CSS

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
language used for specifying the presentation and
styling of a document written in a markup language
such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such
as SVG, MathML or XHTML).[2] CSS is a cornerstone
technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML
and JavaScript.[3]
Icon for CSS3[1]
CSS is designed to enable the separation of content and
presentation, including layout, colors, and fonts.[4]
This separation can improve content accessibility,
since the content can be written without concern for its
presentation; provide more flexibility and control in
the specification of presentation characteristics; enable
multiple web pages to share formatting by specifying
the relevant CSS in a separate .css file, which reduces
complexity and repetition in the structural content; and
enable the .css file to be cached to improve the page
load speed between the pages that share the file and its
formatting.

Separation of formatting and content also makes it Example of CSS source code
feasible to present the same markup page in different Filename .css
styles for different rendering methods, such as on- extension
screen, in print, by voice (via speech-based browser or Internet text/css
screen reader), and on Braille-based tactile devices. media type
CSS also has rules for alternate formatting if the Uniform Type public.css
Identifier (UTI)
content is accessed on a mobile device.[5]
Developed by World Wide Web
The name cascading comes from the specified priority Consortium (W3C)
scheme to determine which declaration applies if more Initial release 17 December 1996
than one declaration of a property match a particular Latest release CSS 3 is being developed
element. This cascading priority scheme is predictable. as multiple separate
modules. Regular
The CSS specifications are maintained by the World snapshots (https://www.w3.
org/TR/CSS/) summarize
Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Internet media type their status.
(MIME type) text/css is registered for use with 7 December 2023
CSS by RFC 2318 (March 1998). The W3C operates a Type of format Style sheet language
free CSS validation service for CSS documents.[6] Container for Style rules for HTML
elements (tags)
Contained by HTML Documents
Open format? Yes
In addition to HTML, other markup languages support Website w3.org/TR/CSS/#css (http
the use of CSS including XHTML, plain XML, SVG, s://w3.org/TR/CSS/#css)
and XUL. CSS is also used in the GTK widget toolkit.

Syntax
CSS has a simple syntax and uses a number of English keywords to specify the names of various style
properties.

Style sheet
A style sheet consists of a list of rules. Each rule or rule-set consists of one or more selectors, and a
declaration block.

Selector
In CSS, selectors declare which part of the markup a style applies to by matching tags and attributes in
the markup itself.

Selector types
Selectors may apply to the following:

all elements of a specific type, e.g. the second-level headers h2

elements specified by attribute, in particular:
id: an identifier unique within the document, denoted in the selector language by a hash
prefix e.g. #id
class: an identifier that can annotate multiple elements in a document, denoted by a dot
prefix e.g. .classname (the phrase "CSS class", although sometimes used, is a
misnomer, as element classes—specified with the HTML class attribute—is a markup
feature that is distinct from browsers' CSS subsystem and the related W3C/WHATWG
standards work on document styles; see RDF and microformats for the origins of the
"class" system of the Web content model)
elements depending on how they are placed relative to others in the document tree.
Classes and IDs are case-sensitive, start with letters, and can include alphanumeric characters, hyphens,
and underscores. A class may apply to any number of instances of any element. An ID may only be
applied to a single element.

Pseudo-classes
Pseudo-classes are used in CSS selectors to permit formatting based on information that is not contained
in the document tree.

One example of a widely used pseudo-class is :hover, which identifies content only when the user
"points to" the visible element, usually by holding the mouse cursor over it. It is appended to a selector as
in a:hover or #elementid:hover.
A pseudo-class classifies document elements, such as :link or :visited, whereas a pseudo-element
makes a selection that may consist of partial elements, such as ::first-line or ::first-
letter.[7] Note the distinction between the double-colon notation used for pseudo-elements and the
single-colon notation used for pseudo-classes.

Combinators
Multiple simple selectors may be joined using combinators to specify elements by location, element type,
id, class, or any combination thereof.[8] The order of the selectors is important. For example,
div .myClass {color: red;} applies to all elements of class myClass that are inside div
elements, whereas .myClass div {color: red;} applies to all div elements that are inside
elements of class myClass. This is not to be confused with concatenated identifiers such as
div.myClass {color: red;} which applies to div elements of class myClass.

Summary of selector syntax

The following table provides a summary of selector syntax indicating usage and the version of CSS that
introduced it.[9]
 First
defined
Pattern Matches
in CSS
level

E an element of type E 1

an E element that is the source anchor of a hyperlink whose target is

E:link 1
either not yet visited (:link) or already visited (:visited)

E:active an E element during certain user actions 1

E::first-line the first formatted line of an E element 1

E::first-letter the first formatted letter of an E element 1

.c all elements with class="c" 1

#myid the element with id="myid" 1

an E element whose class is "warning" (the document language

E.warning 1
specifies how class is determined)

