Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, is a styling language used to control the presentation and layout of HTML and XML documents. CSS separates the visual presentation of a website from its content, allowing developers to easily change the appearance of a website without modifying the HTML code.
CSS was developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 1996 and has since become a fundamental aspect of web development. CSS enables developers to define styles for fonts, colors, backgrounds, borders, and many other visual elements of a website.
CSS works by selecting HTML elements and applying styling rules to them. To select an HTML element, CSS uses selectors, which are patterns that match elements based on their type, attributes, and content. Once a selector has been matched, CSS applies a set of rules that define how the element should be styled.
CSS rules consist of a selector and a declaration block. The selector specifies the HTML element or elements to which the rule applies, while the declaration block contains one or more declarations that define the style properties and their values. For example, the following CSS rule sets the background color of all paragraphs to yellow:
p {
background-color: yellow;
}CSS also supports cascading and inheritance, which allows styles to be inherited by child elements and overridden by more specific styles. This enables developers to create consistent and maintainable styles for large websites with many pages and elements.
One of the key benefits of using CSS is its ability to create responsive and mobile-friendly layouts. CSS provides several layout techniques such as flexbox and grid, which allow developers to create dynamic and flexible layouts that adapt to different screen sizes and devices.
Conclusion
CSS is a powerful styling language that enables developers to control the visual presentation of websites. With CSS, developers can create responsive and mobile-friendly layouts, consistent and maintainable styles, and engaging and interactive user interfaces. As you continue to develop your web development skills, be sure to explore more advanced techniques for working with CSS and enhancing the visual appearance of your websites.
What’s next?
In the coming article, we dive into CSS selectors and properties. Don’t forget to follow and share this with your friends that are just starting their web development journey.