- What does Cascading Style Sheets mean?
- Why do you need CSS?
- How CSS works
- Why is this language important for web developers?
- Negative Sides of Cascading Style Sheets
- Principle of separation of content and design
- Critical principles of creating web layouts with CSS
- How to master Cascading Style Sheets?
- Summing Up
Even for novice users, it is no surprise that HTML is used to create websites. Sometimes the developer community utilizes the acronym CSS, which frequently perplexes newbies. CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is a markup language for the visual design of websites. When creating internet pages, these styles are essential since they provide information on how each document’s elements should be displayed in a single file. To separate the page’s structure from its visual presentation, CSS interacts with HTML, which establishes the content of a web page. In the article, we tell you more about it while shedding some light on the benefits of using such a tool.
What does Cascading Style Sheets mean?
During the FrontEnd course by the DevEducation Academy, students look closely at the tools indispensable for professional developers. Beginners carefully study HTML and CSS in painstaking detail. An integrated approach allows those trying their hand at the IT field for the first time to become valuable specialists in this area.
Cascading Style Sheets is a formal language that aids in describing how a web page is displayed. The idea to utilize this language to build web pages while considering the preferred style gave rise to the first use of shorthand in 1994. The World Wide Web Consortium produced its initial standard recommendation two years later. The current specification, CSS3, which is the third edition, has pushed on to the next level in terms of its own features and capabilities.
Why do you need CSS?
At the dawn of the development of the Internet, experts used only HTML to lay out web pages. But at a certain point, the capabilities of the language became insufficient since it made it impossible to fully perform the tasks of designing resources. Website owners wanted platforms with a tailored and rather complex design, as they believed it helped attract the target audience.
Pages were only ever designed using HTML inside the base document before the advent of CSS. However, the technology made it possible to divide the file’s text and the page’s visual style into different parts. Linking the HTML file with CSS made it doable to utilize the same style in all documents.
With the help of the language, a user can perform various tasks:
- designing the text part of the resource (color scheme, alignment, line characteristics, and font size)
- creating individual components (rounding, background color, dimensions, shadows, indents);
- including animation elements (without the requirement for JS);
- creating a scheme to lay out the content;
- creating an adaptable design.
If you need to perform such tasks, it will be the perfect-pitch solution allowing you to push any project to the goal line quickly and efficiently.
How CSS works
First, developers need to integrate the document into the page they create. There are two ways to do it:
- connecting the Cascading Style Sheets file directly to the HTML document, namely in the head tag;
- write CSS in the file’s body directly inside the style tag.
To style a component, the language offers developers a selector mechanism. It implies that users can access the elements and assign them specific property settings. If you specify a format for a tag, every single tag on the newly formed web page will use it. Moreover, you can define a value by ID, class, or attribute. All items that meet the declared values will be subject to the required characteristics.
Pseudo-selectors are also present in CSS. Developers can choose just one component from a list of identical variations or one piece from the list using these tools.
Why is this language important for web developers?
Today, all IT professionals who develop websites deal with CSS. There are many reasons for it. The primary advantages of technology include:
- The simplicity. It allows you to understand the features of its use quickly. At the same time, the principle of separating content from styling provides an opportunity to significantly reduce the time spent on developing a resource.
- Minimizing the time it takes for a page to load. It is accomplished by shifting the information-sharing regulations to a different document. As a result, the browser only loads the data stored on the page and the HTML file structure. When users switch between pages, information is loaded directly from the program cache rather than the browser, which loads the presentation of such information only once for every page. In addition, it lessens the server’s workload.
- Simple design modifications. CSS is used when something needs to be fixed in the website’s overall outlay. This tool saves developers from having to modify each web page. You only need to edit the properties’ values directly in the required file.
These benefits make Cascading Style Sheets a popular language among experienced website developers since they can significantly simplify and accelerate the work.
Negative Sides of Cascading Style Sheets
CSS does, of course, have its features that can be characterized as drawbacks, just like any other tool. When using various Internet browsers, a layout written in this language could be graphically rendered in a different way. Quite frequently, issues arise specifically while using out-of-date software. As a result, older browsers might not support specific new properties and their values.
Another drawback is the requirement to correct both the HTML and CSS document components. Element links to tool selectors directly cause this to happen. Therefore, editing is required, along with evaluating the modifications.
Moreover, it is limited in what you can do in terms of layout sizes, grid widths, button types, styles, and everything else because the CSS framework uses a standard set of grids, selectors, and other code. If you want to save time and benefit from the framework, you must adhere to your paradigm. If not, you will waste time learning new infrastructure or altering code whenever you wish to do something different, such as if a project calls for out-of-the-box design.
Principle of separation of content and design
The desire of the website’s owners to get more complex designs and formats of websites gave rise to the idea of separating the resource’s content from its design. Pages should have a distinctive design, a comprehensive font, animation, and other features highlighting the company’s competitive edge. The need for more contemporary methods of dealing with HTML files forced website developers to hunt for them.
It eventually caused experts to stop utilizing the traditional way of using tables to design pages. This strategy made the resource’s structure more complex and made managing HTML content challenging. Cascading Style Sheets’ introduction was a lifesaver.
Critical principles of creating web layouts with CSS
The primary task of this language is the development of resource layouts. Nowadays, HTML doesn’t play as much of a role as it did a few years ago, especially when it comes to the elements’ placement on a page. This document only takes charge of the structure and components’ nestedness. Therefore, it allows you to streamline the reading of sites by various screen readers and future markup with the help of cascading styles.
Two basic techniques are used to position components in the body of a resource:
- GRID. It provides the ability to pick wraps, giving preference to placing objects on the selected grid.
- FLEX. It helps to automatically distribute elements in a block by creating wrap blocks with a flex property.
Both options enable users to create web resources where components are always located in their correct position and also adapt to different display resolutions.
How to master Cascading Style Sheets?
Although the tool is very intuitive, it is advised that you receive specialized training. You can always enroll in the DevEducation Academy’s FrontEnd course. It opens the door to anyone starting in the IT field to handle markup, defining style properties, and other fundamental tasks successfully and accurately.
During the course, students will learn atomic CSS and how to build web layouts from scratch. Novice users may get to discuss styles, their capabilities, markup syntax, and other elements in depth and detail. The training program contains interactive exams and projects that let you solidify your understanding of CSS programming and website construction. You will have a strong foundation for self-development after completing the course and be able to grasp the fundamentals of CSS as well as how web page structure is organized.
Summing Up
CSS is an indispensable tool when designing online resources. Thanks to it, you can adjust the appearance and location of certain details on the page. This tool defines the display of HTML documents. It works with fonts, color, margins, lines, height, width, background images, element positioning, and many other things. HTML is used to structure the content of the page while CSS is used to format this structured content.
Cascading Style Sheets are now the most powerful tool to design web resources. It is difficult to imagine creating a stunning web page without it. Modern developers may create attractive and distinctive websites with CSS instead of many JS scripts that degrade resource performance. Cascading Style Sheets is regarded as one of the fundamental languages that every web developer should be familiar with to implement high-quality and modern projects following predetermined guidelines.
