| Although CSS was first introduced in the mid 1990s, | | | | of CSS is to define the presentation. |
| it did not become a mainstream tool among web | | | | The reason that so many web pages have broken |
| designers and masters until more recent years. This is | | | | layouts in different browsers is because they try to |
| unfortunate, because there are millions of poorly | | | | use HTML to control the structure and presentation |
| designed web sites cluttering the internet that could | | | | of the page. The most common abuse of HTML is |
| be easily improved with the help of CSS. | | | | attempting to use tables as a presentation method. |
| So what exactly is CSS? CSS is an acronym that | | | | Although you may be able to achieve the look you |
| stands for Cascading Style Sheets. The term | | | | want in a single browser, your web page will look |
| Cascading Style Sheets implies two things. First off, | | | | broken and distorted in many other browsers. The |
| the style sheets are cascading. This means that | | | | only time that tables should be used is to hold a set |
| multiple style sheets can be used for a single web | | | | of data (such as the results from a scientific |
| page. Additionally, the term "cascading" also refers to | | | | experiment). If you do have a legitimate use for |
| the way a style is determined in the event that more | | | | tables on your web page, you can even use CSS to |
| than one rule matches a single element. The second | | | | style your table and make it more attractive. |
| thing that is implied by the name Cascading Style | | | | By taking the time to learn CSS, you will be able to |
| Sheets is that the purpose of CSS is to style web | | | | create a web page that looks much more consistent |
| pages. Whereas the purpose of HTML (or XHTML) is | | | | across a variety of browsers. |
| to define the structure of a web page, the purpose | | | | |