Building Web pages with HTML is like painting a portrait with a paint roller. Only truly determined and tenacious souls can achieve the exact result they want. It's just not the right tool for precision and flexibility.
Anyone who's used HTML for more than a week knows it isn't a very effective tool for making Web pages. That's why we sometimes resort to making large GIFs when we want just the right font or layout. That's why we're forced to use convoluted table tags and invisible spacer GIFs to push things around on a page.
It's ridiculous, really. Our code gets too complicated, our GIFs too numerous, and our final pages too bandwidth-heavy. It's not exactly optimal Web page construction.
But in late 1996, stylesheets quietly entered the scene. Officially called cascading stylesheets (CSS), it was an elegant cousin to HTML that promised:
- more precise control than ever before over layout, fonts, colors, backgrounds, and other typographical effects;
- a way to update the appearance and formatting of an unlimited number of pages by changing just one document;
- compatibility across browsers and platforms; and
- less code, smaller pages, and faster downloads.
Despite lukewarm support from many of our favorite Web browsers, CSS is starting to make good on these promises. It's transforming the way we make Web pages and is the cornerstone of Dynamic HTML.
We'll spend the next five lessons taking a tour through the land of stylesheets. You'll learn the basics of how to create and use cascading stylesheets within your Web pages as well as what's possible with fonts, typography, colors, backgrounds, and positioning.
In Lesson 1, we'll take a quick trip through the basics of stylesheets, giving you everything you need to get started quickly. Let's begin by asking the most important question: What can stylesheets do for me today?
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