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