E#myid an E element with ID equal to "myid" 1

.c#myid the element with class="c" and ID equal to "myid" 1

E F an F element descendant of an E element 1

* any element 2

E[foo] an E element with a "foo" attribute 2

E[foo="bar"] an E element whose "foo" attribute value is exactly equal to "bar" 2

an E element whose "foo" attribute value is a list of whitespace-

E[foo~="bar"] 2
separated values, one of which is exactly equal to "bar"

an E element whose "foo" attribute has a hyphen-separated list of

E[foo|="en"] 2
values beginning (from the left) with "en"

E:first-child an E element, first child of its parent 2

an element of type E in language "fr" (the document language specifies

E:lang(fr) 2
how language is determined)

E::before generated content before an E element's content 2

E::after generated content after an E element's content 2

E > F an F element child of an E element 2

E + F an F element immediately preceded by an E element 2

an E element whose "foo" attribute value begins exactly with the string
E[foo^="bar"] 3
"bar"

an E element whose "foo" attribute value ends exactly with the string
E[foo$="bar"] 3
"bar"

E[foo*="bar"] an E element whose "foo" attribute value contains the substring "bar" 3

E:root an E element, root of the document 3

E:nth-child(n) an E element, the n-th child of its parent 3

 E:nth-last-
an E element, the n-th child of its parent, counting from the last one 3
child(n)

E:nth-of-type(n) an E element, the n-th sibling of its type 3

E:nth-last-of-
an E element, the n-th sibling of its type, counting from the last one 3
type(n)

E:last-child an E element, last child of its parent 3

E:first-of-type an E element, first sibling of its type 3

E:last-of-type an E element, last sibling of its type 3

E:only-child an E element, only child of its parent 3

E:only-of-type an E element, only sibling of its type 3

E:empty an E element that has no children (including text nodes) 3

E:target an E element being the target of the referring URI 3

E:enabled a user interface element E that is enabled 3

E:disabled a user interface element E that is disabled 3

a user interface element E that is checked (for instance a radio button

E:checked 3
or checkbox)

E:not(s) an E element that does not match simple selector s 3

E ~ F an F element preceded by an E element 3

Declaration block
A declaration block consists of a pair of braces ({}) enclosing a semicolon-separated list of
declarations.[10]

Declaration
Each declaration itself consists of a property, a colon (:), and a value. Optional white-space may be
around the declaration block, declarations, colons, and semi-colons for readability.[11]

Properties
Properties are specified in the CSS standard. Each property has a set of possible values. Some properties
can affect any type of element, and others apply only to particular groups of elements.[12][13]

Values
Values may be keywords, such as "center" or "inherit", or numerical values, such as 200px (200 pixels),
50vw (50 percent of the viewport width) or 80% (80 percent of the parent element's width).

Color values can be specified with keywords (e.g. "red"), hexadecimal values (e.g. #FF0000, also
abbreviated as #F00), RGB values on a 0 to 255 scale (e.g. rgb(255, 0, 0)), RGBA values that
specify both color and alpha transparency (e.g. rgba(255, 0, 0, 0.8)), or HSL or HSLA values
(e.g. hsl(0 100% 50%), hsl(0 100% 50% / 0.8)).[14]
Non-zero numeric values representing linear measures must include a length unit, which is either an
alphabetic code or abbreviation, as in 200px or 50vw; or a percentage sign, as in 80%. Some units – cm
(centimetre); in (inch); mm (millimetre); pc (pica); and pt (point) – are absolute, which means that the
rendered dimension does not depend upon the structure of the page; others – em (em); ex (ex) and px
(pixel) – are relative, which means that factors such as the font size of a parent element can affect the
rendered measurement. These eight units were a feature of CSS 1[15] and retained in all subsequent
revisions. The proposed CSS Values and Units Module Level 3 will, if adopted as a W3C
Recommendation, provide seven further length units: ch; Q; rem; vh; vmax; vmin; and vw.[16]

Use
Before CSS, nearly all presentational attributes of HTML documents were contained within the HTML
markup. All font colors, background styles, element alignments, borders, and sizes had to be explicitly
described, often repeatedly, within the HTML. CSS lets authors move much of that information to
another file, the style sheet, resulting in considerably simpler HTML. And additionally, as more and more
devices are able to access responsive web pages, different screen sizes and layouts begin to appear.
Customizing a website for each device size is costly and increasingly difficult. The modular nature of
CSS means that styles can be reused in different parts of a site or even across sites, promoting
consistency and efficiency.

For example, headings (h1 elements), sub-headings (h2), sub-sub-headings (h3), etc., are defined
structurally using HTML. In print and on the screen, choice of font, size, color and emphasis for these
elements is presentational.

