CSS

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. It is a style sheet language which is used to describe the look and formatting of a document written in markup language. It provides an additional feature to HTML. It is generally used with HTML to change the style of web pages and user interfaces. It can also be used with any kind of XML documents including plain XML, SVG and XUL.

CSS is used along with HTML and JavaScript in most websites to create user interfaces for web applications and user interfaces for many mobile applications.

These are the three major benefits of CSS:

1) Solves a big problem

Before CSS, tags like font, color, background style, element alignments, border and size had to be repeated on every web page. This was a very long process. For example: If you are developing a large website where fonts and color information are added on every single page, it will be become a long and expensive process. CSS was created to solve this problem.

2) Saves a lot of time

CSS style definitions are saved in external CSS files so it is possible to change the entire website by changing just one file.

3) Provide more attributes

CSS provides more detailed attributes than plain HTML to define the look and feel of the website.

Advantages of CSS

• CSS saves time?? You can write CSS once and then reuse same sheet in multiple HTML pages. You can define a style for each HTML element and apply it to as many Web pages as you want.
• Pages load faster?? If you are using CSS, you do not need to write HTML tag attributes every time. Just write one CSS rule of a tag and apply it to all the occurrences of that tag. So less code means faster download times.
• Easy maintenance?? To make a global change, simply change the style, and all elements in all the web pages will be updated automatically.
• Superior styles to HTML?? CSS has a much wider array of attributes than HTML, so you can give a far better look to your HTML page in comparison to HTML attributes.
• Multiple Device Compatibility?? Style sheets allow content to be optimized for more than one type of device. By using the same HTML document, different versions of a website can be presented for handheld devices such as PDAs and cell phones or for printing.
• Global web standards?? Now HTML attributes are being deprecated and it is being recommended to use CSS. So its a good idea to start using CSS in all the HTML pages to make them compatible to future browsers.