| What is so good about CSS anyway? | | | | websites had pages with lots and lots of |
| | | | tables and loads more nested within them. The |
| If you have been looking for a new website | | | | net effect was that the website was slow. The |
| for a while, you will (no doubt) have visited | | | | browser took alot more time to read the |
| many websites of developers and companies | | | | tables and display the text and graphics. |
| that can create them. | | | | |
| | | | What's more, because the makers of the web |
| Lots of these companies bandy about terms | | | | browsers couldn't quite agree about how HTML |
| such as W3C and CSS. So what is all that | | | | should be displayed, we found that a website |
| about and why do I need it? | | | | looked great on Internet Explorer but |
| | | | slightly odd on Mozilla or Opera. |
| To answer that question we need to look at | | | | |
| how web pages are created. | | | | Something needed to be done. |
| | | | |
| In olden days (about 10 years ago) the web | | | | At last CSS was invented that did an amazing |
| page was typically just a bunch of text and | | | | thing for web developers. CSS or Cascading |
| the odd picture. This was fab at first but | | | | Style Sheets allowed the web designer to |
| then people wanted to do more with web sites, | | | | separate content from design which was |
| they wanted to format the page better. But | | | | usually integrated in a traditional site |
| the rules behind the web page (HTML) wouldn't | | | | page. |
| let you do that, so web developers being the | | | | |
| canny individuals that they are decided to | | | | The CSS style sheet was a separate file in |
| use tables to organise the material. | | | | the web site that stored all the designy bits |
| | | | to the website, the font sizes, position of |
| Now, tables are OK for showing tabular data, | | | | graphics & menus and just about everything |
| but our clever web designers where now using | | | | and more. The actual pages had text |
| them with clear borders (so you couldn't see | | | | (content). |
| the table) to position text and pictures | | | | |
| where they wanted. | | | | Wow, this meant that we could now position |
| | | | text and graphics with pixel accuracy instead |
| Bingo! That resolved that problem. Well no... | | | | of old tables, and better still the web pages |
| not really. | | | | loaded faster cos only one stylesheet had to |
| | | | be read for whole site. |
| Those pesky website developers wanted more | | | | |
| and more control so they started putting | | | | If you have read this far, then I applaud |
| tables into tables (called nesting). Many | | | | you. |