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Cascading Style Sheets

Cascading Style Sheets a language we have known since it started!

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Regarding the visual side of web development, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) reigns supreme. Whether you’re building a personal blog, an e-commerce store, or a professional portfolio, CSS makes your website visually appealing and user-friendly. But mastering CSS can seem intimidating at first. This guide breaks it down step by step, so you can learn the essentials and start using CSS confidently.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

  • What CSS is and why it’s important
  • How to write basic CSS syntax
  • Key concepts like the CSS Box Model
  • Styling text and creating layouts
  • Tips for Responsive Design
  • Advanced techniques to take your skills further
  • Best practices for maintaining clean, scalable code

By the end, you’ll have a solid understanding of CSS fundamentals and a roadmap for continuing your learning!

What is CSS?

CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is the technology used to style and layout websites. While HTML is used to structure a web page, CSS gives it life by controlling design elements such as colors, fonts, spacing, and positioning. Together, HTML and CSS allow you to create engaging and functional websites.

Why is CSS Important?

Without CSS, websites would look bland and cluttered. Imagine a world where every website looked like plain blocks of text. CSS makes websites visually appealing and improves usability. CSS plays a significant role in responsive design, ensuring your site works across devices.

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We’ve all seen some of the worst websites. These “website builders” seriously lacked knowledge of web design and web development software, particularly little to nothing about CSS.

Benefits of CSS

CSS is a text-based coding language that controls the formatting and display of HTML documents. It separates document content from presentation. With CSS, web designers can control style elements like layout, color, fonts, and formatting. It offers advantages such as consistent style application, improved site speed, simplified development and maintenance, responsiveness, and bandwidth savings. However, there are disadvantages, such as compatibility issues with different browsers, lack of security, and confusion with varying levels of CSS. Cross-browser issues and complexity for non-developers and beginners are also drawbacks.

CSS Strategies

CSS-in-JS, or JSS, is an authoring tool that allows you to use JavaScript to describe CSS styles in a declarative and reusable way. It can be compiled in the browser, server-side, or at build time. JSS is a more powerful abstraction over CSS, using JavaScript to describe styles in a maintainable way. It is a high-performance JS to-CSS compiler that works at runtime and on the server side. CSS Modules can achieve locally scoped CSS class names, which can help clean up CSS in large applications. Popular CSS-in-JS libraries include Styled components, React-JSS, and Glamorous. CSS preprocessors like Sass, LESS, Stylus, and Post CSS offer additional features and improve the readability and maintainability of CSS structures. (Vitalis, 2019)

Modern CSS properties can improve CSS in application development and enhance user experience. It aims to reduce technical debt and eliminate the need for JavaScript. “How Custom Property Values are Computed” explores the behaviors and processes involved in computing the final values of custom properties in browsers. “Modern CSS For Dynamic Component-Based Architecture” focuses on modern project architecture, theming, responsive layouts, and component design. “Testing Feature Support for Modern CSS” discusses how to determine if it is safe to use new CSS features.

Resources For Learning CSS

Learning CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is crucial for web development. Codecademy provides interactive tutorials on CSS basics, selectors, and layout strategies for novices. The Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) offers thorough documentation and CSS tutorials for beginners and experts. David Sawyer McFarland’s book CSS: The Missing Manual is strongly recommended for detailed knowledge. It covers everything from CSS fundamentals to advanced topics with practical examples.

For those who learn best visually, YouTube channels such as Traversy Media and The Net Ninja provide video tutorials covering a variety of CSS principles and projects. Finally, joining online groups for problem-solving and remaining current, such as Stack Overflow and Reddit’s r/CSS, can be a great resource. Learning the fundamentals of CSS, which are available through resources such as W3School, shows the first step towards mastering modern web design.

CSS 3 and modules

Unlike the earlier version, CSS3 is split into modules; why is that? To create Cascading Style Sheets modules, you need to write markup in a JavaScript file. When this is attempted, the build step will process the file into separate CSS and HTML files, with a new string of characters replacing the HTML class and the CSS selector class by searching the imported CSS file and then looking through JavaScript.New features have come up with CSS3. New CSS3 selectors can choose DOM (Document Object Model) elements based on their attributes so that you can utilize the attribute field to style them. With new selectors, you can easily style different elements on a webpage. Another new thing is the rounded corner. Round corners required a lot of code. But the CSS3 Borer-Radius property solved this issue.

Here is an example: The CSS Module guarantees that all the styles for a single component are live in one place and only apply to that component.

Example Code

On CSS <div class=”code”>  .box{ border: 2px solid orange; border-radius : 25px; width: 100px; padding: 10px; text-align:center;  </div>.

On HTML <div class=”code”><div class=”box”>Submit</div></div>

Border image is the ability to swap out a border with an image. Instead of the border, the image will be displayed. Here is an example of it.

