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CSS Tutorial
This CSS tutorial covers everything from basic styling concepts and selectors to
advanced techniques, such as flexbox, grid, animations, and CSS variables. This CSS
tutorial is designed to help both beginners and experienced designers to make them
masters in creating visually appealing, responsive, and modern web designs.
What is CSS
CSS is the acronym for "Cascading Style Sheet". It's a style sheet language used for
describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language like HTML. CSS
helps the web developers to control the layout and other visual aspects of the web
pages. CSS plays a crucial role in modern web development by providing the tools
necessary to create visually appealing, accessible, and responsive websites.
CSS Versions
Since the inception of CSS, several versions have came into existence. Some of the
notable versions include:
CSS1 (Cascading Style Sheets Level1) - The initial version of CSS, released in
December 1996. CSS1 provided basic styling capabilities for HTML documents,
including properties for text, colors, backgrounds, margins, and borders.
CSS2 (Cascading Style Sheets Level2) - Released in May 1998, CSS2
introduced new features such as positioning, z-index, media types, and more
advanced selectors like attribute selectors and child selectors.
CSS2.1 - The version 2.1, published as a W3C Recommendation in June 2011,
clarified and refined CSS2, addressing inconsistencies and ambiguities in the
specification. CSS2.1 focused on improving interoperability among web browsers.
CSS3 (Cascading Style Sheets Level 3) - CSS3 is a collection of modules that
extend the capabilities of CSS. It introduces numerous new features and
enhancements, including advanced selectors, multiple column layouts,
animations, transformations, gradients, shadows, and more.
CSS4 (Cascading Style Sheets Level 4) - CSS4 is an ongoing effort to extend
CSS3 with new features and enhancements.
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Each version of CSS builds upon the previous ones, adding new features and refining
existing capabilities to meet the evolving needs of web developers and designers. CSS is
referred as just CSS now, without a version number.
Types of CSS
Inline CSS: Inline CSS is applied directly to an HTML element using the style attribute.
It has the highest priority among the three methods.
Example
Open Compiler
<p style="color: blue; font-size: 16px;">
This line is an inline-styled paragraph.
</p>
Internal CSS: Internal CSS is defined within the <style> tag inside the <head> section
of an HTML document.
Example
Open Compiler
<head>
<style>
p { color: green; font-size: 18px; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<p>This line is styled using internal CSS.</p>
</body>
External CSS: External CSS is written in a separate .css file and linked to the HTML
document using the <link> tag. This is the recommended method for large projects as it
improves maintainability.
Example
<!-- HTML file -->
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css">
</head>
<body>
<p>This line is styled using external CSS.</p>
</body>
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/* styles.css */
p { color: red; font-size: 20px; }
Advantages of Using CSS
Responsive design - CSS offers features like media queries that enable
developers to create responsive layouts that adapt to different screen sizes and
devices, ensuring a consistent user experience.
Flexibility and Control - CSS provides precise control over the presentation of
HTML elements, allowing developers to customize layout, typography, colors, and
other visual properties.
Consistency and Reusability - Developers can ensure consistency across the
entire website, by defining styles in a central CSS file. Styles can be reused
across multiple pages, reducing redundancy and making updates easier.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - CSS can be used to structure content in a
way that improves search engine visibility.
Ease of Maintenance - Centralized CSS files make it easier to maintain and
update styles across a website. Changes can be applied globally, ensuring
uniformity and reducing the risk of inconsistencies.
Faster Page Loading - External CSS files can be cached by browsers, resulting
in faster page loading times for subsequent visits to a website. This caching
mechanism reduces server load and bandwidth consumption.
Components of CSS
CSS works by associating rules with HTML elements. A CSS rule contains two main parts:
a selector which specifies the HTML element(s) to style.
a declaration block which contains one or more declarations separated by
semicolons.
Each declaration includes a property name and a value, specifying the aspect of the
element's presentation to control.
CSS Example
Just to give you a little excitement about CSS, here is a sample CSS snippet for your
reference.
