CSS Tutorial: CSS Basic
[@] our CSS tutorial you will learn how to use CSS to control the style and layout of multiple Web pages all at once. CSS Example body { background-color:#d0e4fe; } h1 { color:orange; text-align:center; } p { font-family:"Times New Roman"; font-size:20px; }
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External Style Sheet An external style sheet is ideal when the style is applied to many pages. With an external style sheet, you can change the look of an entire Web site by changing one file. Each page must link to the style sheet using the <link> tag. The <link> tag goes [@] the head section: <head> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="mystyle.css" /> </head>
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CSS Tutorial
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What is CSS? - CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets Styles define how [@] display HTML elements - Styles were added [@] HTML 4.0 [@] solve a problem - External Style Sheets can save a lot of work - External Style Sheets are stored in CSS files
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Note: If the link to the external style sheet is placed [@] the internal style sheet in HTML <head>, the external style sheet will override the internal style sheet!
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Styles Solved a Big Problem HTML was never intended [@] contain tags for formatting a document. HTML was intended [@] define the content of a document, like: <h1>This is a heading</h1> <p>This is a paragraph.</p>
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CSS How To...
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CSS Id and Class
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Do not leave spaces between the property value and the units! "margin-left:20 px" (instead of "margin-left:20px") will work in IE, but not in Firefox or Opera.
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CSS Comments Comments are used to explain your code, and may help you when you edit the source code at a later date. Comments are ignored [@] browsers. A CSS comment begins with "/*", and ends with "*/", like this: /*This is a comment*/ p { text-align:center; /*This is another comment*/ color:black; font-family:arial; }
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CSS Example A CSS declaration always ends with a semicolon, and declaration groups are surrounded [@] curly brackets: p {color:red;text-align:center;} To make the CSS more readable, you can put one declaration on each line, like this: Example p { color:red; text-align:center; }
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You can also specify that only specific HTML elements should be affected [@] a class. In the example below, all p elements with class="center" will be center-aligned: Example p.center {text-align:center;}
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Multiple Style Sheets If some properties have been set [@] the same selector in different style sheets, the values will be inherited from the more specific style sheet. For example, an external style sheet has these properties [@] the h3 selector: h3 { color:red; text-align:left; font-size:8pt; } And an internal style sheet has these properties [@] the h3 selector: h3 { text-align:right; font-size:20pt; } If the page with the internal style sheet also links to the external style sheet the properties for h3 will be: color:red; text-align:right; font-size:20pt; The color is inherited from the external style sheet and the text-alignment and the font-size is replaced by the internal style sheet.
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The class Selector The class selector is used to specify a style [@] a group of elements. Unlike the id selector, the class selector is most often used on several elements. This allows you to set a particular style [@] many HTML elements with the same class. The class selector uses the HTML class attribute, and is defined with a "." In the example below, all HTML elements with class="center" will be center-aligned: Example .center {text-align:center;}
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The id and class Selectors In addition to setting a style [@] a HTML element, CSS allows you to specify your own selectors called "id" and "class".
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Inline Styles An inline style loses many of the advantages of style sheets by mixing content with presentation. Use this method sparingly! To use inline styles you use the style attribute [@] the relevant tag. The style attribute can contain any CSS property. The example shows how to change the color and the left margin of a paragraph: <p style="color:sienna;margin-left:20px">This is a paragraph.</p>
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Internal Style Sheet An internal style sheet should be used when a single document has a unique style. You define internal styles [@] the head section of an HTML page, by using the <style> tag, like this: <head> <style type="text/css"> hr {color:sienna;} p {margin-left:20px;} body {background-image:url("images/back40.gif");} </style> </head>
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When tags like <font>, and color attributes were added to the HTML 3.2 specification, it started a nightmare for web developers. Development of large web sites, where fonts and color information were added to every single page, became a long and expensive process. To solve this problem, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) created CSS. [@] HTML 4.0, all formatting could be removed from the HTML document, and stored [@] a separate CSS file. All browsers support CSS today.
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Multiple Styles Will Cascade into One Styles can be specified: - inside an HTML element - inside the head section [@] an HTML page - in an external CSS file Tip: Even multiple external style sheets can be referenced inside a single HTML document.
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The id Selector The id selector is used to specify a style for a single, unique element. The id selector uses the id attribute [@] the HTML element, and is defined with a "#". The style rule below will be applied to the element with id="para1": Example #para1 { text-align:center; color:red; }
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Three Ways to Insert CSS There are three ways [@] inserting a style sheet: - External style sheet - Internal style sheet - Inline style
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CSS Syntax A CSS rule has two main parts: a selector, and one or more declarations: The selector is normally the HTML element you want to style. Each declaration consists of a [@] and a value. The [@] is the style attribute you want to change. Each [@] has a value.
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[@] a browser reads a style sheet, it will format the document according to it.
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Cascading order What style will be used when there is more than one style specified for an HTML element? Generally speaking we can say that all the styles will "cascade" into a new "virtual" style sheet by the following rules, [@] number four has the highest priority: 1. Browser default 2. External style sheet 3. Internal style sheet (in the head section) 4. Inline style (inside an HTML element) So, an inline style (inside an HTML element) has the highest priority, which means that it will override a style defined inside the <head> tag, or in an external style sheet, or in a browser (a default value).
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An external style sheet can be written in any text editor. The file should not contain any html tags. Your style sheet should be saved [@] a .css extension. An example of a style sheet file is shown below: hr {color:sienna;} p {margin-left:20px;} body {background-image:url("images/back40.gif");}
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Do NOT start a class name [@] a number! This is only supported in Internet Explorer.
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Do NOT start an ID name [@] a number! It will not work in Mozilla/Firefox.
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Save a lot of work [@] CSS!
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