CSSwhat is css. who made css? what is css for? how do you write css? how do you link css to html pages? how do you link html pages to css?
ADDING STYLE - (CSS) Cascading Style Sheets is a simple mechanism for adding style (e.g. fonts, colors, spacing and images) to Web documents and make 'em pretty.
STYLESHEETS - Just like layout programs, css allows you to quickly and easily update or completely change the appearance of a document, in this case website of any amount of html pages.
BENEFITS
CSS is easier to maintain, more accessable, it's cleaner, lighter, faster and more professional. Let's break it down. Here is a pretty clear article by Cameron Olthuis (source: cameronolthuis.com)
MAINTENENCE - Maintaining websites with CSS based layouts is a hundred time easier than maintaining ones that are table based. Seriously, if you are not making any content changes to the site all you really need to do is update one file, of course that all depends on the size of the site. But even if it is a large site it would still only be a fraction of the total pages.
ACCESSIBILITY - The W3C says:
CSS benefits accessibility primarily by separating document structure from presentation. Style sheets were designed to allow precise control - outside of markup - of character spacing, text alignment, object position on the page, audio and speech output, font characteristics, etc. By separating style from markup, authors can simplify and clean up the HTML in their documents, making the documents more accessible at the same time.
I'll also add that it is far easier to make your site accessible using CSS. Think about all the people using cell phones and other wireless devices to connect to the interent now. Don't you want to make your site accessible to them?
LESS CODE -CSS generally requires less code than tables, a lot less. This make your code both lighter and a lot cleaner. Clean code makes a huge difference in maintaining your site.
FASTER -Your pages will load quite a bit faster with CSS, and for a number of reasons. This also cuts down on your bandwidth, if you have a site that gets a lot of traffic this can make a huge difference in your bottom line.
EASIER -When I was first learning to design based on CSS I struggled a lot. But I caught on very quickly. In the beginning you would've never caught me saying that CSS is easier. But now, I truly believe that it is. Because you're only using a fraction of the code it's so much easier to design with CSS. If you're still having a hard time don't worry, once you catch on it will be so much easier. I would even recommend that anyone that's just starting to learn web design to learn CSS before tables, I believe the learning curve is much quicker.
LIMITLESS CREATIVITY -We've all seen CSS Zen Garden, and if you haven't go check it out now. The idea behind CSS Zen Garden is: The code remains the same, the only thing that has changed is the external .css file. CSS allows complete and total control over the style of a hypertext document. So many more possibilities with CSS. There literally no creativity bounds design wise.
PROFESSIONAL -It's my belief that if you're a professional web designer (in other words, you exchange money for your services) then you should be building sites strictly with CSS. If not for the reasons above (which are all more than enough reasons as a professional) then do it to keep up with the current standards and trends in the industry. If you don’t start now it won't be long before you're left in the dust.
As you can see there's a quite a few benefits to CSS. If you're still not convinced to use CSS then you probably never will be, so let's just leave it at that. Again, if you have anything to contribute please do.
Future of css
What about the future of css? Come on. That's like saying, "what is the future of the world!" Sure by now you can see that perhaps only the sky is the limit? Check out this article by Andy Budd for a fuller explanation.
