Infusing Web Pages With Consistency And Clarity By Using CSS
This article is written about W3C CSS.
Normal
0
MicrosoftInternetExplorer4
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:”Table Normal”;
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:”";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:”Times New Roman”;}
CSS
stands for Cascading Style Sheets. It is a language used to describe the style
and presentation of a document written in a special language called the markup
language. Web pages written in Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) and Extensible
HTML (XHTML) are examples of markup languages commonly used. A markup language
is concerned with formatting the content of a webpage whereas the style sheet
language pertains to the presentation and design of the page. The CSS
specifications are maintained by a standards body known as the World Wide Web
Consortium or W3C. Due to this fact, CSS is sometimes also referred to as W3C
CSS.
The
primary purpose of CSS is to separate the content and presentation aspects of a
web page. This carries a significant number of advantages that really promote
the readability of the page by conforming to a pre-defined and consistent
interface design. CSS helps in a lot of other ways too. People access the
internet using different network connections. Not all of these connections are
fast. It is not uncommon for people to run out of patience if a web page takes
too long to load. This might force them to go elsewhere for their information
needs and this would lower your internet traffic. Before CSS, tables were used
extensively in HTML pages for the presentation of information. These tables can
be cumbersome to use and don’t always result in good visual presentation. CSS not
only improves the look of web pages but pages designed with CSS also load
faster than those designed with tables. CSS can lower web page sizes by as much
as 60% which translates to less waiting time. CSS-designed pages are also
displayed progressively as they are downloaded while table-designed pages need
to be downloaded fully before they can be displayed.
The use
of CSS is particularly beneficial in reaching millions of users of devices
other than personal computers like mobile phones and handheld internet devices.
A CSS-less web page would look awful on the small screen of such devices. CSS
enables us to create a page specifically for these devices with the minimum of
effort. In this way, CSS has led to widespread accessibility of information. Modern
HTML pages can be quite complex which is an impediment to the indexing function
of search engines on the internet. CSS-designed pages reduce this complexity
and allow your pages to rank higher in search results. CSS also helps in
printing pages you might find interesting. Typical HTML pages get printed with
unnecessary interface elements like menus. CSS can be used to define special
print-friendly pages that contain only the content you are interested in
printing.
With all
these great advantages, the only fly in the ointment is the less than stellar
implementation of the W3C CSS standard in popular web browsers. As of
this writing, no web browser out there conforms completely to the CSS
specification. Browsers with good CSS support include Firefox, Safari and
Opera. The worst offender in rendering CSS-driven web pages is also ironically
the most used web browser in the world ? Internet Explorer. However, with
developers of these browsers working fervently to improve CSS standards
compliance , it won’t be too long before anyone opening any page on any browser
will be welcomed by consistency in design and appearance thanks to the magic of
CSS.
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