Dreamweaver® CS3 Bible

Chapter 7. Building Style Sheet Web Pages

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Cascading Style Sheets basics

• Using external style sheets

• Applying style sheet attributes

• Dreamweaver Technique: Applying External Style Sheet Styles

• Defining and inserting styles

• Dreamweaver Technique: Crafting a Print Style Sheet

• Understanding style properties

• Specifying design time style sheets

All publications, whether on paper or the Web, need a balance of style and content to be effective. Style without content is all flash with no real information. Content with no style is flat and uninteresting, thus losing the substance. Traditionally, HTML has tied style to content wherever possible, preferring logical tags such as <strong> to indicate emphasis to physical tags such as <b> for bold. But although this emphasis on the logical worked for many single documents, its imprecision made achieving style consistency across a broad range of Web pages unrealistic, if not impossible.

The Cascading Style Sheets specification has changed this situation—and much more. As support for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) grows, more Web designers can alter font faces, type size, spacing, and many other page elements with a single command—and have the effect ripple not only throughout the page, but also throughout a Web site. Moreover, an enhancement of CSS, initially called CSS-P (for positioning), is the foundation for what has become commonly known as AP elements.

Dreamweaver was one of the first Web-authoring tools to make the application of Cascading ...