Cascading Style Sheets
Overview
Originally, HTML allowed only limited control of design elements. This was a philosophical design decision, but developers demanded more control over layout and were soon using all kinds of tricks to get the look they wanted. Tables were one of the most used HTML elements employed to create complex layouts with a great amount of control.
HTML gained many tags and attributes by version 3.2 that allowed detailed control over the format of web documents. This was in direct opposition to the original concept of separating content from presentation. The HTML 4.0 standard deprecated many of those formatting tags and attributes. The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) specification was introduced to fill the gap that existed between what designers wanted and what was available in the HTML specification. CSS allows exact positioning and formatting of text. It may also be used to create master templates for web sites. Wb pages can be made annoyingly dynamic with the combined use of CSS and JavaScript.
CSS has a number of advantages over more traditional markup. It helps separate content from presentation, which means that the person preparing the content doesn't have to be an expert at presentation, and the page can be redesigned without touching the content. CSS provides much more control over formatting than HTML. CSS is relatively easy to use and has a compact notation. One of the best features of CSS is how easy it is to write one style that can be applied to a whole website.
By the time we are finished looking at CSS, you should be able to use CSS elements to enhance your web page presentation, and you should be able to use inline, embedded, and linked CSS elements. If we have enough time, you may even get to try some of the positioning rules. Since we have a text for this topic, these web pagea are meant mainly as an outline type of reference, not a tutorial.