What is CSS Web Design ?

The majority of web pages are written using HTMLWhile HTML was supposed to be a universal way of
(Hypertext Markup Language). HTML was inventedorganising and exchanging documents in a simple
by The European Laboratory for Particle Physicsway, it was becoming increasingly fragmented; in
(CERN, Switzerland) to allow researchers toaddition, designing web pages using tables didn't work
exchange structured documents through a networkas consistently as designers were expecting : some
of computers. By structured documents, we meanlayout could even be broken if using the "wrong"
organising a text document with different levels ofbrowser. This was the era of those logos proudly
headings, paragraphs and lists, or creating tables toclaiming "best viewed with Netscape" or "best
handle tabular data (a bit like in Excel), and linking it toviewed with Internet Explorer ?". Finally, the size of
other documents in a non-linear manner (Hyperlinks).the markup, compared to the actual content, was
HTML is cross-platform : because HTML pages arecluttered and unnecessarily heavy.
text only files (have a look at the source code inAnd then came CSS ...
your favourite web browser to see what I mean),This fragmentation of the world wide web and the
any computer can read it, whatever system the userown limitations of HTML language first led to the
is using (for example Unix, Windows or Mac).standardisation of the most useful proprietary
However, in the 1990's and the very rapidextensions and the rejection of the others (blinking
development of the world wide web, a problemtext and so on). This was The World Wide Web
began to appear.Consortium's (the main international standards
HTML was primarily designed to handle rather simpleorganization for the World Wide Web) important task
documents. But with the arrival of graphical browserswith html 3.2. The second idea was to stop HTML
and a large public accessing the web, designersbeing misused for presentational purposes. By using a
became more and more demanding, and although it isseparate style sheet to control the presentation,
a language which was essentially created to organiseHTML would keep its original use, that of structuring
content and structure, it was being used more andthe documents.
more to control presentation : one very well knownCSS level 1 were developed and finally adopted in
example is the use of tables to control the1996 by the W3C, even though a near-full
presentation. Tables were first created to handleimplementation of the specification wasn't reached
tabular data, full stop. But, as web sites started tofor all browsers before the end of the century.
pop up all over the place, designers startedFinally, there was a way of separating the structure
demanding more complex pages, for example, afrom the presentation itself, which meant the code
layout organised in several columns, something thatwas reduced in size and complexity. It also allowed
HTML couldn't do and was never meant to do. Sodesigners to create style sheets depending on the
they found a way to work around this limitation :use (better accessibiliity with large text alternative
why not use tables to achieve this presentation ?for visually-impaired users, for example, or layout
Also, at the same time, a browser war betweenoptimised for printers, PDA, etc). CSS level 2 was
Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer reached itslaunched in 1998 with new capabilities, and though still
peak: this led to the development by these twobeing a work in progress, current versions of CSS,
firms of numerous proprietary extensions (ie Marqueecombined with the rapid development of the XML
or Netscape blink elements), which means they didn'tlanguage, allow the creation of websites in a much
work in the competitor's browsers.more efficient way.