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.
Liam Derbyshire is the founder of http://www.miraclesformen.com.The site is dedicated to helping individuals to improve their health and fitness. The W3C CSS of this website is approved by the W3C organization.