Before CSS, document authors who wanted to assign such typographic characteristics to, say, all h2
headings had to repeat HTML presentational markup for each occurrence of that heading type. This made
documents more complex, larger, and more error-prone and difficult to maintain. CSS allows the
separation of presentation from structure. CSS can define color, font, text alignment, size, borders,
spacing, layout and many other typographic characteristics, and can do so independently for on-screen
and printed views. CSS also defines non-visual styles, such as reading speed and emphasis for aural text
readers. The W3C has now deprecated the use of all presentational HTML markup.[17]

For example, under pre-CSS HTML, a heading element defined with red text would be written as:

<h1><font color="red">Chapter 1.</font></h1>

Using CSS, the same element can be coded using style properties instead of HTML presentational
attributes:

<h1 style="color: red;">Chapter 1.</h1>

The advantages of this may not be immediately clear but the power of CSS becomes more apparent when
the style properties are placed in an internal style element or, even better, an external CSS file. For
example, suppose the document contains the style element:

<style>
h1 {
color: red;
 }
</style>

All h1 elements in the document will then automatically become red without requiring any explicit code.
If the author later wanted to make h1 elements blue instead, this could be done by changing the style
element to:

<style>
h1 {
color: blue;
}
</style>

rather than by laboriously going through the document and changing the color for each individual h1
element.

The styles can also be placed in an external CSS file, as described below, and loaded using syntax similar
to:

<link href="path/to/file.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">

This further decouples the styling from the HTML document and makes it possible to restyle multiple
documents by simply editing a shared external CSS file.

Sources
CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, offers a flexible way to style web content, with styles originating from
browser defaults, user preferences, or web designers. These styles can be applied inline, within an HTML
document, or through external .css files for broader consistency. Not only does this simplify web
development by promoting reusability and maintainability, it also improves site performance because
styles can be offloaded into dedicated .css files that browsers can cache. Additionally, even if the styles
cannot be loaded or are disabled, this separation maintains the accessibility and readability of the content,
ensuring that the site is usable for all users, including those with disabilities. Its multi-faceted approach,
including considerations for selector specificity, rule order, and media types, ensures that websites are
visually coherent and adaptive across different devices and user needs, striking a balance between design
intent and user accessibility.

Multiple style sheets

Multiple style sheets can be imported. Different styles can be applied depending on the output device
being used; for example, the screen version can be quite different from the printed version, so authors can
tailor the presentation appropriately for each medium.

Cascading
The style sheet with the highest priority controls the content display. Declarations not set in the highest
priority source are passed on to a source of lower priority, such as the user agent style. The process is
called cascading.
One of the goals of CSS is to allow users greater control over presentation. Someone who finds red italic
headings difficult to read may apply a different style sheet. Depending on the browser and the website, a
user may choose from various style sheets provided by the designers, or may remove all added styles, and
view the site using the browser's default styling, or may override just the red italic heading style without
altering other attributes. Browser extensions like Stylish and Stylus have been created to facilitate the
management of such user style sheets. In the case of large projects, cascading can be used to determine
which style has a higher priority when developers do integrate third-party styles that have conflicting
priorities, and to further resolve those conflicts. Additionally, cascading can help create themed designs,
which help designers fine-tune aspects of a design without compromising the overall layout.

CSS priority scheme

CSS priority scheme (highest to lowest)

Priority CSS source type Description

The "!important" annotation overwrites the previous priority

1 Importance
types
2 Inline A style applied to an HTML element via HTML "style" attribute

A property definition applies to all media types unless a media-

3 Media Type
specific CSS is defined

4 User defined Most browsers have the accessibility feature: a user-defined CSS

A specific contextual selector (#heading p) overwrites generic

5 Selector specificity
definition

6 Rule order Last rule declaration has a higher priority

7 Parent inheritance If a property is not specified, it is inherited from a parent element

CSS property definition in HTML
8 CSS rule or CSS inline style overwrites a default browser value
document

The lowest priority: browser default value is determined by W3C

9 Browser default
initial value specifications

Specificity
Specificity refers to the relative weights of various rules.[18] It determines which styles apply to an
element when more than one rule could apply. Based on the specification, a simple selector (e.g. H1) has
a specificity of 1, class selectors have a specificity of 1,0, and ID selectors have a specificity of 1,0,0.
Because the specificity values do not carry over as in the decimal system, commas are used to separate
the "digits"[19] (a CSS rule having 11 elements and 11 classes would have a specificity of 11,11, not 121).

Thus the selectors of the following rule result in the indicated specificity:
 Selectors Specificity

h1 {color: white;} 0, 0, 0, 1

p em {color: green;} 0, 0, 0, 2

.grape {color: red;} 0, 0, 1, 0

p.bright {color: blue;} 0, 0, 1, 1

p.bright em.dark {color: yellow;} 0, 0, 2, 2

#id218 {color: brown;} 0, 1, 0, 0

style=" " 1, 0, 0, 0

Examples
Consider this HTML fragment:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<style>
#xyz { color: blue; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<p id="xyz" style="color: green;">To demonstrate specificity</p>
</body>
</html>

In the above example, the declaration in the style attribute overrides the one in the <style> element
because it has a higher specificity, and thus, the paragraph appears green:

To demonstrate specificity

Inheritance
Inheritance is a key feature in CSS; it relies on the ancestor-descendant relationship to operate.
Inheritance is the mechanism by which properties are applied not only to a specified element but also to
its descendants.[18] Inheritance relies on the document tree, which is the hierarchy of XHTML elements
in a page based on nesting. Descendant elements may inherit CSS property values from any ancestor
element enclosing them. In general, descendant elements inherit text-related properties, but their box-
related properties are not inherited. Properties that can be inherited are color, font, letter spacing, line-
height, list-style, text-align, text-indent, text-transform, visibility, white-space, and word-spacing.
Properties that cannot be inherited are background, border, display, float and clear, height, and width,
margin, min- and max-height and -width, outline, overflow, padding, position, text-decoration, vertical-
align, and z-index.
Inheritance can be used to avoid declaring certain properties over and over again in a style sheet, allowing
for shorter CSS.

