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Chapter Three CSS

CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation of HTML documents, allowing for the separation of content and design. It enables developers to control the layout and appearance of multiple web pages from a single external file, significantly simplifying web development. CSS syntax consists of selectors and declaration blocks, and it supports various selector types to target HTML elements for styling.

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Chapter Three CSS

CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation of HTML documents, allowing for the separation of content and design. It enables developers to control the layout and appearance of multiple web pages from a single external file, significantly simplifying web development. CSS syntax consists of selectors and declaration blocks, and it supports various selector types to target HTML elements for styling.

Uploaded by

nafyjabesa1
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Chapter Three: Cascading Style Sheets

(CSS)
What is CSS?

• 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 style sheets are stored in CSS files

CSS is a style sheet language which is used to describe the look and formatting of a document
written in markup language. It provides an additional feature to HTML. It is generally used
with HTML to change the style of web pages and user interfaces.
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?


CSS is used to define styles for your web pages, including the design, layout and variations
in display for different devices and screen sizes.

CSS Solved a Big Problem

HTML was NEVER intended to contain tags for formatting a web page! HTML was created
to describe the content of a web page, like:
<h1> This is a heading </h1>
<p> This is a paragraph. </p>

When tags like <font>, and color attributes were added to the HTML specifications, it
started a nightmare for web developers. Development of large websites, where fonts and
color information were added to every single page, became a long and expensive process.

To solve this problem, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) created CSS.
CSS removed the style formatting from the HTML page.

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CSS Saves a Lot of Work!
The style definitions are normally saved in external .css files.
With an external style sheet file, you can change the look of an entire website by changing
just one file.

CSS Syntax
A CSS rule consists of a selector and a declaration block.
CSS Syntax

Selector: the selector points to the HTML element you want to style. It could be any tag like
<h1>, <title> etc.
The declaration block: the declaration block contains one or more declarations separated
by semicolons. For the above example, there are two declarations:

1. color: blue;
2. font-size: 12px;

Each declaration includes a CSS property name and a value, separated by a colon.
Multiple CSS declarations are separated with semicolons, and declaration blocks are
surrounded by curly braces.
Property: A Property is a type of attribute of HTML element. It could be color, border etc.
Value: Values are assigned to CSS properties. In the above example, value "blue" is
assigned to color property.
Selector { Property1: value1; Property2: value2; ..........; }
Example
In this example all <p> elements will be center-aligned, with a red text color:
p {
color: red;
text-align: center;
}
Example Explained

2
• p is a selector in CSS (it points to the HTML element you want to style: <p>).
• color is a property, and red is the property value
• text-align is a property, and center is the property value
CSS Selectors

A CSS selector selects the HTML element(s) you want to style. CSS selectors are used to
"find" (or select) the HTML elements you want to style.
We can divide CSS selectors into five categories:

• Simple selectors (select elements based on name, id, class)


• Combinator selectors (select elements based on a specific relationship between them)
• Pseudo-class selectors (select elements based on a certain state)
• Pseudo-elements selectors (select and style a part of an element)
• Attribute selectors (select elements based on an attribute or attribute

value) The most basic CSS selectors are explained below:

CSS element Selector

The element selector selects HTML elements based on the element name.
Example
Here, all <p> elements on the page will be center-aligned, with a red text color:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<style>
p {
text-align: center;
color: red;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<p> Every paragraph will be affected by the style. </p>
<p id="para1"> Me too! </p>
<p> And me! </p>
</body>
</html>
Output:

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CSS id Selector

The id selector uses the id attribute of an HTML element to select a specific element.
The id of an element is 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.
Example
The CSS rule below will be applied to the HTML element with id="para1"
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<style>
#para1 {
text-align: center;
color: red;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>

<p id="para1"> Hello World! </p>


<p> This paragraph is not affected by the style. </p>
</body>
</html>
Output:

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CSS class Selector
The class selector selects HTML elements with a specific class attribute.
To select elements with a specific class, write a period (.) character, followed by the class name.
Example
In this example all HTML elements with class="center" will be red and center-aligned.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<style>
.center {
text-align: center;
color: red;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1 class="center"> Red and center-aligned heading </h1>
<p class="center"> Red and center-aligned paragraph. </p>
</body>
</html>
Output:

HTML elements can also refer to more than one class.

