15.1. What is CSS?

15.1.1. Background

As discussed in the previous chapter, HTML lays out the structure of a webpage. However, when programmers make pages only with HTML, they might not be able to really show off their creativity and artistic flair.

HTML by itself may not fully reflect a programmer’s style.

When building a website, the structure of each page is important, but so is the appearance of the elements. By adding style attributes inside the tags, programmers can adjust how an element looks on the screen.

Attributes spice up a webpage.

The attributes provide styling information, not structure. As such, we generally consider the styling of a webpage to be a separate task from building the HTML layout.

While HTML creates the structure and content of the page, CSS adds the styling to make it beautiful! Cascading Styling Sheets (CSS) is a language that allows programmers to easily add styling instructions to HTML documents. With CSS, programmers can change background and font colors, the size of different elements, and many more things.

HTML is the frame. CSS is the decoration. Combined, they make attractive webpages.

CSS works by applying style rules to different elements. A style rule could be: Make this lettering purple or Make this font Helvetica.

The cascading part of the CSS name refers to how the style rules get applied. The rules “cascade” because they follow a specific order of importance.

Note

We will explore this order of importance later in the chapter.

15.1.2. Check Your Understanding

Question

HTML is responsible for which parts of a webpage? Select ALL that apply.

1. The structure
2. The content
3. The appearance
4. The web address

Question

CSS is responsible for which part of a webpage?

1. The structure
2. The content
3. The appearance
4. The web address