On CSS <div class=”code”>#col{border-image:url(border_image.png) 100 100 100 100 round round; border-width: 10px;}</div>

On HTML <div class=”code”><div id=”col”>my content</div></div>

Box shadow allows the creation of a drop shadow for an element. Example of  Property Box-shadow.

On CSS <div class=”code”>.shadow{ background-color: #EEEEEE; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px 2px #797979; height: 50px; width: 100px; padding: 5px;}</div>

On HTML <div class=”code”><div class=”shadow”>  my content </div></div>

Property text-shadow puts shadows on the text. This is similar to the box-shadow.

Example on CSS <div class=”code”>p{ text-shadow: #aaa 2px 2px 2px; }</div>

On HTML <div class=”code”><p>My text is more beautiful, than a normal webfont</p></div>

The property gradient is a sleek design tool. It can be covered over resources if it is not implemented correctly. Here is an example of it.

On CSS <div class=”code”>#gradient { background-image: -webkit-   gradient(linear,left bottom,left top,color-stop(0, #E6C674),color-stop(1, #F7ECCA)); background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(center bottom , #E6C674 0pt, #F7ECCA 100%); height: 50px;}</div>

On HTML <div class=”code”><p id=”gradient”>My text is more beautiful, than a normal webfont</p></div>

RGB Property

The RGB property sets the color for different elements. It is transformed to RGBA, which simplifies controlling the opacity of elements. In CSS3, opacity manipulation is added. Here is an example.

On CSS <div class=”code”>p {background: rgba(217, 127, 185, .5); }</div>

This code will make the opacity of p tags 50%, as specified in the RGBA property.

Property transform enables the rotating Web element. Example.

On CSS <div class=”code”>p{ -moz-transform: rotate(180deg); -webkit-transform: rotate(180deg);} </div>

On Html <div class=”code”><p>I can rotate this element, by 180degree using -moz-transform property</p></div>

The multicolumn layout property adjusts boxes and columns to display correctly on different browsers. Here is the Example.

On CSS <div class=”code”>#col{-moz-column-count:3;-webkit-column-count:3;} </div>

On HTML  <div class=”code”><div id=”col”> text truncated, due to length</div></div>

Web fonts

Web fonts property allows you to include fonts from a remote location. This is helpful since fonts are dependent on the client and web page. It can be shown differently if yours doesn’t support it. On the regional website, this property is beneficial. Example:

On CSS  <div class=”code”>@font-face { src: URL(“myfont.ttf”); font-family: “myfont_bold”; }</div>

Take Away on Cascading Style Sheets

The key takeaway from Cascading Style Sheets is that a website would not look pretty without CSS. Hence, the process of web design, and in particular front-end coding, always requires CSS. Whether a large web design agency or a freelance web designer is building a website, they must all incorporate and understand CSS. No matter what website costs or web trends are in place today, Cascading Style Sheets will be necessary in the foreseeable future.

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More on CSS

CSS History

CSS is needed when developing modern websites. Without the Cascading Style Sheets, the design and layout of current websites are tacky and plain at best. The birth of CSS started in the year of 1994. At the World Wide Web Consortium, Hakon Wium Lie and Bert Bos contributed to developing a method to style documents. Although incorporating a separate style sheet language within a web page wasn’t revolutionary, “Hakon saw the need for a style sheet language for the Web” since there were none applicable for practical use then.

The syntax of CSS published.

In 1990, when Tim Berners-Lee published the syntax for the style sheets, it didn’t give each browser much of an option to “best display pages to its users.” Instead of letting the style sheet match each user, it gave out a strict method and a guide to the users’ browsers to display a specific page in that way. No matter how many windows are sized, the Web page display and the layout would stay the same throughout when the Web pages were made popular by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications with their Mosaic in 1993.  It was a step backward. Especially in style, it only allowed its users to change specific colors and fonts. Thus leaving not much configuration to be freed from the experience for the users.

 

CSS

Netscape

Later, one of NCSA Mosaic programmers, Marc Andreessen, co-founded a new browser called Netscape. He utilized his opinions on the NCSA Mosaic and put them to use in the Navigator. When the release of Netscape became public, Hakon published the first draft of Cascading HTML Style Sheets. This draft proposed a “simple mapping between HTML elements and presentation hints.” Unlike the initial release of Time Berners-Lee’s syntax for the style sheets, Hakon’s proposal “provided logic to make presentation decisions based on the user’s environment. For example, the Web page will display a situational display depending on the size of the user’s screen or the current date. Hence formatting the content size based on the user’s screen resolution. Which was an ingenious method of keeping the theme of the Web page? It is more commonly known today as responsive design.

Hakon’s proposal

In Hakon’s proposal for the Style Sheets, he stated why the style sheet functionality was insufficient. Håkon’s reasons were that the “current stylesheets are static; they seldom change within the lifetime of a browser process. This makes the visual environment sparse” and “the current stylesheets are implemented using platform-specific notations. While some may consider this a feature, it prohibits general mechanisms for passing styles over the web.” While it is very unthinkable to imagine what web pages would look like without style sheets, it was a real struggle for developers trying to convene a universal way for the web pages to follow.

