Thursday, January 5, 2012
About CSS
What You Should Already Know
Before you continue you should have a basic understanding of the following:- HTML / XHTML
What is CSS?
- CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets
- Styles define how to display HTML elements
- Styles were added to HTML 4.0 to solve a problem
- External Style Sheets can save a lot of work
- External Style Sheets are stored in CSS files
CSS Demo
An HTML document can be displayed with different styles: See how it worksStyles Solved a Big Problem
HTML was never intended to contain tags for formatting a document.HTML was intended to define the content of a document, 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 3.2 specification, it started a nightmare for web developers. Development of large web sites, 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.
In HTML 4.0, all formatting could be removed from the HTML document, and stored in a separate CSS file.
All browsers support CSS today.
CSS Saves a Lot of Work!
CSS defines HOW HTML elements are to be displayed.Styles are normally saved in external .css files. External style sheets enable you to change the appearance and layout of all the pages in a Web site, just by editing one single file!
CSS Syntax
A CSS rule has two main parts: a selector, and one or more declarations:The selector is normally the HTML element you want to style.
Each declaration consists of a property and a value.
The property is the style attribute you want to change. Each property has a value.
CSS Example
A CSS declaration always ends with a semicolon, and declaration groups are surrounded by curly brackets:
p {color:red;text-align:center;}
Example
p
{
color:red;
text-align:center;
}
{
color:red;
text-align:center;
}
Try it yourself »
CSS Comments
Comments are used to explain your code, and may help you when you edit the source code at a later date. Comments are ignored by browsers.A CSS comment begins with "/*", and ends with "*/", like this:
/*This is a comment*/
p
{
text-align:center;
/*This is another comment*/
color:black;
font-family:arial;
}
p
{
text-align:center;
/*This is another comment*/
color:black;
font-family:arial;
}
The id and class Selectors
In addition to setting a style for a HTML element, CSS allows you to specify your own selectors called "id" and "class".The id Selector
The id selector is used to specify a style for a single, unique element.The id selector uses the id attribute of the HTML element, and is defined with a "#".
The style rule below will be applied to the element with id="para1":
Example
#para1
{
text-align:center;
color:red;
}
{
text-align:center;
color:red;
}
Try it yourself »
The class Selector
The class selector is used to specify a style for a group of elements. Unlike the id selector, the class selector is most often used on several elements.This allows you to set a particular style for many HTML elements with the same class.
The class selector uses the HTML class attribute, and is defined with a "."
In the example below, all HTML elements with class="center" will be center-aligned:
Example
.center {text-align:center;}
Try it yourself »
In the example below, all p elements with class="center" will be center-aligned:
Example
p.center {text-align:center;}
Try it yourself »
Three Ways to Insert CSS
There are three ways of inserting a style sheet:- External style sheet
- Internal style sheet
- Inline style
External Style Sheet
An external style sheet is ideal when the style is applied to many pages. With an external style sheet, you can change the look of an entire Web site by changing one file. Each page must link to the style sheet using the <link> tag. The <link> tag goes inside the head section:
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="mystyle.css" />
</head>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="mystyle.css" />
</head>
hr {color:sienna;}
p {margin-left:20px;}
body {background-image:url("images/back40.gif");}
p {margin-left:20px;}
body {background-image:url("images/back40.gif");}
Internal Style Sheet
An internal style sheet should be used when a single document has a unique style. You define internal styles in the head section of an HTML page, by using the <style> tag, like this:
<head>
<style type="text/css">
hr {color:sienna;}
p {margin-left:20px;}
body {background-image:url("images/back40.gif");}
</style>
</head>
<style type="text/css">
hr {color:sienna;}
p {margin-left:20px;}
body {background-image:url("images/back40.gif");}
</style>
</head>
Inline Styles
An inline style loses many of the advantages of style sheets by mixing content with presentation. Use this method sparingly!To use inline styles you use the style attribute in the relevant tag. The style attribute can contain any CSS property. The example shows how to change the color and the left margin of a paragraph:
<p style="color:sienna;margin-left:20px">This is a paragraph.</p>
Multiple Style Sheets
If some properties have been set for the same selector in different style sheets, the values will be inherited from the more specific style sheet.For example, an external style sheet has these properties for the h3 selector:
h3
{
color:red;
text-align:left;
font-size:8pt;
}
{
color:red;
text-align:left;
font-size:8pt;
}
h3
{
text-align:right;
font-size:20pt;
}
{
text-align:right;
font-size:20pt;
}
color:red;
text-align:right;
font-size:20pt;
text-align:right;
font-size:20pt;
Multiple Styles Will Cascade into One
Styles can be specified:- inside an HTML element
- inside the head section of an HTML page
- in an external CSS file
Cascading order
What style will be used when there is more than one style specified for an HTML element?Generally speaking we can say that all the styles will "cascade" into a new "virtual" style sheet by the following rules, where number four has the highest priority:
- Browser default
- External style sheet
- Internal style sheet (in the head section)
- Inline style (inside an HTML element)
CSS background properties are used to define the background effects of an element.