Inheritance in CSS is not the same as inheritance in class-based programming languages, where it is
possible to define class B as "like class A, but with modifications".[20] With CSS, it is possible to style an
element with "class A, but with modifications". However, it is not possible to define a CSS class B like
that, which could then be used to style multiple elements without having to repeat the modifications.

Example
Given the following style sheet:

p {
color: pink;
}

Suppose there is a p element with an emphasizing element (<em>) inside:

<p>
This is to <em>illustrate</em> inheritance
</p>

If no color is assigned to the em element, the emphasized word "illustrate" inherits the color of the parent
element, p. The style sheet p has the color pink, hence, the em element is likewise pink:

This is to illustrate inheritance

Whitespace
The whitespace between properties and selectors is ignored. This code snippet:

body{overflow:hidden;background:#000000;background-image:url(images/bg.gif);background-repeat:no-
repeat;background-position:left top;}

is functionally equivalent to this one:

body {
overflow: hidden;
background-color: #000000;
background-image: url(images/bg.gif);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: left top;
}

Indentation
One common way to format CSS for readability is to indent each property and give it its own line. In
addition to formatting CSS for readability, shorthand properties can be used to write out the code faster,
which also gets processed more quickly when being rendered:[21]

body {
overflow: hidden;
background: #000 url(images/bg.gif) no-repeat left top;
}

Sometimes, multiple property values are indented onto their own line:

@font-face {
font-family: 'Comic Sans';
font-size: 20px;
src: url('first.example.com'),
url('second.example.com'),
url('third.example.com'),
url('fourth.example.com');
}

Positioning
CSS 2.1 defines three positioning schemes:

Normal flow
Inline items are laid out in the same way as the letters in words in the text, one after the
other across the available space until there is no more room, then starting a new line
below. Block items stack vertically, like paragraphs and like the items in a bulleted list.
Normal flow also includes the relative positioning of block or inline items and run-in boxes.
Floats
A floated item is taken out of the normal flow and shifted to the left or right as far as
possible in the space available. Other content then flows alongside the floated item.
Absolute positioning
An absolutely positioned item has no place in, and no effect on, the normal flow of other
items. It occupies its assigned position in its container independently of other items.[22]

Position property
There are five possible values of the position property. If an item is positioned in any way other than
static, then the further properties top, bottom, left, and right are used to specify offsets and
positions.The element having position static is not affected by the top, bottom , left or right
properties.

Static
The default value places the item in the normal flow.

Relative
The item is placed in the normal flow, and then shifted or offset from that position. Subsequent flow
items are laid out as if the item had not been moved.

Absolute
Specifies absolute positioning. The element is positioned in relation to its nearest non-static ancestor.

Fixed
The item is absolutely positioned in a fixed position on the screen even as the rest of the document is
scrolled[22]

Float and clear

The float property may have one of three values. Absolutely positioned or fixed items cannot be
floated. Other elements normally flow around floated items, unless they are prevented from doing so by
their clear property.

left
The item floats to the left of the line that it would have appeared in; other items may flow
around its right side.
right
The item floats to the right of the line that it would have appeared in; other items may flow
around its left side.
clear
Forces the element to appear underneath ('clear') floated elements to the left
(clear:left), right (clear:right) or both sides (clear:both).[22][23]

History
CSS was first proposed by Håkon Wium Lie on 10 October 1994.[24] At
the time, Lie was working with Tim Berners-Lee at CERN.[25] Several
other style sheet languages for the web were proposed around the same
time, and discussions on public mailing lists and inside World Wide Web
Consortium resulted in the first W3C CSS Recommendation (CSS1)[26]
being released in 1996. In particular, a proposal by Bert Bos was
influential; he became co-author of CSS1, and is regarded as co-creator of
CSS.[27]

Style sheets have existed in one form or another since the beginnings of
Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) in the 1980s, and CSS
was developed to provide style sheets for the web.[28] One requirement for
Håkon Wium Lie, chief
a web style sheet language was for style sheets to come from different technical officer of the
sources on the web. Therefore, existing style sheet languages like DSSSL Opera Software company
and FOSI were not suitable. CSS, on the other hand, let a document's style and co-creator of the CSS
be influenced by multiple style sheets by way of "cascading" styles.[28] web standards
As HTML grew, it came to encompass a wider variety of stylistic capabilities to meet the demands of web
developers. This evolution gave the designer more control over site appearance, at the cost of more
complex HTML. Variations in web browser implementations, such as ViolaWWW and
WorldWideWeb,[29] made consistent site appearance difficult, and users had less control over how web
content was displayed. The browser/editor developed by Tim Berners-Lee had style sheets that were
hard-coded into the program. The style sheets could therefore not be linked to documents on the web.[25]
Robert Cailliau, also of CERN, wanted to separate the structure from the presentation so that different
style sheets could describe different presentation for printing, screen-based presentations, and editors.[29]

