Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

CSS for Other Media

CSS 2 introduced the ability to target style sheets to specific presentation media. This is done using the media attribute in the link element or @media or @import rules in a style sheet. The complete list of accepted values for the media attribute follows, but currently, only screen, print, and all are widely supported. Support for handheld is getting a lot of attention by the W3C’s Mobile Web Initiative. Multiple values may be provided in a comma-separated list.

Modular Style Sheets

The @import command may also be used within a style sheet document (the .css file) to pull style information in from other style sheets. With this method, one external style sheet attached to the HTML document accesses style rules from multiple .css files. This functionality is used strategically as a way to modularize styles and reuse them efficiently.

For example, frequently used styles related to navigation could be stored in a navigation style sheet. Basic typography settings could be stored in another, form styles in another, and so on. These style modules are added to the main style sheet with the @import command as shown here:

    /* basic typography */
    @import url("type.css");

    /* form inputs */
    @import url("forms.css");

    /* navigation */
    @import url("list-nav.css");

all

Used for all media.

aural

Used for screen readers and other audio versions of the document. This value is deprecated in favor of speech in future versions of CSS.

braille

Used when rendering the document with a Braille ...