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"Cascading Style Sheets" For Styling WWW Information: Mike Pangburn

The document discusses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and how they can be used to style web pages. CSS allows separation of document content from page layout/styles. Styles are defined through selectors that target specific HTML elements, and declarations that set properties like colors and fonts. CSS provides advantages like reusable stylesheets, easier maintenance, and cleaner HTML code. Common ways to define styles are through internal, inline, and external stylesheets. The cascade determines which styles take precedence when multiple selectors apply.

Uploaded by

Rihab Ait Azzhra
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© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
49 views

"Cascading Style Sheets" For Styling WWW Information: Mike Pangburn

The document discusses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and how they can be used to style web pages. CSS allows separation of document content from page layout/styles. Styles are defined through selectors that target specific HTML elements, and declarations that set properties like colors and fonts. CSS provides advantages like reusable stylesheets, easier maintenance, and cleaner HTML code. Common ways to define styles are through internal, inline, and external stylesheets. The cascade determines which styles take precedence when multiple selectors apply.

Uploaded by

Rihab Ait Azzhra
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 24

“Cascading Style Sheets” for

styling WWW information

DSC340

Mike Pangburn
CSS Advantages
 Makes website more flexible
 CSS is reusable
 Change stylesheet to change design of many pages
 Example: CSS Zen garden http://www.csszengarden.com/

 Easier to maintain
 Cleaner HTML code
 Separates styles from HTML tags and page content
 Consistent look across entire website that is easily maintained by
changing styles in one place.
CSS Disadvantages
 Not uniformly supported by all
browsers.
 Firefox adheres to CSS standards
more than IE
 For this course we use Firefox
CSS: adding style
 CSS allows you to add “style” to an HTML (web page)
element
 E.g., color, size, or positioning information

 There are two aspects to adding style to a web page via CSS
 Specifying what the style looks like
 Called the CSS style “Declaration”
 Naming the HTML (or XML) element to which the style applies
 Referred to as specifying the CSS “Selector”
CSS: adding style

 The “declaration” part looks a bit like HTML:


{
font-size: 10px;
background-color: #fff; A CSS declaration
color: #222;
margin: 20px;
}
 The above CSS declaration takes an HTML element and adds a
background color, a margin, and changes the element’s font
size/color
CSS: adding style

 A question: how does the browser know which HTML


element on the webpage this declaration applies to?
{
font-size: 10px;
background-color: #fff;
color: #222;
margin: 20px;
}
CSS: adding style

 Answer: we precede the declaration with the selector.


 For example:
body {
font-size: 10px;
background-color: #fff;
color: #222; }

…this tells the browser to apply the declared style to the


HTML <body> element.
The most basic kind of CSS selector

 “Simple” type selectors

Ex.: body{}, p{}, strong{}


 Selects every instance of the corresponding HTML
element
 These simple selectors are commonly used

 Wildcard selector
*{}
 Selects all elements on a page
 Can be used in combination with other selectors
Aside: grouping selectors
 You can apply the same declaration to a group of
selectors by listing all of the desired selector names
separated by commas.
 Example:
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {color:#ff0000; font-family:sans-serif}
CSS: selector flexibility

 The usefulness of selectors relates to how much


specificity you have in selecting different parts of a
web page.
 Simple example: your personal webpage
 You may not want the same font/color type style
throughout the entire <body> element
CSS: selector flexibility

 You could use the declaration with the selector just for
the HTML <p> tag
p{
font-size: 10px;
background-color: #fff;
color: #222; }
…this tells the browser to apply the declared style to
HTML <p> tags.
But, what if you want <p> blocks in the About Me
section to look one way, and those within your
Education section to be styled differently?
Naming HTML elements

 There are two naming options for an HTML element: assigning “ID”
names and “class names.”

 When you give an HTML element a class or id name, you need to


use that name when making the corresponding style declaration
 These two options are very similar, and the “class name” approach is
more popular, so we focus on that.

 Aside: An id declaration is the same as a class declaration, except


that it should only be used specifically once per web page
 The syntax for id vs. class is also nearly identical, the only difference
being the use of a pound sign (#) instead of the period (.) you will see in
a couple slides.
Example: naming HTML elements

 The following HTML block gives the “class name”


bigblue to the following specific <h1> tag in this (very)
simple webpage.

