HTML Styles - CSS
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets.
CSS saves a lot of work. It can control the layout of multiple web pages all at once.
What is CSS?
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)!]
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.
Inline CSS
An inline CSS is used to apply a unique style to a single HTML element.
An inline CSS 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.
An internal CSS is defined in the <head> section of an HTML page, within a <style> element so it can be inserted with font size, font family, text align, border, color, background color.
The following example sets the text color of ALL the <h1> elements (on that page) to blue,
and the text color of ALL the <p> elements to red. In addition, the page will be displayed with a "powderblue" background color:
Example:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<style>
body {background-color: powderblue;}
h1 {color: blue;}
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:
"styles.css":
body {
background-color: powderblue;
}
h1 {
color: blue;
}
p {
color: red;
}
CSS Colors, Fonts and Sizes
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:
Use of CSS color, font-family and font-size properties:
<!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.
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:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://www.w3schools.com/html/styles.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/html/styles.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css">
style attribute for inline styling
<style> element to define internal CSS
<link> element to refer to an external CSS file (Defines a link between a document and an external resource)
<head> element to store <style> and <link> elements
color property for text colors
font-family property for text fonts
font-size property for text sizes
border property for borders
CSS padding property for space inside the border
CSS margin property for space outside the border