CSS For Beginners - What IS CSS Anyway?

Does CSS for BEGINNERS sound about right for you?each side of the border.
Do you keep asking yourself "What is CSS anyway?".CSS can also save you a lot of time and effort in
Maybe you don't feel ready for anything too techie -applying one basic, consistent style to the text of
but you would love to understand the basics of whatyour document.
CSS actually IS.What do I mean by that?
Well, look no further - that's exactly what I'm goingMost web browsers default to a serif font like Times
to tell you!New Roman. If you want to create a complex web
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. It is apage layout (with tables etc) using a sans-serif font
computer language used to define the stylelike Verdana or Tahoma this will involve many, many
formatting details used in a web site. This includestags - all dedicated to keeping the text consistent.
things like colours, background images, fonts, marginsSo, what's the problem with that?
and indentation.None - until you decide to change the font and you
To every CSS style definition there are twoare faced with the task of adjusting hundreds of
components:tags to make what seems like a very simple change.
1. The Selector - defines which tags the style will beIf you understand HTML you could set the default
applied to.font to be used throughout a page but you would
2. The Attributes - specify what font, size, colour etchave to adjust one tag for each page of your site.
the style actually is.And you'll be in trouble if you need to add a second
An exciting aspect of CSS is that it allows you tofont to the page.
achieve many effects that could not be reproducedNow, that's enough CSS for beginners! And if
using plain HTML. For example it is possible for bordersomeone asks YOU -"What IS CSS anyway? - you
colors, styles, widths etc to be set up individually forcan tell them!