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Open Compiler
<html>
<head>
<title>CSS Tutorial</title>
<style>
h1 {
color: #36CFFF;
}
p {
font-size: 1.5em;
color: white;
}
div {
border: 5px inset gold;
background-color: black;
width: 300px;
text-align: center;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div>
<h1>Hello World!</h1>
<p>This is a sample CSS code.</p>
</div>
</body>
</html>
In the above CSS snippet:
h1, p, and div are the selectors that target the <h1>, <p>, and <div>
elements.
color, font-size, border, background-color, width, and text-align are the
properties.
#36CFFF, 1.5em, white, 5px inset gold, black, 300px, and center are the
corresponding values passed to these properties.
For a quick glance of CSS properties and features, check our CSS Reference page.
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Getting Started with CSS
Below listed topics are most important to learn in CSS from basics to advance, after
completing these topics you will able to style your HTML document as you want. We
highly recommend you to do practice with CSS by modifying the provided code in this
tutorial.
CSS Basics
Understanding the basics is important whenever you are learning something new. So
before diving deep into CSS please know fundamentals of CSS.
CSS Introduction
CSS Syntax
CSS Selectors
CSS Inclusion
CSS Comments
CSS Properties
CSS properties and selectors are the main thing in CSS, without the properties there is
no ways to define the styling of any HTML element. So better to know most frequently
used properties in one go will help you to work with CSS.
CSS Background
CSS Border
CSS Display
CSS Float
CSS Font
CSS Line Height
CSS Margin
CSS Opacity
CSS Overflow
CSS Padding
CSS Position
CSS Align
CSS White Space
CSS Width
CSS Height
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CSS Outline
CSS Visibility
CSS Counter
You can get complete list of CSS Properties on the attached link.
CSS Advanced
After completing the above two section you can proceed with the advance part of this
tutorial, these topics will helps you to make an actual website layout.
CSS Animation
CSS Gradient
CSS Transition
CSS Tooltips
CSS Arrow
CSS Grid
CSS FlexBox
CSS Responsive Design
CSS @Media Query
CSS 2D Transforms
CSS 3D Transforms
CSS Pseudo Classes
CSS Practice
The following are some of the important links to practice CSS:
CSS Interview Questions
CSS Online Quiz
CSS Online Test
CSS Mock Test
CSS Cheatsheet
Prerequisites to Learn CSS
Before using CSS extensively, it is essential to have a baisc understanding of the
following prerequisites:
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HTML - A fundamental understanding of HTML markup is necessary. This includes
knowledge of HTML elements, attributes, tags, and their hierarchical structure.
Text Editors or Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) - In order to
write to write your CSS code, a text editor or an IDE is required. Popular choices
include Visual Studio Code, Sublime Text, Atom, or integrated editors within IDEs
like IntelliJ IDEA or Eclipse.
Browser Developer Tools - Familiarizing yourself with browser developer tools
can help you understand how styles are applied and troubleshoot layout issues.
Basic Environment Setup - Basic understanding of creating and managing files,
along with saving and organizing them on your computer.
If you are new to HTML and XHTML, then we would suggest you to go through our HTML
or XHTML Tutorial first.
Target Audience: Who Should Learn CSS?
This tutorial has been prepared for beginners and professionals to help them understand
the basics to advanced concepts of CSS. After completing this tutorial, you will find
yourself at a great level of expertise in CSS, from where you can take your web design
skills to the next level.
Frequently Asked Questions about CSS
There are some very Frequently Asked Questions(FAQ) about CSS, this section tries to
answer them briefly.
What is the Full form of CSS?
CSS stand for Cascading Style Sheet.
What is the purpose of CSS?
CSS are used to style or decorate the web pages, it will help you to create a beautiful
website. CSS specify how an HTML element should be displayed on the web page. If you
think of the human body as a web page then CSS is styling part of the body.
Is there any alternative of CSS?
Yes, there are CSS frameworks which can be used as an alternative of CSS. But you can
not replace the main CSS without having knowledge of basic CSS.
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What is the current version of CSS?
The current version of CSS is 3.0 but CSS 4.0 is an ongoing effort to extend CSS3 with
new features and enhancements.
Is there any disadvantage of CSS?
Yes, CSS can't provide maximum security, or you can say the purpose is not to provide
that kind of security for your website. Lots of browsers required different properties for
the same functionality(cross-browser issue).
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