The Benefits of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are used to format Web content for various browsers and devices. Style sheets allow Web designers to control the rendering of fonts, colors, margins, typefaces, and other design aspects of a Web page without compromising its structure i.e. the html. CSS also provides web designers with a tool to design pages for a wide range of devices ranging from cell phones and PDA's to printer-friendly pages.
CSS History
Cascading Style Sheets have been around since the inception of the Internet but were not used until recently because many Web browsers did not fully support it. You may recall the browser wars of the second half of the 90's and early 2000's. These "wars" were fought by various Web browser teams trying to out-do each other. This left Web developers with a can of worms that required them to "hack" up their html code to make it work in all the current browsers.
A Need for Web Standards
As the browser wars continued, it became increasingly clear that for the Web to move forward in an effective way some standard practices were needed. Under the recommendations of the W3C, browser developers began to develop "compliant" browsers which meant they understood HTML, XHTML and CSS. The compliant browsers put an end to the browser wars and moved the Web to the next level. While many modern browsers are standards-compliant it will still be a few more years until all aspects of CSS are supported in all browsers.
CSS: a new frontier In Web Design
Now that most web browsers are at least partially standards-compliant, Web designers and developers can reap the benefits. Below are just a few of the benefits:
- CSS allows designers to separate the style and layout of HTML files from the content. The look and feel of a site can be defined in one CSS file. Site-wide design changes can be made by editing this one CSS file.
- Because of the separation of the content from the layout, Web pages are much smaller and require less bandwidth.
- CSS works not only in modern standards-compliant browsers but in older browsers as well. Older browsers don't understand CSS and ignore it. The result is a very plain document with no styles. This is known as "graceful degradation" where content is presented in an unformatted yet useful way.
- If a website style is later changed, only the style sheet needs to be changed while the html remains untouched. This can prevent costly redesigns.
- Special style sheets can be put together for printing purposes to create clean prints of Web documents. Paper has different properties than a computer screen and the differences can be accounted for in a style sheet.
- Website visitors with disabilities have better access to your pages. For example visually impaired Web users may need increased font sizes and will be among the first to benefit from style sheets. CSS also provides a framework for speech style sheets for users using screen readers.
CSS Resources
- Learn more about CSS and its application
- W3C on CSS
- See CSS in action in the ZenGarden
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