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CS Students' Brief On CSS

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94 views43 pages

CS Students' Brief On CSS

Uploaded by

Waqas Mehmood
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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CS Students' Brief on

CSS
Essential CSS for CS3172
Background
Presentation vs. Structure
An early goal of the WWW
Easy to update many pages at once
Easier to maintain consistency
Early goal: authors' vs. readers' rules
Now partly respected by major browsers
CSS 1 CSS 2
Extended the scope of the rules

2
CS Student Overview of CSS
Ignoring most of the incompatibilities for now
To get an overall understanding
Later slides will show some details
We'llexamine 4 interesting parts of the
presentational instructions and options later
Colour Font Border Positio
n
But first we'll see
What it can do (CSS Zen Garden,CSS Examples)
& How it works
3
What's Next?
Introduction
to CSS rule method
CSS selectors

How CSS matches rules to elements


The parse tree
The cascade
How to include rules in an XHTML file
A simple example
Visual formatting and Dual presentation
4
How CSS Works Rules
Rules provide presentation hints to browser
Browser can ignore hints
Three sources of rules:
User agent (browser's default settings),
Webpage (source file),
The user (personal settings in the browser)
Rules apply when selectors match context
E.g. p {text-indent:1.5em }
Selector is p (matches any <p> element)
5
Rules
Attached to elements
As attributes of elements (inline style)
Tied to id attribute of elements
Tied to class attribute of elements
Rules all have form
{Property Name : Value;}
Multiple rules separated by ;

6
Selectors
Can apply to every element of a type
E.g. h2
More often to a class of element
<cite class="textbook book">
Matches both textbook and book

Can apply to pseudo-elements


a:visited, etc.

7
Special Elements

div and span


Only for grouping other elements
div is block-level (think about paragraphs)
span is in-line (think about <code>)

8
Selectors (cont.)
E
E1 E2
The selector
E1 > E2 always refers to
E1 + E2 the rightmost
E#id element
E.class

See the handout for more pattern matches


Resources about selectors are listed on a later slide (just after
the cascade)

9
How CSS Works Matching
Every XHTML document represents a document
tree

The browser uses the tree to determine which rules


apply

What about inheritance? And conflicts?


10
HTML Parse Tree
<html> HTML

<head> HEAD BODY

<meta /> META TITLE H1 P UL P


<title></title>
SPAN LI LI LI
</head>
<body> SPAN

<h1></h1>
<p><span></span></p>
<ul>
<li></li> What will h1 + p match?
<li></li>
<li><span></span></li> What will ul > span match?
</ul>
What will ul {color:blue}
<p></p>
</body> do?
</html>
13
Inheritance in CSS
The Cascade
Inheritance
moves down tree
Cascading move horizontally
It works on elements that the same rules apply to
It is only used for tie-breaking when 2 rules apply
The highest ranking rule wins
Most specific wins (usually)
But important rules override others
!important beats plain
User's !important beats everything else
14
Details of the CSS 2.1 Cascade
For each element E
1. Find all declarations that apply to E
2. Rank those declarations by origin
a. user !important > author !important > inline style
b. inline style > author plain > user plain > browser
3. If there is not a clear winner then most specific rule
wins.
Compute specificity as shown on next 2 slides.

15
CSS 2.1 Cascade (Continued)
3. Compute specificity thus:
a. If one rule uses more # symbols than the others then it
applies, otherwise
b. If one rule uses more attributes (including class)
class than the
others then it applies, otherwise
c. If one rule uses more elements then it applies
d. For each two rules that have the same number of every
one of the above specifiers, the one that was declared last
applies
class is the only attribute that can be selected
with the . in CSS
An equivalent method is shown on the next slide
16
CSS 2.1 Cascade Computation
The cascade algorithm in the standard uses a semi-
numerical algorithm
The computation looks like this:
class is an
1 if the selector is an inline style
attribute
a=
0 otherwise

b= Number of id attributes (but only if specified with #)

c= Number of attributes (except those in b) and pseudo-attributes specified


The specificity is abase3 + bbase2 + cbase + d
d = Number of non-id elements specified (including pseudo-elements)
Where base = 1 + maximum(b,c,d)
The rule with the largest specificity applies

17
To find the value for an element/property combination, user
agents must apply the following sorting order:
1. Find all declarations that apply to the element and property in
question, for the target media type. Declarations apply if the
associated selector matches the element in question.

Summary
CSS 2.1 Cascade:
2. Sort according to importance (normal or important) and origin
(author, user, or user agent). In ascending order of precedence:
a. user agent declarations
b. user normal declarations
c. author normal declarations
d. author important declarations
e. user important declarations
3. Sort rules with the same importance and origin by specificity of
selector: more specific selectors will override more general ones.
Pseudo-elements and pseudo-classes are counted as normal
elements and classes, respectively.
4. Finally, sort by order specified: if two declarations have the same
weight, origin and specificity, the latter specified wins. Declarations
in imported style sheets are considered to be before any
declarations in the style sheet itself.
Apart from the !important setting on individual declarations, this
strategy gives author's style sheets higher weight than those of the
reader. User agents must giveCSS 2.1 the ability to turn off the
the user 19
influence of specific author
6.4.1style sheets, order
Cascading e.g., through a pull-down
Pseudo-Elements?
Pseudo-Attributes?!
CSS introduces the concepts of pseudo-elements and pseudo-classes to
permit formatting based on information that lies outside the document tree.

