3.

1 Introduction

- The CSS1 specification was developed in 1996

- CSS2 was released in 1998

- CSS3 is on its way

- CSSs provide the means to control and

change presentation of HTML documents

- CSS is not technically HTML, but can be

embedded in HTML documents

- A style sheet is a syntactic mechanism for

specifying style information

- Style sheets allow you to impose a standard

style on a whole document, or even a whole
collection of documents

- Style is specified for a tag by the values of its

properties

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 1

3.2 Levels of Style Sheets
- There are three levels of style sheets

1. Inline - specified for a specific occurrence of a

tag and apply only to that tag

- This is fine-grain style, which defeats the

purpose of style sheets - uniform style

2. Document-level style sheets - apply to the

whole document in which they appear

3. External style sheets - can be applied to any

number of documents

- When more than one style sheet applies to a

specific tag in a document, the lowest level style
sheet has precedence

- In a sense, the browser searches for a style

property spec, starting with inline, until it finds
one (or there isn’t one)

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 2

3.2 Levels of Style Sheets (continued)
- Inline style sheets appear in the tag itself

- Document-level style sheets appear in the head of

the document

- External style sheets are in separate files,

potentially on any server on the Internet

- Written as text files with the MIME type text/css

- A <link> tag is used to specify that the browser

is to fetch and use an external style sheet file

<link rel = "stylesheet" type = "text/css"

href = "http://www.wherever.org/termpaper.css">
</link>

- An alternative way to reference an external style

sheet:
@import url(filename);
- Appears at the beginning of the content of a
style element (later)

- External style sheets can be validated

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
validator-upload.html

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 3

3.3 Style Specification Formats
- Format depends on the level of the style sheet

- Inline:
- Style sheet appears as the value of the style
attribute
- General form:
style = "property_1: value_1;
property_2: value_2;
…
property_n: value_n"

- Document-level:

- Style sheet appears as a list of rules that are the

content of a <style> tag

- The <style> tag must include the type attribute,

set to "text/css"

- Comments in the rule list must have a different

form - use C comments (/*…*/)

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 4

3.3 Style Specification Formats (continued)
- General form:
<style type = "text/css">
rule list
</style>

- Form of the rules:

selector {list of property/values}

- Each property/value pair has the form:

property: value

- Pairs are separated by semicolons, just as in

the value of a <style> tag

- External style sheets

- Form is a list of style rules, as in the content of

a <style> tag for document-level style sheets

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 5

3.4 Selector Forms
1. Simple Selector Forms

- The selector is a tag name or a list of tag names,

separated by commas
- Examples:

h1, h3
p

- Contextual selectors

ol ol li

2. Class Selectors

- Used to allow different occurrences of the same

tag to use different style specifications

- A style class has a name, which is attached to a

tag name

- For example,

p.narrow {property/value list}

p.wide {property/value list}

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 6

3.4 Selector Forms (continued)
2. Class Selectors (continued)

- The class you want on a particular occurrence of

a tag is specified with the class attribute of the tag

- For example,

<p class = "narrow">

...
</p>
...
<p class = "wide">
...
</p>

3. Generic Selectors

- A generic class can be defined if you want a

style to apply to more than one kind of tag

- A generic class must be named, and the name

must begin with a period

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 7

3.4 Selector Forms (continued)
3. Generic Selectors (continued)

- Example,
.sale { … }

- Use it as if it were a normal style class

<h1 class = "sale"> Weekend Sale </h1>

...
<p class = "sale"> … </p>

4. id Selectors

- An id selector allows the application of a style to

one specific element

- General form:
#specific-id {property-value list}

- Example:
#section14 {...}

5. Universal Selectors

* {color: red;}
- Applies to all elements in the document

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 8

3.4 Selector Forms (continued)
6. Pseudo Classes

- Pseudo classes are styles that apply when

something happens, rather than because the
target element simply exists
- Names begin with colons

- hover classes apply when the mouse cursor is

over the element

- focus classes apply when an element has focus

<!-- pseudo.html -->

<html xmlns = "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head> <title> Checkboxes </title>
<style type = "text/css">
input:hover {background: pink;
color: red;}
input:focus {background: lightblue;
color: blue;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<form action = "">
<p>
Your name:
<input type = "text" />
</p>
</form>
</body>
</html>

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 9

3.5 Property Value Forms
- There are 60 different properties in 7 categories:
- Fonts
- Lists
- Alignment of text
- Margins
- Colors
- Backgrounds
- Borders

- Property Value Forms

- Keywords - left, small, …

- Not case sensitive

- Length - numbers, maybe with decimal points

- Units:
px - pixels
in - inches
cm - centimeters
mm - millimeters
pt - points
pc - picas (12 points)
em - height of the letter ‘m’
ex - height of the letter ‘x’

- No space is allowed between the number

and the unit specification
e.g., 1.5 in is illegal!

