“Cascading Style Sheets” for
styling WWW information
DSC340
Mike Pangburn
CSS Advantages
Makes website more flexible
CSS is reusable
Change stylesheet to change design of many pages
Example: CSS Zen garden http://www.csszengarden.com/
Easier to maintain
Cleaner HTML code
Separates styles from HTML tags and page content
Consistent look across entire website that is easily maintained by
changing styles in one place.
CSS Disadvantages
Not uniformly supported by all
browsers.
Firefox adheres to CSS standards
more than IE
For this course we use Firefox
CSS: adding style
CSS allows you to add “style” to an HTML (web page)
element
E.g., color, size, or positioning information
There are two aspects to adding style to a web page via CSS
Specifying what the style looks like
Called the CSS style “Declaration”
Naming the HTML (or XML) element to which the style applies
Referred to as specifying the CSS “Selector”
CSS: adding style
The “declaration” part looks a bit like HTML:
{
font-size: 10px;
background-color: #fff; A CSS declaration
color: #222;
margin: 20px;
}
The above CSS declaration takes an HTML element and adds a
background color, a margin, and changes the element’s font
size/color
CSS: adding style
A question: how does the browser know which HTML
element on the webpage this declaration applies to?
{
font-size: 10px;
background-color: #fff;
color: #222;
margin: 20px;
}
CSS: adding style
Answer: we precede the declaration with the selector.
For example:
body {
font-size: 10px;
background-color: #fff;
color: #222; }
…this tells the browser to apply the declared style to the
HTML <body> element.
The most basic kind of CSS selector
“Simple” type selectors
Ex.: body{}, p{}, strong{}
Selects every instance of the corresponding HTML
element
These simple selectors are commonly used
Wildcard selector
*{}
Selects all elements on a page
Can be used in combination with other selectors
Aside: grouping selectors
You can apply the same declaration to a group of
selectors by listing all of the desired selector names
separated by commas.
Example:
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {color:#ff0000; font-family:sans-serif}
CSS: selector flexibility
The usefulness of selectors relates to how much
specificity you have in selecting different parts of a
web page.
Simple example: your personal webpage
You may not want the same font/color type style
throughout the entire <body> element
CSS: selector flexibility
You could use the declaration with the selector just for
the HTML <p> tag
p{
font-size: 10px;
background-color: #fff;
color: #222; }
…this tells the browser to apply the declared style to
HTML <p> tags.
But, what if you want <p> blocks in the About Me
section to look one way, and those within your
Education section to be styled differently?
Naming HTML elements
There are two naming options for an HTML element: assigning “ID”
names and “class names.”
When you give an HTML element a class or id name, you need to
use that name when making the corresponding style declaration
These two options are very similar, and the “class name” approach is
more popular, so we focus on that.
Aside: An id declaration is the same as a class declaration, except
that it should only be used specifically once per web page
The syntax for id vs. class is also nearly identical, the only difference
being the use of a pound sign (#) instead of the period (.) you will see in
a couple slides.
Example: naming HTML elements
The following HTML block gives the “class name”
bigblue to the following specific <h1> tag in this (very)
simple webpage.
<html>
<body>
<h1 class=”myboldandbluelook”> Introduction </h1>
</body>
<html>
Connecting a style declaration to a class name
To connect a style declaration to a particular class name
you wrote into your HTML document, you simply precede
the class declaration with: .theclassname
Example
.myboldandbluelook
{
Aside: if you want this style to be used
font-weight: bold; only once in the web page, then specify it
color: blue; as an ID style with this slight syntax
} change:
#myboldandbluelook
{
font-weight: bold;
color: blue;
}
More on selector options
Descendant (nested) selector
ul li a strong{color:green;}
Syntax is similar to the example of grouping selectors—but
without the commas
Selects all elements that correspond to the “nested”
structure specified by the selector
E.g., the above style will apply to any <strong> HTML tag that
lies within an <a> tag that lies within an <li> tag that lies within a
<ul> tag
Very (!!!) specific—nice!
Aside: styling hyperlinks
You can style links to respond dynamically.
The associated style selectors are called the hyperlink (or “anchor”) pseudo-class
selectors:
:link, :visited, :hover, :active { }
Example:
a:link {color:#FF0000;} /* color to apply to link before it’s visited */
a:visited {color:#00FF00;} /* color to apply to link before it’s visited*/
a:hover {color:#FF00FF;} /* color to apply to link while mouse pointer is over it*/
a:active {color:#0000FF;} /* color to apply while left mouse button is held down on link */
Note: a:hover MUST be listed after a:link and a:visited !
Note: a:active MUST be listed after a:hover !
CSS: what does cascading mean?
Cascading means a more-specific selector beats out a less-
specific selector.
For example, with styles... Both the body and .red
.red { color: red; } selectors pertain, but
the .red selector
body { color: black; } overrules because it is
What will this HTML look like? more specific
<body>
<p>I am black</p>
<p class="red">I am red</p>
</body>
Related point: if both ID (#) and class (.) styles to the same HTML element,
the ID style “wins” because ID styles are supposed to be used just once per
web-page (thus, in some sense, quite specifically)
CSS: the cascade
What if there is a “tie” regarding how specific the selectors are?
p{font-weight:bold;}
p{font-weight:normal;}
p{color:green;}
<p>This will be green text with a normal
font weight</p>
When there is a tie, the tied selector that is most immediately
preceding the HTML element wins (in this case, the second “p”
selector)
In other words, in a tie, the last-defined selector wins
How/where do we add the style declarations to our HTML
files?
Two good approaches for named (class or id) styles:
Internal stylesheet
Put the style declarations in the <head> of HTML text file
External stylesheet
Put the style declarations in a separate text file and then import
that text file into your HTML file
How/where do we add the style declarations to our HTML
files?
Third approach when you don’t want to bother
naming/reusing a style:
Inline style
Simply put the style declaration within the HTML tag where
it’s used
Example
<p style=“font-size: 14px;”>Text</p>
Note: instead of using an inline (i.e., embedded in
HTML) style, we could use our HTML tags
<p> <font size=“14px”>Text</font> </p>
Internal Style sheet example
<head>
<style type=“text/css”>
CSS Code Here
</style>
</head>
Preferred method: External Style Sheet
You create a separate style document (example: style.css).
Insert it into your html head tag
<head>
<link rel=“stylesheet” href=http://yoursite.com/style.css
type=“text/css”>
</head>
Aside: the above “link” tag works for Importing a stylesheet, and
there is also an equivalent “<@import>” tag
Recap: 3 places to define styles
Inline – apply style attribute to a single tag
Takes a lot of work to maintain across a website
Internal, (“embedded,” “global”)
stylesheet defined in the <head> tag of a page
External style sheet (a .css text file)
same functionality as Internal
Resources
Nice description for beginners:
http://www.cssbasics.com/introduction-to-css/
Nice tutorial for beginners:
http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/011/firstcss
