Building a Web Site For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Chapter 5. Cascading Style Sheets

In This Chapter

Adding CSS to your Web pages Using selectors, classes, and IDs Setting new properties for HTML elements Positioning elements

HTML was designed to specify the appearance of a Web page, but the initial implementation left a lot to be desired. In the name of standardization (admittedly, a laudable goal at the time), a great deal of creative control was left behind. An <H1> element, for example, would always look the same no matter what the designer wanted to show with it. It would always be the same size, the same color, the same font, and so forth.

With the advent of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), however, all that changed. Suddenly, Webmasters could make anything on a Web page behave any way they wanted it to. This led, naturally, to both a greater degree of creative license and more than a little bit of confusion.

In this chapter, I’ll cover the basics of CSS and how you can use it to make your own Web pages dance to the tune of your dreams. There is SO much that you can do with CSS that is beyond the scope of this book, however, that I highly recommend that — after you read this chapter, of course — you rush out to the bookstore and get a copy of CSS Web Design For Dummies by Richard Mansfield (Wiley Publishing).

That said, let’s take a look at CSS and the kinds of things that you can accomplish with it.