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Example
In this example the <p> element will be styled according to class="center" and to
class="large"
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<style>
p.center {
text-align: center;
color: red;
}

p.large {
font-size: 300%;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>

<h1 class="center"> This heading will not be affected </h1>


<p class="center"> This paragraph will be red and center-aligned. </p>
<p class="center large"> This paragraph will be red, center-aligned, and
in a large font-size. </p>
</body>
</html>
Output:

CSS Universal Selector

The universal selector (*) selects all HTML elements on the page.
Example
The CSS rule below will affect every HTML element on the page.

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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<style>
{
text-align: center;
color: blue;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1> Hello world! </h1>
<p> Every element on the page will be affected by the style. </p>
<p id="para1"> Me too! </p>
<p> And me! </p>
</body>
</html>
Output:

CSS Grouping Selector


The grouping selector selects all the HTML elements with the same style definitions.
Look at the following CSS code (the h1, h2, and p elements have the same style definitions).
h1 {
text-align: center;
color: red;
}
h2 {
text-align: center;
color: red;
}

p {

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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.
Example
In this example we have grouped the selectors from the code above.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<style>
h1, h2, p {
text-align: center;
color: red;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1> Hello World! </h1>
<h2> Smaller heading! </h2>
<p> This is a paragraph. </p>
</body>
</html>

All CSS Simple Selectors


Selector Example Example description
#id #firstname Selects the element with id="firstname"
.class .intro Selects all elements with class="intro"
element.class p.intro Selects only <p> elements with class="intro"
* * Selects all elements
element p Selects all <p> elements

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element,element,.. div, p Selects all <div> elements and all <p> elements

How to Add CSS into HTML

When a browser reads a style sheet, it will format the HTML document according to
the information in the style sheet.
Three Ways to Insert CSS
There are three ways of inserting a style sheet:

• External CSS
• Internal CSS
• Inline CSS

External CSS
With an external style sheet, you can change the look of an entire website by changing just
one file!
Each HTML page must include a reference to the external style sheet file inside the <link>
element, inside the head section.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="mystyle.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, and must be saved with a .css
extension. The external .css file should not contain any HTML tags.
Here is how the "mystyle.css" file looks:
"mystyle.css"
body {
background-color: lightblue;
}
h1 {
color: navy;

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margin-left: 20px;
}

Note: Do not add a space between the property value and the unit (such as margin-left:
20 px;). The correct way is: margin-left: 20px;

Internal CSS
An internal style sheet may be used if one single HTML page has a unique
style. The internal style is defined inside the <style> element, inside the head
section. Example
Internal styles are defined within the <style> element, inside the <head> section of an HTML
page:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<style>
body {
background-color: linen;
}

h1 {
color: maroon;
margin-left: 40px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1> This is a heading </h1>
<p> This is a paragraph. </p>
</body>
</html>

Inline CSS
An inline style may be used to apply a unique style for a single element.
To use inline styles, add the style attribute to the relevant element. The style attribute can
contain any CSS property.
Example
Inline styles are defined within the "style" attribute of the relevant element:

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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<h1 style="color:blue;text-align:center;"> This is a heading </h1>
<p style="color:red;"> This is a paragraph. </p>
</body>
</html>

Style Rules Precedence


What style will be used when there is more than one style specified for an HTML
element? All the styles in a page will "cascade" into a new "virtual" style sheet by the
following rules, where number one has the highest priority:
1. Inline style (inside an HTML element)
2. External and internal style sheets (in the head section)
3. Browser default
So, an inline style has the highest priority, and will override external and internal styles
and browser defaults.

3.5. CSS Comments


CSS comments are not displayed in the browser, but they can help document your source code.
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 is placed inside the <style> element, and starts with /* and ends with */:
Example
/* This is a single-line comment */
p {
color: red;
}
You can add comments wherever you want in the code.
p {
color: red; /* Set text color to red */
}
Comments can also span multiple lines:
/* This is
a multi-line
comment */
p {
color: red;
}
/* This is

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a multi-line
comment */

p {
color: red;
}

HTML and CSS Comments


From the HTML, you learned that you can add comments to your HTML source by using the
<!--...--> syntax.
In the following example, we use a combination of HTML and CSS comments:
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<style>
p {
color: red; /* Set text color to red */
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h2>My Heading</h2>
<!-- These paragraphs will be red -->
<p> Hello World! </p>
<p> This paragraph is styled with CSS. </p>
<p> CSS comments are not shown in the output. </p>
</body>
</html>

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