<html>
<body>
<h1 class=”myboldandbluelook”> Introduction </h1>
</body>
<html>
Connecting a style declaration to a class name
To connect a style declaration to a particular class name
you wrote into your HTML document, you simply precede
the class declaration with: .theclassname
Example
.myboldandbluelook
{
Aside: if you want this style to be used
font-weight: bold; only once in the web page, then specify it
color: blue; as an ID style with this slight syntax
} change:
#myboldandbluelook
{
font-weight: bold;
color: blue;
}
More on selector options
 Descendant (nested) selector
ul li a strong{color:green;}
 Syntax is similar to the example of grouping selectors—but
without the commas

 Selects all elements that correspond to the “nested”


structure specified by the selector
 E.g., the above style will apply to any <strong> HTML tag that
lies within an <a> tag that lies within an <li> tag that lies within a
<ul> tag

 Very (!!!) specific—nice!


Aside: styling hyperlinks

You can style links to respond dynamically.


The associated style selectors are called the hyperlink (or “anchor”) pseudo-class
selectors:

:link, :visited, :hover, :active { }


Example:
a:link {color:#FF0000;}  /* color to apply to link before it’s visited */
a:visited {color:#00FF00;}  /* color to apply to link before it’s visited*/
a:hover {color:#FF00FF;}  /* color to apply to link while mouse pointer is over it*/
a:active {color:#0000FF;}  /* color to apply while left mouse button is held down on link */

 Note: a:hover MUST be listed after a:link and a:visited !


 Note: a:active MUST be listed after a:hover !
CSS: what does cascading mean?
 Cascading means a more-specific selector beats out a less-
specific selector.
 For example, with styles... Both the body and .red
.red { color: red; } selectors pertain, but
the .red selector
body { color: black; } overrules because it is
What will this HTML look like? more specific
<body>
<p>I am black</p>
<p class="red">I am red</p>
</body>

Related point: if both ID (#) and class (.) styles to the same HTML element,
the ID style “wins” because ID styles are supposed to be used just once per
web-page (thus, in some sense, quite specifically)
CSS: the cascade
 What if there is a “tie” regarding how specific the selectors are?

p{font-weight:bold;}

p{font-weight:normal;}

p{color:green;}

<p>This will be green text with a normal


font weight</p>
 When there is a tie, the tied selector that is most immediately
preceding the HTML element wins (in this case, the second “p”
selector)
 In other words, in a tie, the last-defined selector wins
How/where do we add the style declarations to our HTML
files?

 Two good approaches for named (class or id) styles:


 Internal stylesheet
 Put the style declarations in the <head> of HTML text file
 External stylesheet
 Put the style declarations in a separate text file and then import
that text file into your HTML file
How/where do we add the style declarations to our HTML
files?

 Third approach when you don’t want to bother


naming/reusing a style:
 Inline style
 Simply put the style declaration within the HTML tag where
it’s used
 Example
<p style=“font-size: 14px;”>Text</p>
 Note: instead of using an inline (i.e., embedded in
HTML) style, we could use our HTML tags
<p> <font size=“14px”>Text</font> </p>
Internal Style sheet example

<head>
<style type=“text/css”>
CSS Code Here
</style>
</head>
Preferred method: External Style Sheet

 You create a separate style document (example: style.css).

 Insert it into your html head tag


<head>
<link rel=“stylesheet” href=http://yoursite.com/style.css
type=“text/css”>
</head>

 Aside: the above “link” tag works for Importing a stylesheet, and
there is also an equivalent “<@import>” tag
Recap: 3 places to define styles
 Inline – apply style attribute to a single tag
 Takes a lot of work to maintain across a website
 Internal, (“embedded,” “global”)
 stylesheet defined in the <head> tag of a page

 External style sheet (a .css text file)


 same functionality as Internal
Resources
 Nice description for beginners:
 http://www.cssbasics.com/introduction-to-css/

 Nice tutorial for beginners:


 http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/011/firstcss

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