HTML Styles - CSS
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. It saves a lot of work and can control the layout of multiple web pages all at once. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is used to format the layout of a webpage.
With CSS, you can control the color, font, the size of text, the spacing between elements, how elements are positioned and laid out, what background images or background colors are to be used, different displays for different devices and screen sizes, and much more!
TIP: The word cascading means that a style applied to a parent element will also apply to all children elements within the parent. So, if you set the color of the body text to "blue", all headings, paragraphs, and other text elements within the body will also get the same color (unless you specify something else)!
Use the HTML style attribute for inline styling
Use the HTML <style> element to define internal CSS
Use the HTML <link> element to refer to an external CSS file
Use the HTML <head> element to store <style> and <link> elements
Use the CSS color property for text colors
Use the CSS font-family property for text fonts
Use the CSS font-size property for text sizes
Use the CSS border property for borders
Use the CSS padding property for space inside the border
Use the CSS margin property for space outside the border
Using CSS
CSS can be added to HTML documents in 3 ways:
Inline - by using the style attribute inside HTML elements
Internal - by using a <style> element in the <head> section
External - by using a <link> element to link to an external CSS file
The most common way to add CSS, is to keep the styles in external CSS files. However, in this tutorial we will use inline and internal styles, because this is easier to demonstrate.
Inline CSS
An inline CSS is used to apply a unique style to a single HTML element. This uses the style attribute of an HTML element.
The following example sets the text color of the <h1> element to blue, and the text color of the <p> element to red.
Example:
<h1 style="color:blue;">A Blue Heading</h1>
<p style="color:red;">A red paragraph.</p>
Internal CSS
An internal CSS is used to define a style for a single HTML page. This is defined in the <head> section of an HTML page, within a <style> element.
The following example sets the text color of ALL the <h1> elements (on that page) to orange, and the text color of ALL the <p> elements to red. In addition, the page will be displayed with a "blue" background color:
Example:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<style>
body {background-color: blue;}
h1 {color: orange;}
p {color: red;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1>This is a heading</h1>
<p>This is a paragraph.</p>
</body>
</html>
External CSS
An external style sheet is used to define the style for many HTML pages. To use an external style sheet, add a link to it in the <head> section of each HTML page.
Example:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css">
</head>
<body>
<h1>This is a heading</h1>
<p>This is a paragraph.</p>
</body>
</html>
The external style sheet can be written in any text editor. The file must not contain any HTML code, and must be saved with a .css extension.
Here is what the "styles.css" file looks like:
body {
background-color: powderblue;
}
h1 {
color: blue;
}
p {
color: red;
}
TIP: With an external style sheet, you can change the look of an entire web site, by changing one file!
CSS Colors, Fonts and Sizes
Here, we will demonstrate some commonly used CSS properties. You will learn more about them later.
The CSS color property defines the text color to be used.
The CSS font-family property defines the font to be used.
The CSS font-size property defines the text size to be used.
Example:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<style>
h1 {
color: blue;
font-family: verdana;
font-size: 300%;
}
p {
color: red;
font-family: courier;
font-size: 160%;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1>This is a heading</h1>
<p>This is a paragraph.</p>
</body>
</html>
CSS Border
The CSS border property defines a border around an HTML element.
TIP: You can define a border for nearly all HTML elements.
Example:
p {
border: 2px solid powderblue;
}
CSS Padding
The CSS padding property defines a padding (space) between the text and the border.
Example:
p {
border: 2px solid powderblue;
padding: 30px;
}
CSS Margin
The CSS margin property defines a margin (space) outside the border.
Example:
p {
border: 2px solid powderblue;
margin: 50px;
}
Link to External CSS
External style sheets can be referenced with a full URL or with a path relative to the current web page.
Example 1 - This example uses a full URL to link to a style sheet:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://www.w3schools.com/html/styles.css">
Example 2 - This example links to a style sheet located in the html folder on the current web site:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/html/styles.css">
Example 3 - This example links to a style sheet located in the same folder as the current page:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css"> |
