Acronym for Cascading Style Sheet, It is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standard for style sheets capable of indicating presentation formats (such as fonts, font sizes, and paragraph alignment) for HTML elements. Using syntax, Web authors can incorporate style statements using HTML 4.0’s style attribute, a separate style area (using the STYLE element) within the document’s HEAD element, or a completely different text file (with the .css extension).
The term “cascading” is meant to suggest the various levels of authority; style definitions within the HEAD override external style sheets, while style statements placed within an HTML element override all other style definitions is currently in its Level 2 specification See DeCSS, DVD Regia locking.
Technipages Explains CSS
CSS, an abbreviation for Cascading style sheet is used to describe how documents written in mark up languages like HTML should appear on the screen of different types of devices either on a small screen, big screen or even printers. It also works for any XML based mark-up language. CSS controls variables on a webpage such as a font, font colors, spacing and textures.
CSS was developed to enhance the separation of presentation and content of webpages. It can control the layout for quite some webpages at the same time. With CSS, it allows multiple pages to share the formatting information, and this minimizes repetition in the structural component of the documents. So, therefore, reducing the size of file transfer causing pages to load faster.
In the year 1996, the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) introduced CSS, because, before this, development of large websites became long and expensive due to the style information being added to every single page of the website. With HTML being in use, the variables on a webpage were being described within the HTML. CSS was introduced to solve this problem.
Common Uses of CSS
- CSS works on HTML and also on any XML based mark up language
- CSS is the language for describing the presentation of web pages, and these include colors, fonts, and layouts
- The separation of HTML from CSS makes it easier to maintain sites, share style sheets across pages, and design pages to individual tastes
Common Misuses of CSS
- A typography CSS file can not define your typefaces, sizes, leading, kerning, and possibly even color
- CSS does not replace any part of HTML, and it is not even customizable