Top Site Net Features | Register | Login

Cascading Style Sheets: Overview

Cascading Style Sheets are essential for all kinds of styling techniques in your Web pages. It was first introduced in 1998. The original features covered were absolute, relative, fixed, positioning, z-index, media type, bi-directional text, and a few font properties.

The syntax of CSS is very much easy to learn, and the developers can easily monitor the changes on a visual via Inspect Element. Due to this, the required modification in the code becomes easy. There are primarily two parts in a CSS rule set – one is, the Selector and another is the Declaration. <p> tag is called the Selector while the code written inside the Selector tags, is called the Declaration. There can be some declarations inside a Selector. Now, a Declaration has two major parts – Property & Value. For example, if you talk about a Colour, it is the Property, and "Red" will be value to it. A colon inside a CSS code separates Property and value.

Now, we will discuss a few different ways of using CSS in the section below.

External CSS

It is the idea of changing the CSS of multiple files by changing only one file. The external CSS file has a.CSS extension. All the styles are in an external file linked with an HTML file that maintains a proper syntax.

Internal CSS

Internal CSS is only responsible for changing the CSS in only a single HTML file. There lies no external CSS file for the same, and the CSS is written inside the HTML file only.

Inline CSS

It is used to define unique CSS to an HTML page. Styles attributes are added to the elements. Inline CSS is faster when there is a long Web page, and a lot of styling is in use. Hence, it has got more priority over External and Internal CSS.

Also Read :- 10 Best PHP Frameworks For Web Development.

Advantages of CSS

  • CSS saves a lot of time to add desired styling in your HTML pages

  • Due to CSS, you get spontaneous and consistent changes

  • For CSS, the overall loading of your Web page increases

  • There is an ability to re-position by a CSS

  • CSS has better device compatibility, and with the introduction of CSS3, the mobile responsive properties of the Web pages can be improved

Disadvantages of CSS

  • While using in a cross-browser application, CSS can create severe issues sometimes

  • There are multiple levels of CSS for which the developers get often confused

Significance of CSS in Mobile Responsive Design

Before discussing the role of CSS in Mobile Responsive Design, let's quickly understand why Mobile Responsiveness is required. After the aggressive marketing of the smartphones, businesses followed, if they launch any Website or Web Application, that has to be good with both the Web and Mobile browsers. People spend much time with their Smartphone devices, and they don't want to compromise on their browsing preferences. If they are browsing an eCommerce site, they don't want to miss the highlighted products, the 360-degree view of the same, the discount options, list of the related products, and promotional offers. All of the critical features, if portrayed correctly in a Mobile Browser even while loading the site, you get more conversion of your online visitor into the paying customers. Hence, HTML5 and CSS3 were introduced, and today's other front-end tools and techniques also follow the Mobile Responsiveness with individual libraries. As CSS determines the Object Size and other vital attributes, tuning CSS files, you can attain the desired styling of your Web page. Now, let's have some highlights on the CSS3, which is written to achieve a Mobile Responsiveness for a Web page.

CSS3 is termed to be the key responsible for a Mobile Responsive code. The most flexible approach would be using the CSS Media queries within a specified screen width and device resolution. It directs the browser to read a particular page with all the embedded style elements within the determined screen resolution only. With the optional Media type, Media queries can be made flexible. These Media types include,

  • All: which is suitable for all the devices where the default Media type is not specified

  • Print: it is for preview mode

  • Screen: it is intended primarily for the Screens

  • Speech: it is designed mostly for the speech synthesizers

CSS Techniques in comparison

You can find a few Mobile Responsive Design techniques through CSS. Those include Flexbox, Grid, or CSS Frameworks like Bootstrap. Bootstrap can handle your Mobile Responsive requirement sometimes much better than the other usual techniques. You will find significant advantages & flexibilities of CSS Media library because of the following two reasons,

  1. These can be easily used in combinations

  2. These allow more control

Conclusion

Initially, CSS looks to be challenging to learn by fresh web developers. Due to the presence of an excellent preview tool, it becomes straightforward to attain the desired result with a few minor tweaking. Once your developer masters HTML5 and CSS3, he/she can create a fully Mobile Responsive Application, which will cross-browser compatible, and till a specific time, you'll also be able to hold the requirement of an exclusive Mobile Application.


About This Author


Adam MathewzAdam Mathewz
Adam Mathewz works as a Chief Operations Manager.
Joined: February 6th, 2020
Article Directory /

Arts, Business, Computers, Finance, Games, Health, Home, Internet, News, Other, Reference, Shopping, Society, Sports