family, boldness, size, and the style of a text.
On computer screens, sans-serif fonts are considered easier to read than serif fonts.
generic family - a group of font families with a similar look (like "Serif" or "Monospace") font family - a specific font family (like "Times New Roman" or "Arial") Font family Description Serif fonts have small lines at the ends on some characters
Times New Roman Georgia Arial Verdana Courier New Lucida Console
Sans-serif
"Sans" means without - these fonts do not have the lines at the ends of characters
Monospace
Font Family
The font family of a text is set with the font-family property. The font-family property should hold several font names as a "fallback" system. If the browser does not support the first font, it tries the next font. Start with the font you want, and end with a generic family, to let the browser pick a similar font in the generic family, if no other fonts are available. Note: If the name of a font family is more than one word, it must be in quotation marks, like fontfamily: "Times New Roman". More than one font family is specified in a comma-separated list:
Example
p{font-family:"Times New Roman", Times, serif;}
Try it yourself
For more commonly used font combinations, look at our Web Safe Font Combinations.
Font Style
The font-style property is mostly used to specify italic text. This property has three values:
normal - The text is shown normally italic - The text is shown in italics oblique - The text is "leaning" (oblique is very similar to italic, but less supported)
Example
p.normal {font-style:normal;} p.italic {font-style:italic;} p.oblique {font-style:oblique;}
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Font Size
The font-size property sets the size of the text.
Being able to manage the text size is important in web design. However, you should not use font size adjustments to make paragraphs look like headings, or headings look like paragraphs. Always use the proper HTML tags, like <h1> - <h6> for headings and <p> for paragraphs. The font-size value can be an absolute, or relative size. Absolute size:
Sets the text to a specified size Does not allow a user to change the text size in all browsers (bad for accessibility reasons) Absolute size is useful when the physical size of the output is known
Relative size:
Sets the size relative to surrounding elements Allows a user to change the text size in browsers
If you do not specify a font size, the default size for normal text, like paragraphs, is 16px (16px=1em).
Example
h1 {font-size:40px;} h2 {font-size:30px;} p {font-size:14px;}
Try it yourself
The example above allows Firefox, Chrome, and Safari to resize the text, but not Internet Explorer. The text can be resized in all browsers using the zoom tool (however, this resizes the entire page, not just the text).
The size can be calculated from pixels to em using this formula: pixels/16=em
Example
h1 {font-size:2.5em;} /* 40px/16=2.5em */ h2 {font-size:1.875em;} /* 30px/16=1.875em */ p {font-size:0.875em;} /* 14px/16=0.875em */
Try it yourself
In the example above, the text size in em is the same as the previous example in pixels. However, with the em size, it is possible to adjust the text size in all browsers. Unfortunately, there is still a problem with IE. When resizing the text, it becomes larger than it should when made larger, and smaller than it should when made smaller.
Example
body {font-size:100%;} h1 {font-size:2.5em;} h2 {font-size:1.875em;} p {font-size:0.875em;}
Try it yourself
Our code now works great! It shows the same text size in all browsers, and allows all browsers to zoom or resize the text!
font-size/line-height font-family caption icon menu message-box small-caption status-bar inherit font-family Specifies the font family for text family-name generic-family inherit xx-small x-small small medium large x-large xx-large smaller larger length % inherit normal italic oblique inherit normal small-caps inherit normal bold bolder lighter 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 inherit 1
font-size
font-style
font-variant
font-weight