Improving web presentation capabilities was a topic of interest to many in the web community and nine
different style sheet languages were proposed on the www-style mailing list.[28] Of these nine proposals,
two were especially influential on what became CSS: Cascading HTML Style Sheets[24] and Stream-
based Style Sheet Proposal (SSP).[27][30] Two browsers served as testbeds for the initial proposals; Lie
worked with Yves Lafon to implement CSS in Dave Raggett's Arena browser.[31][32][33] Bert Bos
implemented his own SSP proposal in the Argo browser.[27] Thereafter, Lie and Bos worked together to
develop the CSS standard (the 'H' was removed from the name because these style sheets could also be
applied to other markup languages besides HTML).[25]

Lie's proposal was presented at the "Mosaic and the Web" conference (later called WWW2) in Chicago,
Illinois in 1994, and again with Bert Bos in 1995.[25] Around this time the W3C was already being
established and took an interest in the development of CSS. It organized a workshop toward that end
chaired by Steven Pemberton. This resulted in W3C adding work on CSS to the deliverables of the
HTML editorial review board (ERB). Lie and Bos were the primary technical staff on this aspect of the
project, with additional members, including Thomas Reardon of Microsoft, participating as well. In
August 1996, Netscape Communication Corporation presented an alternative style sheet language called
JavaScript Style Sheets (JSSS).[25] The spec was never finished, and is deprecated.[34] By the end of
1996, CSS was ready to become official, and the CSS level 1 Recommendation was published in
December.

Development of HTML, CSS, and the DOM had all been taking place in one group, the HTML Editorial
Review Board (ERB). Early in 1997, the ERB was split into three working groups: HTML Working
Group, chaired by Dan Connolly of W3C; DOM Working group, chaired by Lauren Wood of SoftQuad;
and CSS Working Group, chaired by Chris Lilley of W3C.

The CSS Working Group began tackling issues that had not been addressed with CSS level 1, resulting in
the creation of CSS level 2 on November 4, 1997. It was published as a W3C Recommendation on May
12, 1998. CSS level 3, which was started in 1998, is still under development as of 2014.

In 2005, the CSS Working Groups decided to enforce the requirements for standards more strictly. This
meant that already published standards like CSS 2.1, CSS 3 Selectors, and CSS 3 Text were pulled back
from Candidate Recommendation to Working Draft level.

Difficulty with adoption

The CSS 1 specification was completed in 1996. Microsoft's Internet Explorer 3[25] was released that
year, featuring some limited support for CSS. IE 4 and Netscape 4.x added more support, but it was
typically incomplete and had many bugs that prevented CSS from being usefully adopted. It was more
than three years before any web browser achieved near-full implementation of the specification. Internet
Explorer 5.0 for the Macintosh, shipped in March 2000, was the first browser to have full (better than 99
percent) CSS 1 support,[35] surpassing Opera, which had been the leader since its introduction of CSS
support fifteen months earlier. Other browsers followed soon afterward, and many of them additionally
implemented parts of CSS 2.

However, even when later "version 5" web browsers began to offer a fairly full implementation of CSS,
they were still incorrect in certain areas. They were fraught with inconsistencies, bugs, and other quirks.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5. x for Windows, as opposed to the very different IE for Macintosh, had a
flawed implementation of the CSS box model, as compared with the CSS standards. Such inconsistencies
and variation in feature support made it difficult for designers to achieve a consistent appearance across
browsers and platforms without the use of workarounds termed CSS hacks and filters. The IE Windows
box model bugs were so serious that, when Internet Explorer 6 was released, Microsoft introduced a
backward-compatible mode of CSS interpretation ("quirks mode") alongside an alternative, corrected
"standards mode". Other non-Microsoft browsers also provided mode-switch capabilities. It, therefore,
became necessary for authors of HTML files to ensure they contained special distinctive "standards-
compliant CSS intended" marker to show that the authors intended CSS to be interpreted correctly, in
compliance with standards, as opposed to being intended for the now long-obsolete IE5/Windows
browser. Without this marker, web browsers with the "quirks mode"-switching capability will size objects
in web pages as IE 5 on Windows would, rather than following CSS standards.

Problems with the patchy adoption of CSS and errata in the original specification led the W3C to revise
the CSS 2 standards into CSS 2.1, which moved nearer to a working snapshot of current CSS support in
HTML browsers. Some CSS 2 properties that no browser successfully implemented were dropped, and in
a few cases, defined behaviors were changed to bring the standard into line with the predominant existing
implementations. CSS 2.1 became a Candidate Recommendation on February 25, 2004, but CSS 2.1 was
pulled back to Working Draft status on June 13, 2005,[36] and only returned to Candidate
Recommendation status on July 19, 2007.[37]

In addition to these problems, the .css extension was used by a software product used to convert
PowerPoint files into Compact Slide Show files,[38] so some web servers served all .css[39] as MIME
type application/x-pointplus[40] rather than text/css.