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 10

3.5 Property Value Forms
(continued)

- Percentage - just a number followed

immediately by a percent sign

- URL values
- url(protocol://server/pathname)

- Colors
- Color name
- rgb(n1, n2, n3)
- Numbers can be decimal or percentages
- Hex form: #XXXXXX

- Property values are inherited by all nested

tags, unless overriden

3.6 Font Properties

- font-family
- Value is a list of font names - browser uses
the first in the list it has

- font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Futura

- Generic fonts: serif, sans-serif, cursive,

fantasy, and monospace (defined in CSS)
- Browser has a specific font for each

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 11

3.6 Font Properties (continued)
- If a font name has more than one word, it
should be single-quoted

- font-size

- Possible values: a length number or a name,

such as smaller, xx-large, etc.

- Font variants

- Default is normal, but can be set to small-caps

- font-style

- italic, oblique (useless), normal

- font-weight - degrees of boldness

- bolder, lighter, bold, normal

- Could specify as a multiple of 100 (100 – 900)

- font

- For specifying a list of font properties

font: bolder 14pt Arial Helvetica

- Order must be: style, weight, size, name(s)

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 12

3.6 Font Properties (continued)
 SHOW fonts.html and display
 SHOW fonts2.html and styles.css and display

- The text-decoration property

- line-through, overline, underline, none

 SHOW decoration.html & display

- letter-spacing – value is any length property

value

3.7 List properties

- list-style-type

- Unordered lists
- Bullet can be a disc (default), a square, or a
circle

- Set it on either the <ul> or <li> tag

- On <ul>, it applies to all items in the list

<h3> Some Common Single-Engine Aircraft </h3>

<ul style = "list-style-type: square">
<li> Cessna Skyhawk </li>
<li> Beechcraft Bonanza </li>
<li> Piper Cherokee </li>
</ul>

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 13

3.7 List properties (continued)
- On <li>, list-style-type applies to just that
item

<h3> Some Common Single-Engine Aircraft </h3>

<ul>
<li style = "list-style-type: disc">
Cessna Skyhawk </li>
<li style = "list-style-type: square">
Beechcraft Bonanza </li>
<li style = "list-style-type: circle">
Piper Cherokee </li>
</ul>

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 14

3.7 List properties (continued)

- Could use an image for the bullets in an

unordered list

- Example:

<li style = "list-style-image:

url(bird.jpg)">

- On ordered lists - list-style-type can be used

to change the sequence values

Property value Sequence type First four

decimal Arabic numerals 1, 2, 3, 4

upper-alpha Uc letters A, B, C, D
lower-alpha Lc letters a, b, c, d
upper-roman Uc Roman I, II, III, IV
lower-roman Lc Roman i, ii, iii, iv

 SHOW sequence_types.html and display

- CSS2 has more, like lower-greek, and hebrew,

and armenian

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 15

3.8 Colors
- Color is a problem for the Web for two reasons:

1. Old monitors vary widely

2. Old browsers vary widely

- There are three color collections

1. There is a set of 17 colors that are guaranteed

to be displayable by all graphical browsers on
all color monitors

black 000000 purple 800080

navy 000080 olive 808000
blue 0000FF gray 808080
green 008000 silver C0C0C0
teal 008080 red FF0000
lime 00FF00 fuchia FF00FF
aqua 00FFFF yellow FFFF00
maroon 800000 white FFFFFF
orange FFA500

- There are 140 named colors – see Appx. B

2. There is a much larger set, the Web Palette

- 216 colors
- Use hex color values of 00, 33, 66, 99, CC,
and FF

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 16

3.8 Colors (continued)
3. Any one of 16 million different colors

___________________________________________

- The color property specifies the foreground

color of elements

<style type = "text/css" >

th.red {color: red}
th.orange {color: orange}
</style>
…
<table border = "5">
<tr>
<th class = "red"> Apple </th>
<th class = "orange"> Orange </th>
<th class = "orange"> Screwdriver </th>
</tr>
</table>

