MISY233

CHAPTER 3
 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
 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)
 3.2 Levels of Style Sheets (cont.)

• 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
 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 (/*…*/)
 3.3 Style Specification Formats (cont.)

• 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
 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
 3.4. Selector Forms (cont.)

• 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}
• 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>
 3.4. Selector Forms (cont.)

• 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
• Example,
.sale { … }
• Use it as if it were a normal style class
<h1 class = "sale"> Weekend Sale </h1>
...
<p class = "sale"> … </p>
 3.4. Selector Forms (cont.)

• 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
 3.4. Selector Forms (cont.)

• 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>
 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)
 3.5 Property Value Forms (cont.)
• 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!
• 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
• 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
 3.6. Font Properties (cont.)
• 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)
• The text-decoration property
• line-through, overline, underline, none
• 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
• On <li>, list-style-type applies to just that item
 3.7. List Properties (cont.)
• Unordered lists (cont.)
<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>

<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>
 3.7. List Properties (cont.)
• 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

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

 3.8. Colors
• Color is a problem for the Web for two reasons:
• Old monitors vary widely
• 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

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

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

• 3. Any one of 16 million different colors

 3.8. 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

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

• Padding – the distance between the content of an element and its border
• Controlled by padding, padding-left, etc.
 3.11. Background Images
• The background-image property

• 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
 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>
 3.12 The <span> and <div> tags (cont.)
• 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

<html>
<style>
.div1 { background:#FF0000; }
.div2 { background-color:green; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1> THIS IS A DIV EXAMPLE</h1>
<div class="div1"> test1 </div>
<div class="div2"> test2 </div>
</body>
</html>
 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)
 3.12 Conflict Resolution (cont.)
• 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
• 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