Have you ever wondered what exactly powers the visual aesthetics and functionality of websites? Are you interested in diving deeper into the infrastructure of your static or WordPress website? If so, then Cascading Style Sheets and the foundation of dynamic web design is an excellent place to begin.
While modern websites run on a variety of coding languages, such as HTML, HTML5, JavaScript, and PHP, the majority of sites require a Cascading Style Sheet, or CSS, file. Whether you’re building a website or a web application, CSS plays a fundamental role in activating and directing the visual style elements that make up a website.
Even though CSS is a complex and multi-layered coding language, the best place to begin your understanding is learning what its purpose actually is and how this code interacts with your website. Without further ado, let’s briefly dive into the cascading world of CSS.
CSS – A Brief Overview
Essentially, CSS is a collection of style definitions that are followed when an HTML document is rendered by an end-user’s browser. Not only does a CSS stylesheet define the visual elements represented in the HTML document, but it also instructs the browser about where these elements should be positioned on the rendered webpage.
In terms of website coding and rendering, Cascading Style Sheets reduce time as it eliminates the need to input each attribute within your HTML document. As you can imagine, having to individually assign attributes would take forever to write and even longer to render for a browser. Running a webpage speed test can fill you in on any elements that could benefit from optimization.
With CSS, you create a broad rule assigned to specific attributes. For example, whenever an HTML document refers to a specific visual attribute, the browser calls upon the CSS stylesheet for instructions. It doesn’t matter if the attribute occurs once or 1,000 times, the element descriptions are only written once in the CSS.
The Parts of CSS Styling
Every CSS style command, which is also called a style rule, features two components: selector and declaration. In essence, the selector attribute, such as H2, defines the on-page element to be rendered. The declaration defines how the selector will look when rendered. This means any text included within this attribute will look as described by the declaration. For example,
H2 {text-align:center; color:red;}
In the above code snippet, the selector is (H2) while the declaration is everything included within the brackets. If this was being used in your site, then text included within the HTML <H2>…</H2> tags would be centered and colored red. This would be true regardless of where or how many times you used this specific HTML tag.
Creating CSS style rules may also be done directly within the HTML document using the <style></style> tags found in <HEAD> section of the HTML file. This is referred to as an internal CSS stylesheet. However, you may also create an external CSS stylesheet, which is a separate document from the HTML file. Unlike HTML files with included CSS, an external CSS stylesheet only contains CSS style rules and not actual website content.