Vendor prefixes
Individual browser vendors occasionally introduced new parameters ahead of standardization and
universalization. To prevent interfering with future implementations, vendors prepended unique names to
the parameters, such as -moz- for Mozilla Firefox, -webkit- named after the browsing engine of
Apple Safari, -o- for Opera Browser and -ms- for Microsoft Internet Explorer and early versions of
Microsoft Edge that use EdgeHTML.

Occasionally, the parameters with vendor prefixes such as -moz-radial-gradient and -webkit-
linear-gradient have slightly different syntax as compared to their non-vendor-prefix
counterparts.[41]

Prefixed properties are rendered obsolete by the time of standardization. Programs are available to
automatically add prefixes for older browsers and to point out standardized versions of prefixed
parameters. Since prefixes are limited to a small subset of browsers, removing the prefix allows other
browsers to see the functionality. An exception is certain obsolete -webkit- prefixed properties, which
are so common and persistent on the web that other families of browsers have decided to support them for
compatibility.[42]

CSS has various levels and profiles. Each level of CSS builds
upon the last, typically adding new features and typically
denoted[43] as CSS 1, CSS 2, CSS 3, and CSS 4. Profiles are
typically a subset of one or more levels of CSS built for a
particular device or user interface. Currently, there are profiles for
mobile devices, printers, and television sets. Profiles should not be
confused with media types, which were added in CSS 2.

CSS 1
The first CSS specification to become an official W3C
Recommendation is CSS level 1, published on 17 December 1996.
Håkon Wium Lie and Bert Bos are credited as the original
developers.[44][45] Among its capabilities are support for

Font properties such as typeface and emphasis

Color of text, backgrounds, and other elements CSS Snapshot 2021

Text attributes such as spacing between words, letters,

and lines of text
Alignment of text, images, tables and other elements
Margin, border, padding, and positioning for most elements
Unique identification and generic classification of groups of attributes
The W3C no longer maintains the CSS 1 Recommendation.[46]

CSS 2
CSS level 2 specification was developed by the W3C and published as a recommendation in May 1998. A
superset of CSS 1, CSS 2 includes a number of new capabilities like absolute, relative, and fixed
positioning of elements and z-index, the concept of media types, support for aural style sheets (which
were later replaced by the CSS 3 speech modules)[47] and bidirectional text, and new font properties such
as shadows.

The W3C no longer maintains the CSS 2 recommendation.[48]

CSS 2.1
CSS level 2 revision 1, often referred to as "CSS 2.1", fixes errors in CSS 2, removes poorly supported or
not fully interoperable features and adds already implemented browser extensions to the specification. To
comply with the W3C Process for standardizing technical specifications, CSS 2.1 went back and forth
between Working Draft status and Candidate Recommendation status for many years. CSS 2.1 first
became a Candidate Recommendation (https://www.w3.org/TR/2004/CR-CSS21-20040225/) on 25
February 2004, but it was reverted to a Working Draft on 13 June 2005 for further review. It returned to
Candidate Recommendation on 19 July 2007 and then updated twice in 2009. However, because changes
and clarifications were made, it again went back to Last Call Working Draft on 7 December 2010.
CSS 2.1 went to Proposed Recommendation on 12 April 2011.[49] After being reviewed by the W3C
Advisory Committee, it was finally published as a W3C Recommendation on 7 June 2011.[50]

CSS 2.1 was planned as the first and final revision of level 2—but low-priority work on CSS 2.2 began in
2015.

CSS 3
Unlike CSS 2, which is a large single specification defining various features, CSS 3 is divided into
several separate documents called "modules". Each module adds new capabilities or extends features
defined in CSS 2, preserving backward compatibility. Work on CSS level 3 started around the time of
publication of the original CSS 2 recommendation. The earliest CSS 3 drafts were published in June
1999.[51]

Due to the modularization, different modules have different stability and statuses.[52]

Some modules have Candidate Recommendation (CR) status and are considered moderately stable. At CR
stage, implementations are advised to drop vendor prefixes.[53]
 Summary of main module-specifications[54]
Module Specification title Status Date
CSS Backgrounds and Borders Module
css3-
Level 3 (https://www.w3.org/TR/css3-backgr Candidate Rec. Feb 2023
background ound/)

CSS Box Model Module Level 3 (https://ww

css-box-3 Recommendation Apr 2023
w.w3.org/TR/css-box-3/)

CSS Cascading and Inheritance Level 3 (htt

css-cascade-3 Recommendation Feb 2021
ps://www.w3.org/TR/css-cascade-3/)
CSS Color Module Level 3 (https://www.w3.
css-color-3 Recommendation Jan 2022
org/TR/css3-color)