Classes Elements
:first-child :first-line
:link, :first-letter
:visited :before,
:hover, :after
:active,
:focus CSS 2.1 5.10
Pseudo-elements
:lang and pseudo-classes
Selector Resources on the WWW
The CSS 2 Standard
At W3.org (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/ )
In frames (http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/references/css2ref.html
)
Selector Tutorial [Excellent!] (
http://css.maxdesign.com.au/selectutorial/)
SelectORACLE (http://gallery.theopalgroup.com/selectoracle/)

Other Recommended Resources


In the resources part of the course website
21
How To Include Rules
Inline
<p style=text-align: center ></p>
Inside the head element
<link rel="stylesheet"
type="text/css" href="site.css" />
<style type="text/css"></style>
<style type="text/css">
@import url(site.css);
/* other rules could go here */
</style>
22
Simple Example
Fonts and background colours
Inheritance and cascading

See simple in CSS examples

23
A Very Brief Overview of
Visual Formatting With CSS
Visual Formatting
Fonts
Colours
Position
Box model and Borders

Dual presentation / Hiding CSS

24
Visual Formatting: fonts
Some major properties
font-family
body {font-family: Garamond, Times, serif}
Serif fonts and sans-serif fonts
font-size:
Length (em,ex), percentage, relative size, absolute size
font-style:
Normal, italic, oblique
font-weight:
Lighter, normal, bold, bolder, 100, 200, , 800, 900
Set all at once with font

25
Visual Formatting: Colours
How to specify
16 Predefined names
RGB values (%, #, 0255)
System names: e.g. CaptionText
Dithered Colour
See Lynda Weinman's charts
Okay for photos, etc.

26
Visual Formatting: Colours (cont.)
Major properties
background-color
color

transparent and inherit values

27
Visual Formatting: Images
position:

static, relative, absolute, fixed


Static normal elements
Relative translate from usual position

Absolute scroll with the page

Fixed like absolute, but don't scroll away

Example: Jon Gunderson

28
Visual Formatting: Images (cont.)
z-index: depth

float and clear


float: left or float: right or float: none
Position relative to parent element
Reset with clear
<br style="clear:both" />

29
Visual Formatting: Box Model

Margin

Border

Padding

Figure from materials by Dietel, Dietel, and


Nieto
30
Borders? Do we have borders!
Fourtypes again
Can all be set at once with border

See Border slides by Jon Gunderson

31
Box Model (Cont.)
Padding
Size in %, em, or ex for text
padding-top, padding-right, padding-bottom, padding-left
Mnemonic: TRouBLe
Set all at once with padding

Margin
Similar to padding Width is of content only.
But can also be auto Neither the border nor the
padding are included in width.
see centring example

32
Making Room for a
fixed position object

body
{margin-left: 6.3em}
div.up
{position: fixed;
left: 1em;
top: 40%;
padding: .2ex;
min-width: 5.5ex }

Width computation: see <URL:


http://tantek.com/CSS/Examples/boxmodelhack.html> 33
Formatting The Jump Box

Jump Box

34
Basic Formatting of the
Jump Box
HTML Outline
Extract of CSS Rules
<body> body
<!-- --> {margin-left: 6.3em}
<div class="up"> div.up
<dl> {position: fixed;
<dt>Jump to left: 1em;
top</dt> top: 40%;
<!-- --> padding: .2ex;
</div>
min-width: 5.5ex }
</body>

35
Effects of Box Formatting

36
body {padding:4em}

37
div.up {margin: 4em}

38
div.up dl {margin:4em}

39
CSS For Dual Presentation
What if users don't have CSS?
See button example

What if CSS only sortof works?


Tricks to hide CSS from dumb browsers
How can I make cool webpages?
One of many ways: see W3C Core Styles

40
Hiding CSS
Why do we need to?
Two failure modes: graceful and catastrophic
Pragmatism

Hubris

41
A Trick For Dual Presentation

visibility: visible:hidden
element can't be seen
visible or hidden but it still uses space

display: display:none
element isn't shown
none

visibility example (CSS buttons)

42
Hiding CSS How (overview)
Ensure that markup is meaningful without CSS
Order of presentation
Extra/hidden content
Make styles in layers
v4.0 browsers dont recognize @import
Some browsers ignore media rules
Later, and more specific, rules override other rules
Use parsing bugs for browser detection
Example follows
Use browser-specific Javascript
Server-side detection doesnt work well
Too much spoofing
43
Hiding CSS Some details
Credits follow
IE 5 for Windows computes incorrect sizes
It also doesnt understand voice-family,
so
p {
font-size: x-small; /* for Win IE 4/5 only */
voice-family: "\"}\"";
/* IE thinks rule is over */
voice-family: inherit; /* recover from trick */
font-size: small /* for better browsers */
}
html>p {font-size: small} /* for Opera */
44
Hiding CSS Caveats
There are no fool-proof workarounds for every bug in
every browser
Some workarounds are incompatible with strict
XHTML
The workarounds take time and are sometimes
inelegant
But they are necessary if you want to reach the
largest possible audience

For more about hacks see


<URL:http://tantek.com/log/2005/11.html>
45
Hiding CSS Credits
The example was adapted from
p. 324 of Designing with web standards by Jeffrey
Zeldman (2003 by the author, published by New
Riders with ISBN 0-7357-1201-8)

The methods are due to


Tantek elick (who also created much of Mac IE
and much else)

46

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