- The background-color property specifies the

background color of elements

SHOW back_color.html and display

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 17

3.9 Alignment of Text
- The text-indent property allows indentation

- Takes either a length or a % value

- The text-align property has the possible

values, left (the default), center, right, or
justify

- Sometimes we want text to flow around

another element - the float property

- The float property has the possible values,

left, right, and none (the default)

- If we have an element we want on the right,

with text flowing on its left, we use the
default text-align value (left) for the text and
the right value for float on the element we
want on the right

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 18

3.9 Alignment of Text (continued)
<img src = "c210.jpg"
style = "float: right" />
-- Some text with the default alignment - left

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 19

3.10 The Box Model
- Borders – every element has a border-style
property

- Controls whether the element has a border and

if so, the style of the border

- border-style values: none, dotted, dashed,

and double
- border-width – thin, medium (default), thick,
or a length value in pixels

- Border width can be specified for any of the

four borders (e.g., border-top-width)

- border-color – any color

- Border color can be specified for any of the

four borders (e.g., border-top-color)

 SHOW borders.html and display

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 20

3.10 The Box Model (continued)
- Margin – the space between the border of an
element and its neighbor element

- The margins around an element can be set with

margin-left, etc. - just assign them a length
value

<img src = "c210.jpg " style = "float: right;

margin-left: 0.35in;
margin-bottom: 0.35in" />

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 21

3.10 The Box Model (continued)
- Padding – the distance between the content of an
element and its border

- Controlled by padding, padding-left, etc.

 SHOW marpads.html and display

3.11 Background Images

- The background-image property

 SHOW back_image.html and display

- Repetition can be controlled

- background-repeat property

- Possible values: repeat (default), no-repeat,

repeat-x, or repeat-y

- background-position property

- Possible values: top, center, bottom, left,

or right

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 22

3.12 The <span> and <div> tags
- One problem with the font properties is that
they apply to whole elements, which are
often too large

- Solution: a new tag to define an element in the

content of a larger element - <span>

- The default meaning of <span> is to leave the

content as it is

<p>
Now is the <span> best time </span> ever!
</p>

- Use <span> to apply a document style sheet to

its content

<style type = "text/css">

.bigred {font-size: 24pt;
font-family: Ariel; color: red}
</style>

...

<p>
Now is the
<span class = "bigred">
best time </span> ever!
</p>

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 23

3.12 The <span> and <div> tags (continued)

- The <span> tag is similar to other HTML tags,

they can be nested and they have id and class
attributes

- Another tag that is useful for style specifications:

<div>

- Used to create document sections (or divisions)

for which style can be specified

- e.g., A section of five paragraphs for which

you want some particular style

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 24

3.12 Conflict Resolution
- A conflict occurs when there are two or more
values for the same property on the same
element

- Sources of conflict:

1. Conflicting values between levels of style

sheets

2. Within one style sheet

3. Inheritance can cause conflicts

4. Property values can come from style sheets

written by the document author, the browser
user, and the browser defaults

- Resolution mechanisms:

1. Precedence rules for the different levels of

style sheets

2. Source of the property value

3. The specificity of the selector used to set the

property value

4. Property value specifications can be marked

to indicate their weight (importance)

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 25

3.12 Conflict Resolution (continued)
- Weight is assigned to a property value by
attaching !important to the value

- Conflict resolution is a multistage process,

called the cascade:

1. Gather all of the style specs from the different

levels of style sheets

2. All available specs, from all sources, are sorted

by origin and weight, using the following rules,
which are given in precedence order:

a. Important declarations with user origin

b. Important declarations with author origin

c. Normal declarations with author origin

d. Normal declarations with user origin

e. Any declarations with browser (or other user

agent) origin

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 26

3.12 Conflict Resolution (continued)
3. If any conflicts remain, sort them by
specificity:

a. id selectors

b. Class and pseudo-class selectors

c. Contextual selectors

d. Universal selectors

4. If there are still conflicts, resolve them by

precedence to the most recently seen
specification

Chapter 3 © 2010 by Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. 27