CSS Generated Content Module Level 3 (htt

css3-content Working Draft Aug 2019
ps://www.w3.org/TR/css-content-3/)

CSS Fonts Module Level 3 (https://www.w3.

css-fonts-3 Recommendation Sep 2018
org/TR/css-fonts-3/)
CSS Generated Content for Paged Media
css3-gcpm Module (https://www.w3.org/TR/css-gcpm- Working Draft May 2014
3/)

CSS Template Layout Module (https://www.

css3-layout Note Mar 2015
w3.org/TR/css-template-3/)

css3- Media Queries (https://www.w3.org/TR/css3

Recommendation Jun 2012
mediaqueries -mediaqueries/)

Media Queries Level 4 (https://www.w3.org/

mediaqueries-4 Candidate Rec. Dec 2021
TR/mediaqueries-4/)

Multi-column Layout Module Level 1 (https://

css3-multicol Candidate Rec. Oct 2021
www.w3.org/TR/css-multicol-1/)

CSS Paged Media Module Level 3 (https://w Working Draft, and part
css3-page Oct 2018
ww.w3.org/TR/css3-page/) migrated to css3-break
CSS Fragmentation Module Level 3 (https://
css3-break Candidate Rec. Dec 2018
www.w3.org/TR/css-break/)

Selectors Level 3 (https://www.w3.org/TR/se

selectors-3 Recommendation Nov 2018
lectors-3/)

Selectors Level 4 (https://www.w3.org/TR/se

selectors-4 Working Draft Nov 2022
lectors-4/)
CSS Basic User Interface Module Level 3
css3-ui Recommendation Jun 2018
(CSS3 UI) (https://www.w3.org/TR/css-ui-3/)

CSS 4
There is no single, integrated CSS4 specification,[55] because the specification has been split into many
separate modules which level independently.

Modules that build on things from CSS Level 2 started at Level 3. Some of them have already reached
Level 4 or are already approaching Level 5. Other modules that define entirely new functionality, such as
Flexbox,[56] have been designated as Level 1 and some of them are approaching Level 2.
The CSS Working Group sometimes publishes "Snapshots", a
collection of whole modules and parts of other drafts that are
considered stable enough to be implemented by browser
developers. So far, five such "best current practices" documents
have been published as Notes, in 2007,[57] 2010,[58] 2015,[59]
2017,[60] and 2018.[61]
Jen Simmons discussing the state
Since these specification snapshots are primarily intended for
of CSS in 2019, as several CSS 4
developers, there has been a growing demand for a similar modules were being advanced
versioned reference document targeted at authors, which would
present the state of interoperable implementations as meanwhile
documented by sites like Can I Use...[62] and the MDN Web Docs.[63] A W3C Community Group has
been established in early 2020 in order to discuss and define such a resource.[64] The actual kind of
versioning is also up to debate, which means that the document, once produced, might not be called
"CSS4".

Browser support
Each web browser uses a layout engine to render web pages, and support for CSS functionality is not
consistent between them. Because browsers do not parse CSS perfectly, multiple coding techniques have
been developed to target specific browsers with workarounds (commonly known as CSS hacks or CSS
filters). The adoption of new functionality in CSS can be hindered by a lack of support in major browsers.
For example, Internet Explorer was slow to add support for many CSS 3 features, which slowed the
adoption of those features and damaged the browser's reputation among developers. Additionally, a
proprietary syntax for the non-vendor-prefixed filter property was used in some versions.[65] In order
to ensure a consistent experience for their users, web developers often test their sites across multiple
operating systems, browsers, and browser versions, increasing development time and complexity. Tools
such as BrowserStack have been built to reduce the complexity of maintaining these environments.

In addition to these testing tools, many sites maintain lists of browser support for specific CSS properties,
including CanIUse (https://caniuse.com/) and the MDN Web Docs. Additionally, CSS 3 defines feature
queries, which provide an @supports directive that will allow developers to target browsers with
support for certain functionality directly within their CSS.[66] CSS that is not supported by older browsers
can also sometimes be patched in using JavaScript polyfills, which are pieces of JavaScript code designed
to make browsers behave consistently. These workarounds—and the need to support fallback
functionality—can add complexity to development projects, and consequently, companies frequently
define a list of browser versions that they will and will not support.

As websites adopt newer code standards that are incompatible with older browsers, these browsers can be
cut off from accessing many of the resources on the web (sometimes intentionally).[67] Many of the most
popular sites on the internet are not just visually degraded on older browsers due to poor CSS support but
do not work at all, in large part due to the evolution of JavaScript and other web technologies.

Limitations
Some noted limitations of the current capabilities of CSS include:

Cannot explicitly declare new scope independently of position

Scoping rules for properties such as z-index look for the closest parent element with a position: absolute
or position: relative attribute. This odd coupling has undesired effects. For example, it is impossible to
avoid declaring a new scope when one is forced to adjust an element's position, preventing one from
using the desired scope of a parent element.