CSS properties used for background effects:- background-color
- background-image
- background-repeat
- background-attachment
- background-position
Background Color
The background-color property specifies the background color of an element.The background color of a page is defined in the body selector:
Example
body {background-color:#b0c4de;}
Try it yourself »
- a HEX value - like "#ff0000"
- an RGB value - like "rgb(255,0,0)"
- a color name - like "red"
In the example below, the h1, p, and div elements have different background colors:
Example
h1 {background-color:#6495ed;}
p {background-color:#e0ffff;}
div {background-color:#b0c4de;}
p {background-color:#e0ffff;}
div {background-color:#b0c4de;}
Try it yourself »
Background Image
The background-image property specifies an image to use as the background of an element.By default, the image is repeated so it covers the entire element.
The background image for a page can be set like this:
Example
body {background-image:url('paper.gif');}
Try it yourself »
Example
body {background-image:url('bgdesert.jpg');}
Try it yourself »
Background Image - Repeat Horizontally or Vertically
By default, the background-image property repeats an image both horizontally and vertically.Some images should be repeated only horizontally or vertically, or they will look strange, like this:
Example
body
{
background-image:url('gradient2.png');
}
{
background-image:url('gradient2.png');
}
Try it yourself »
Example
body
{
background-image:url('gradient2.png');
background-repeat:repeat-x;
}
{
background-image:url('gradient2.png');
background-repeat:repeat-x;
}
Try it yourself »
Background Image - Set position and no-repeat
Showing the image only once is specified by the background-repeat property:
Example
body
{
background-image:url('img_tree.png');
background-repeat:no-repeat;
}
{
background-image:url('img_tree.png');
background-repeat:no-repeat;
}
Try it yourself »
The position of the image is specified by the background-position property:
Example
body
{
background-image:url('img_tree.png');
background-repeat:no-repeat;
background-position:right top;
}
{
background-image:url('img_tree.png');
background-repeat:no-repeat;
background-position:right top;
}
Try it yourself »
Background - Shorthand property
As you can see from the examples above, there are many properties to consider when dealing with backgrounds.To shorten the code, it is also possible to specify all the properties in one single property. This is called a shorthand property.
The shorthand property for background is simply "background":
Example
body {background:#ffffff url('img_tree.png') no-repeat right top;}
Try it yourself »
- background-color
- background-image
- background-repeat
- background-attachment
- background-position
text formatting
This
text is styled with some of the text formatting properties. The heading
uses the text-align, text-transform, and color properties.
The paragraph is indented, aligned, and the space between characters is
specified.
Text Color
The color property is used to set the color of the text.With CSS, a color is most often specified by:
- a HEX value - like "#ff0000"
- an RGB value - like "rgb(255,0,0)"
- a color name - like "red"
The default color for a page is defined in the body selector.
Example
body {color:blue;}
h1 {color:#00ff00;}
h2 {color:rgb(255,0,0);}
h1 {color:#00ff00;}
h2 {color:rgb(255,0,0);}
Try it yourself »
Text Alignment
The text-align property is used to set the horizontal alignment of a text.Text can be centered, or aligned to the left or right, or justified.
When text-align is set to "justify", each line is stretched so that every line has equal width, and the left and right margins are straight (like in magazines and newspapers).
Example
h1 {text-align:center;}
p.date {text-align:right;}
p.main {text-align:justify;}
p.date {text-align:right;}
p.main {text-align:justify;}
Try it yourself »
Text Decoration
The text-decoration property is used to set or remove decorations from text.The text-decoration property is mostly used to remove underlines from links for design purposes:
Example
a {text-decoration:none;}
Try it yourself »
Example
h1 {text-decoration:overline;}
h2 {text-decoration:line-through;}
h3 {text-decoration:underline;}
h4 {text-decoration:blink;}
h2 {text-decoration:line-through;}
h3 {text-decoration:underline;}
h4 {text-decoration:blink;}
Text Transformation
The text-transform property is used to specify uppercase and lowercase letters in a text.It can be used to turn everything into uppercase or lowercase letters, or capitalize the first letter of each word.
Example
p.uppercase {text-transform:uppercase;}
p.lowercase {text-transform:lowercase;}
p.capitalize {text-transform:capitalize;}
p.lowercase {text-transform:lowercase;}
p.capitalize {text-transform:capitalize;}
Text Indentation
The text-indentation property is used to specify the indentation of the first line of a text.Example
p {text-indent:50px;}
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