CSS can be used to set the style parameters of your entire website. With CSS, you can control the look of your website’s:

• Font types
• Font and element colors
• Padding
• Margins
• Element positioning
• And much more.

The advantage of CSS is that it allows you to set the formatting of your site without affecting the site’s underlying structure. By separating the layout and formatting properties of your website from its underlying logical structure, you can make cosmetic changes to your site without running the risk of altering the integrity of your site’s data by accident.

On January 12, 1999, Microsoft Corp. (microsoft.com) was granted U.S. Patent #5,860,073. This particular patent, titled “Style sheets for publishing system(s),” covers “the use of style sheets in an electronic publishing system.” Sound familiar?

The inventors listed in this patent claim to have developed a system whereby “text, or other media such as graphics, is poured into the display region,” at which time style sheetsdefined as “a collection of formatting information, such as fonts and tabs”are applied. This patent seems to overlap concepts laid out in the W3C’s specifications for CSS and the Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL), which have been in development since at least 1994. More »

Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can use the Web. More specifically, Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that they can contribute to the Web. Web accessibility also benefits others, including older people with changing abilities due to aging. More »

Markup Validation  

Most pages on the World Wide Web are written in computer languages (such as HTML) that allow Web authors to structure text, add multimedia content, and specify what appearance, or style, the result should have. More »

The best thing about Cascading Style Sheets is that they are amazingly simple to set up. They don’t require plug-ins or fancy softwarejust text files with rules. A CSS rule specifies the HTML to which a style definition applies, and then defines the style, or how the selected HTML should behave in the browser window. More »

The World Wide Web Consortium (w3.org) is an organization that sets many of the standards that browser manufacturers eventually use to create their products.

Created in 1994, the W3C’s mission is “to lead the Web to its full potential” by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability. More »

CSS has evolved over the past several years under the guidance of the W3C into its current form. Most modern browsers (Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, Mozilla Firefox 2, Apple Safari 2, Opera 9) support CSS Level 2 (which includes CSS Level 1 and CSS-Positioning). More »

When a visitor loads one of your Web pages, either by typing the address into a browser or by clicking a link, the server (the computer that stores the Web page) sends the HTML file to the visitor’s computer along with any files linked to or embedded in the HTML file, such as images or movies. The CSS code, or style sheet, can be either embedded directly in the HTML file or linked to it. More »

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) allow for the designer to separate the content from the design. A CSS-based design allows the designer to create a site with much less code than a site with an identical look that has been designed with tables. More »

Whether you’ve forgotten the name of a function or the property of a cascading style sheet - handy cheat sheets deliver the information you are looking for - immediately. More »