What are the best ways to style HTML elements with CSS?

1 Selectors and properties

One of the basic concepts of CSS is the selector, which is a way of targeting specific HTML elements or groups of elements on your web page. For example, you can use a tag name, an id, a class, or a combination of them as selectors. Once you have a selector, you can use a set of properties and values to define the style rules for that selector. For example, you can use the color property to change the text color, or the margin property to add some space around the element. You can write your CSS rules in a separate file, or inside a <style> tag in your HTML document, or as an attribute on the element itself.

2 The box model

Another important concept of CSS is the box model, which describes how every HTML element is treated as a rectangular box with different layers. The box model consists of four parts: content, padding, border, and margin. The content is the actual text or image inside the element, the padding is the space between the content and the border, the border is the line that surrounds the element, and the margin is the space between the border and the other elements. You can use CSS properties to control the size, shape, and position of each part of the box model, and create different effects and layouts.

3 Layouts and positioning

One of the main challenges of web design is to create layouts and positioning that work well on different devices and screen sizes. CSS offers several methods and properties to help you achieve this goal, such as display, float, flexbox, grid, and position. Display controls how an element is displayed on the page, whether it is a block, inline, or something else. Float allows you to align elements to the left or right, and wrap text around them. Flexbox and grid are modern techniques that let you create flexible and responsive layouts with rows and columns. Position allows you to specify the location of an element relative to its parent, sibling, or the viewport.

4 Colors and backgrounds

One of the easiest ways to add some flair and personality to your web pages is to use colors and backgrounds. CSS provides a variety of ways to specify colors, such as keywords, hexadecimal codes, RGB values, HSL values, and opacity. You can also use gradients, images, patterns, and animations as backgrounds for your elements. You can use CSS properties such as background-color, background-image, background-repeat, background-position, background-size, and background-attachment to control how your backgrounds look and behave.

5 Fonts and typography

Another way to enhance the appearance and readability of your web pages is to use fonts and typography. CSS allows you to choose from different fonts, sizes, weights, styles, and decorations for your text. You can also use web fonts, which are fonts that are hosted online and can be accessed by any browser. You can use CSS properties such as font-family, font-size, font-weight, font-style, text-align, text-decoration, text-transform, and line-height to style your text.

6 Transitions and animations

One of the most advanced and fun ways to style HTML elements with CSS is to use transitions and animations. Transitions and animations allow you to create dynamic and interactive effects on your elements, such as changing colors, sizes, shapes, positions, or transformations over time. You can use CSS properties such as transition, transition-property, transition-duration, transition-timing-function, transition-delay, animation, animation-name, animation-duration, animation-timing-function, animation-delay, animation-iteration-count, animation-direction, and animation-fill-mode to create and control your transitions and animations.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?