A balance between reader and author

In Hakon’s ‘Cascading HTML style sheets proposal, Hakon says that the style sheet he is proposing is balanced because it provides the author and reader with the same notation for specifying style. While the Web page author desires to design their page with a distinct look and feel, the reader may have preferences while viewing or surfing the Web. While Hakon’s proposal may not completely redefine the web designing community, it is a step towards the Web developing languages that balance the power struggle between the author and the reader like we have today.

Others besides Hakon

While Hakon’s stylesheet was being proposed, he was not the only one with the proposal in mind. Rob Raisch from O’Reilly & Associates also proposed. Raisch’s proposal remained a “set of hints or suggestions to the renderer which might be used to display particular HTML objects in the fashion the author of a document originally intended.” This means that Raisch is making another Web page within a web page to match the suggestions that the readers may or may not follow, which gives power to the author and not the reader. In Raisch’s proposal, he states that the Web pages should look like this but can also look like this.

Hakon’s CSS stood out.

While two ways of viewing a web page are available, it doesn’t matter which way the reader prefers to view it since there are only two ways to display it. Of all the details and power struggle between the author and the reader proposed by other people, the Cascade Style Sheet proposed by Hakon stood out since it took into account that Web pages are not a one-way street that either authors or readers have the power to make a Web page look the way they want; “but that their wishes had to be combined, or ‘cascaded.’”

Addressed the author-reader power struggle

Since the Cascade Style Sheet proposal by Hakon addresses the issue of the power struggle between the author and the reader, when the next World Wide Web conference in April 1995 came around, the Cascade Style Sheet brought up a political debate on author-reader balance. The author argued that they had to be ultimately in charge in cases of “legal requirements on how warning labels have to be printed, and the user should not be able to reduce the font size for such warnings.” The reader side argued that because the readers have to take in the information given by the author and understand what is presented, the readers should have the last say.

W3C Founded

After the political debate and the founding of W3C, CSS1 was narrowly used, but the browser race has begun.

  1. The first browser to support CSS was Internet Explorer 3, which was released in August 1996.
  2. The second browser to support CSS was Netscape’s Navigator, version 4.0.
  3. The Navigator tried to prevent IE3 from becoming the standard browser many people use. Due to this hasty attempt, many CSS properties could not be used in Navigator 4. Unlike Netscape’s Navigator, version 4.0, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 3 reliably supported most CSS properties given in the CSS1 specification.  But there was one exception – the box model. Navigator did not implement CSS entirely but instead translated the CSS rules into bits and pieces of Javascript, which resulted in running multiple languages to support the CSS rule. If Netscape were successful with their Navigator version 4.0, then the web page authors would’ve had to write codes alongside the CSS.

Improvements in Internet Explorer

While Navigator failed to display CSS correctly, Microsoft continued to work to improve Internet Explorer. Although Internet Explorer did not fully support CSS1, it was capable of “dynamically changing stylistic properties,” which utilizes Dynamic HTML, which is an integral part of CSS. When Microsoft released IE4, they implemented a module named “Trident,” which “removed many of the limitations in IE3, but also came with its own set of limitations and bugs.”

A collaborative effort in the success of CSS

When thinking about modern-day Web pages, it is often overlooked how many hurdles people have overcome to publish something you can find today on the Web. Just by looking at the history of CSS, it is clear that many collaborations and efforts were put in place for this power struggle present in the past. While it was difficult for CSS to be fully implemented in Web pages and browsers, CSS’s capabilities grew even more prominent once it happened. In CSS 1, the main properties regarded the manner of CSS Syntax, Color and background, font and text properties, Cascade, Pseudo Classes, and Box properties. Previously stated properties are just some basic features of the Web page we see today proposed and developed by many people to have CSS become the universal style sheet.

CSS Versions

As CSS1 paved the ground for CSS to stand, the focus became evident in the improvements made in later versions. When CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 rolled out, many more improvements were made. For example, in CSS 2.1, the progress made was: Selectors, Media Types, Box Models, Visual Effects, Generated Content, Tables, and Paged Media. Lastly, in CSS3, the properties improved were: MathML, Color L3, Name Spaces, Selectors L3, Media Queries, and Style Attributes, with Generated Content, Paged Media (improvement), Transforms, Transitions, Ruby, Grid Layout, Web Animations, and Selectors L4 currently being in the development.

CSS History SummThanks to the developers and authors who implement the up-to-date CSS properties, the Web pages we see today aren’t plain or tacky at best. ary

While impressive Web pages today that utilize multiple languages showcase CSS, the development of CSS is not yet complete. Although the next CSS level is not yet planned, we can still tell the Level 4 Selectors within the Cest.

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