Cascading Style Sheets

What are they?

A cascading style sheet (css) is a set of instructions that tells the Web browser how to display different HTML elements.

You can use multiple style sheets to customize the display of your Web site for different browsers, different platforms, and different devices.

There are three types of cascading style sheets:

• External style sheet, which you use when you want to apply the same styles consistently across all the pages in your Web site that are linked to it. This is also known as linked style sheet. Individual HTML pages are linked to an external CSS file, in which styles are defined. This page is referenced to an external style sheet.
   
• Embedded style sheet, which you use when you want to define styles for the current page. An embedded style sheet will allow you to deviate from the styles that have been established in an external style sheet.
   
• Inline style sheet, which you apply to individual elements on a page, such as a specific word, line, paragraph, or other elements. This sentence was changed using an inline style sheet (i.e., span) command.

Why "Cascading"?

Style sheets are referred to as "cascading" because of their hierarchical relationship. An inline style will take precedence over an embedded style, and an embedded style will take precedence over a linked style.

Learn more

1. Complete the CSS training tutorial for Microsoft FrontPage. In order to complete the tutorial, you must open the link using Microsoft Explorer. 

2. In class, your TA will show you how to use and modify css templates that already exist in Microsoft FrontPage.

3. You can also apply and modify pre-existing "themes" in FrontPage. Themes allow you to unify the content in a webpage in way similar to cascading style sheets.

Page created 4-16-06 by DCT