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.
CSS can be added to HTML elements in 3 ways:
Inline - by using the style attribute in HTML elements
Internal - by using a <style> element in the <head> section
External - by using an external CSS file
Inline CSS
An inline CSS is used to apply a unique style to a single HTML
element.
An inline CSS uses the style attribute of an HTML element.
This example sets the text color of the <h1> element to blue:
Example
<h1 style="color:blue;">This is a Blue Heading</h1>
Internal CSS
An internal CSS is used to define a style for a single HTML page.
An internal CSS is defined in the <head> section of an HTML page,
within a <style> element:
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<style>
body {
background-color: powderblue;
}
h1 {color: blue;}
p {color: red;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1>This is a heading</h1>
<p>This is a paragraph.</p>
</body>
</html>
External CSS
An external style sheet is used to define the style for many HTML
pages.
With an external style sheet, you can change the look of an entire
web site, by changing one file!
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css">
</head>
<body>
<h1>This is a heading</h1>
<p>This is a paragraph.</p>
</body>
</html>
An external style sheet can be written in any text editor. The file
must not contain any HTML code, and must be saved with a .css
extension.
Here is how the "styles.css" looks:
body {
background-color: powderblue;
}
h1 {
color: blue;
}
p{
color: red;
}
A CSS rule-set consists of a selector and a declaration block:
The selector points to the HTML element you want to style.
The declaration block contains one or more declarations separated
by semicolons.
Each declaration includes a CSS property name and a value,
separated by a colon.
A CSS declaration always ends with a semicolon, and declaration
blocks are surrounded by curly braces.
In the following example all <p> elements will be center-aligned,
with a red text color:
Example
p{
color: red;
text-align: center;
}
CSS Selectors
CSS selectors are used to "find" (or select) HTML elements based on
their element name, id, class, attribute, and more.
The element Selector
The element selector selects elements based on the element name.
You can select all <p> elements on a page like this (in this case, all
<p> elements will be center-aligned, with a red text color):
Example
p{
text-align: center;
color: red;
}
The id Selector
The id selector uses the id attribute of an HTML element to select a
specific element.
The id of an element should be unique within a page, so the id
selector is used to select one unique element!
To select an element with a specific id, write a hash (#) character,
followed by the id of the element.
The style rule below will be applied to the HTML element with
id="para1":
Example
#para1 {
text-align: center;
color: red;
}
The class Selector
The class selector selects elements with a specific class attribute.
To select elements with a specific class, write a period (.) character,
followed by the name of the class.
In the example below, all HTML elements with class="center" will be
red and center-aligned:
Example
.center {
text-align: center;
color: red;
}
You can also specify that only specific HTML elements should be
affected by a class.
In the example below, only <p> elements with class="center" will be
center-aligned:
Example
p.center {
text-align: center;
color: red;
}
HTML elements can also refer to more than one class.
In the example below, the <p> element will be styled according to
class="center" and to class="large":
Example
<p class="center large">This paragraph refers to two classes.</p>
Grouping Selectors
If you have elements with the same style definitions, like this:
h1 {
text-align: center;
color: red;
}
h2 {
text-align: center;
color: red;
}
p{
text-align: center;
color: red;
}
It will be better to group the selectors, to minimize the code.
To group selectors, separate each selector with a comma.
In the example below we have grouped the selectors from the code
above:
Example
h1, h2, p {
text-align: center;
color: red;
}
CSS Comments
Comments are used to explain the code, and may help when you edit
the source code at a later date.
Comments are ignored by browsers.
A CSS comment starts with /* and ends with */. Comments can also
span multiple lines:
Example
p{
color: red;
/* This is a single-line comment */
text-align: center;
}
/* This is
a multi-line
comment */
