What are cascading style sheets
by Paul Flyer
Imagine a landscape gardener.
At her disposal are plants, seeds, bushes, trees, timbers, bricks, patio blocks, etc.
All these materials are her CONTENT.
Her job is to take those materials and landscape the yard/garden. In other words, to create presentation. Without her presentation skills, the materials remain in one large unroganized heap.
Style sheets are like the landscaper. Style sheets take content (text, images, and links of a website) and arranges them on a web page.
In the coding world, this seperates the code for presentation from the structural and content code.
If you “view source” on any web page from your browser, you can look at the HTML code behind it. The actual HTML tags provide the basic structure. The text, images, and links within those HTML tags are the content. Typically, the CSS file sits externally from this code. Its job is to take the structure provided by the HTML and position it so it makes sense.
To use another analogy:
-HTML is the bones
-Text, Images and links are the organs
-CSS is the muscles, ligaments, cartilage, skin that brings the bones and organs together. Without CSS, the HTML and Content are just a pile of bones and guts.
For more CSS resources visit our CSS Tutorials page or visit our CSS blog archives.
[tags]css, cascading+style+sheets, web, design, development[/tags]
Be sure to review our list of recommended web tools.
