Cascading Style Sheets

Advanced Methods | Style Sheets

Cascading Style Sheets
Cascading Style Sheets are a part of what's often referred to as DHTML, or Dynamic HTML. Style sheets give you far greater control over how your pages will be displayed than is possible with only HTML. Style sheets also make it possible to add numerous stylistic enhancements to pages that are often difficult or impossible to achieve with HTML alone. But for all of their power, the basic features of style sheets are very easy to use.
In fact, the basic features are so easy to use that perhaps it's a bit misleading to include style sheets in this chapter of "Advanced Methods". (There are some features of style sheets, integrating them with Javascript to produce animations for example, that might qualify as advanced. But we won't cover those in this introduction.)
Before we proceed any further, we should provide an important warning: cascading style sheets are only supported by recent browsers. You need Internet Explorer 4 or later, or Netscape Navigator 4 or later, in order to properly display pages designed to use style sheets. (IE 3 supported style sheets, but in a very limited way.)

What Style Sheets Aren't

Before we take a look at some examples of style sheets and see how they work, let's take a brief moment to note what style sheets aren't. Style sheets are not HTML. If you want to use the powerful features of style sheets, you can't do so with just the HTML commands that you've already learned. Instead, you'll have to learn (at least parts of) a new language that works with HTML. But the good news is that it is a very simple language.


			Advanced Methods \| Style Sheets
		Cascading Style Sheets Cascading Style Sheets are a part of what's often referred to as DHTML, or Dynamic HTML. Style sheets give you far greater control over how your pages will be displayed than is possible with only HTML. Style sheets also make it possible to add numerous stylistic enhancements to pages that are often difficult or impossible to achieve with HTML alone. But for all of their power, the basic features of style sheets are very easy to use. In fact, the basic features are so easy to use that perhaps it's a bit misleading to include style sheets in this chapter of "Advanced Methods". (There are some features of style sheets, integrating them with Javascript to produce animations for example, that might qualify as advanced. But we won't cover those in this introduction.) Before we proceed any further, we should provide an important warning: cascading style sheets are only supported by recent browsers. You need Internet Explorer 4 or later, or Netscape Navigator 4 or later, in order to properly display pages designed to use style sheets. (IE 3 supported style sheets, but in a very limited way.) What Style Sheets Aren't Before we take a look at some examples of style sheets and see how they work, let's take a brief moment to note what style sheets aren't. Style sheets are not HTML. If you want to use the powerful features of style sheets, you can't do so with just the HTML commands that you've already learned. Instead, you'll have to learn (at least parts of) a new language that works with HTML. But the good news is that it is a very simple language.