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CSS Introduction

What is CSS?​

CSS is the language we use to style a Web page.

  • CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets
  • CSS describes how HTML elements are to be displayed on screen, paper, or in other media
  • CSS saves a lot of work. It can control the layout of multiple web pages all at once
  • External stylesheets are stored in CSS files

CSS can also be used with any kind of XML documents including plain XML, SVG and XUL.

CSS is used along with HTML and JavaScript in most websites to create user interfaces for web applications and user interfaces for many mobile applications.

What does CSS do?​

  • You can add new looks to your old HTML documents.
  • You can completely change the look of your website with only a few changes in CSS code.

Why use CSS?​

These are the three major benefits of CSS:

1. Solves a big problem​

Before CSS, tags like font, color, background style, element alignments, border and size had to be repeated on every web page. This was a very long process. For example: If you are developing a large website where fonts and color information are added on every single page, it will be become a long and expensive process. CSS was created to solve this problem. It was a W3C recommendation.

2. Saves a lot of time​

CSS style definitions are saved in external CSS files so it is possible to change the entire website by changing just one file.

3. Provide more attributes​

CSS provides more detailed attributes than plain HTML to define the look and feel of the website.

note

If you don't know what HTML is, we suggest that you read our HTML Tutorial.

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