Pseudo-class dynamic behavior not controllable

CSS implements pseudo-classes that allow a degree of user feedback by conditional application of
alternate styles. One CSS pseudo-class, ":hover", is dynamic (equivalent of JavaScript "onmouseover")
and has potential for misuse (e.g., implementing cursor-proximity popups),[68] but CSS has no ability for
a client to disable it (no "disable"-like property) or limit its effects (no "nochange"-like values for each
property).

Cannot name rules

There is no way to name a CSS rule, which would allow (for example) client-side scripts to refer to the
rule even if its selector changes.

Cannot include styles from a rule into another rule

CSS styles often must be duplicated in several rules to achieve the desired effect, causing additional
maintenance and requiring more thorough testing. Some new CSS features were proposed to solve this
but were abandoned afterward.[69][70] Instead, authors may gain this ability by using more sophisticated
stylesheet languages which compile to CSS, such as Sass, Less, or Stylus.

Cannot target specific text without altering markup

Besides the ::first-letter pseudo-element, one cannot target specific ranges of text without
needing to utilize placeholder elements.

Advantages

Separation of content from presentation

CSS facilitates the publication of content in multiple presentation formats by adjusting styles based on
various nominal parameters. These parameters include explicit user preferences (such as themes or font
size), compatibility with different web browsers, the type of device used to view the content (e.g.,
desktop, tablet, or mobile device), screen resolutions, the geographic location of the user, and many other
variables. CSS also enables responsive design, ensuring that content dynamically adapts to different
screen sizes and orientations, enhancing accessibility and user experience across a wide range of
environments.

Site-wide consistency
When CSS is used effectively, in terms of inheritance and "cascading", a global style sheet can be used to
affect and style elements site-wide. If the situation arises that the styling of the elements should be
changed or adjusted, these changes can be made by editing rules in the global style sheet. Before CSS,
this sort of maintenance was more difficult, expensive, and time-consuming.

Bandwidth
A stylesheet, internal or external, specifies the style once for a range of HTML elements selected by
class, type or relationship to others. This is much more efficient than repeating style information inline
for each occurrence of the element. An external stylesheet is usually stored in the browser cache, and can
therefore be used on multiple pages without being reloaded, further reducing data transfer over a network.

Page reformatting
With a simple change of one line, a different style sheet can be used for the same page. This has
advantages for accessibility, as well as providing the ability to tailor a page or site to different target
devices. Furthermore, devices not able to understand the styling still display the content.

Accessibility
Without CSS, web designers must typically lay out their pages with techniques such as HTML tables that
hinder accessibility for vision-impaired users (see Tableless web design § Accessibility).

Standardization

Frameworks
CSS frameworks are prepared libraries that are meant to allow for easier, more standards-compliant
styling of web pages using the Cascading Style Sheets language. CSS frameworks include Blueprint,
Bootstrap, Foundation and Materialize. Like programming and scripting language libraries, CSS
frameworks are usually incorporated as external .css sheets referenced in the HTML <head>. They
provide a number of ready-made options for designing and laying out the web page. Although many of
these frameworks have been published, some authors use them mostly for rapid prototyping, or for
learning from, and prefer to 'handcraft' CSS that is appropriate to each published site without the design,
maintenance and download overhead of having many unused features in the site's styling.[71]

Blueprint
Blueprint is a CSS framework designed to reduce development time and ensure cross-browser
compatibility when working with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). It also serves as a foundation for many
tools designed to make CSS development easier and more accessible to beginners.

Bootstrap
Bootstrap (formerly Twitter Bootstrap) is a free and open-source CSS framework directed at responsive,
mobile-first front-end web development. It contains HTML, CSS and (optionally) JavaScript-based
design templates for typography, forms, buttons, navigation, and other interface components.

Foundation
Foundation is a free responsive front-end framework, providing a responsive grid and HTML and CSS UI
components, templates, and code snippets, including typography, forms, buttons, navigation and other
interface elements, as well as optional functionality provided by JavaScript extensions. Foundation is an
open source project, and was formerly maintained by ZURB. Since 2019, Foundation has been
maintained by volunteers.[72]

Design methodologies
As the size of CSS resources used in a project increases, a development team often needs to decide on a
common design methodology to keep them organized. The goals are ease of development, ease of
collaboration during development, and performance of the deployed stylesheets in the browser. Popular
methodologies include OOCSS (object-oriented CSS), ACSS (atomic CSS), CSS (organic Cascade Style
Sheet), SMACSS (scalable and modular architecture for CSS), and BEM (block, element, modifier).[73]

See also
Flash of unstyled content

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Further reading
Meyer, Eric A.; Weyl, Estelle (2023). Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, Fifth
Edition (https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/css-the-definitive/9781098117603/). O'Reilly
 Media, Inc. ISBN 978-1-09-811761-0.
Grant, Keith J. (2018). CSS in Depth (https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/css-in-depth/97
81617293450/). Manning Publications Co. ISBN 978-1-61729-345-0.
MDN CSS reference (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/)
MDN Getting Started with CSS (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Getting_star
ted_with_the_web/CSS_basics/)

External links
Official website (https://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/)

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