CSS: The Missing Manual

Tutorial: Creating Your First Styles

The rest of this chapter takes you through the basic steps for adding inline styles, writing CSS rules, and creating internal and external style sheets. As you work through this book, you'll help design a fictitious Web site called CosmoFarmer.com, creating various aspects of its design, and eventually styling entire pages of the site. To get started, you need to download the tutorial files located on the book's companion Web site at http://www.sawmac.com/css/. Click the tutorial link and download the Zip archive containing the files (detailed instructions for unzipping the files are on the Web site as well). Each chapter's files are in a separate folder, named chapter_2, chapter_3, and so on.

Next, you need to launch your favorite Web page editing software, whether it's a simple text editor like Notepad or TextEdit, or a visually oriented program like Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression Web Designer (for information on selecting an editor, see Section 3.6).

WORKAROUND WORKSHOP: Don't Get Caught in the Cache

A browser's cache is a great speed-boost for Web surfers. Whenever the cache downloads and stores a frequently used file—like an external CSS file or an image—it saves precious moments traveling the relatively sluggish highways of the Internet. Instead of redownloading the next time it needs the same file, the browser can go straight to the new stuff—like a yet-to-be-viewed page or graphic.

But what's good for your visitors isn't always good ...