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Maybe you already heard about CSS without really knowing what it is. In this lesson you will learn more about what CSS is and what it can do for you. CSS is an acronym for Cascading Style Sheets.
control layout of many documents from one single style sheet; more precise control of layout; apply different layout to different media-types (screen, print, etc.); numerous advanced and sophisticated techniques.
As you will note, the codes are more or less identical for HTML and CSS. The above example also shows you the fundamental CSS model:
But where do you put the CSS code? This is exactly what we will go over now.
One way to apply CSS to HTML is by using the HTML attribute style. Building on the above example with the red background color, it can be applied like this:
<html> <head> <title>Example</title> </head> <body style="background-color: #FF0000;"> <p>This is a red page</p> </body> </html>
Another way is to include the CSS codes using the HTML tag <style>. For example like this:
<html> <head> <title>Example</title> <style type="text/css"> body {background-color: #FF0000;} </style> </head> <body> <p>This is a red page</p> </body> </html> Method 3: External (link to a style sheet)
The recommended method is to link to a so-called external style sheet. Throughout this tutorial we will use this method in all our examples. An external style sheet is simply a text file with the extension .css. Like any other file, you can place the style sheet on your web server or hard disk. For example, let's say that your style sheet is named style.css and is located in a folder named style. The situation can be illustrated like this:
The trick is to create a link from the HTML document (default.htm) to the style sheet (style.css). Such link can be created with one line of HTML code:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style/style.css" />
Notice how the path to our style sheet is indicated using the attribute href. The line of code must be inserted in the header section of the HTML code i.e. between the <head> and </head> tags. Like this:
<html> <head> <title>My document</title> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style/style.css" /> </head> <body> ...
This link tells the browser that it should use the layout from the CSS file when displaying the HTML file. The really smart thing is that several HTML documents can be linked to the same style sheet. In other words, one CSS file can be used to control the layout of many HTML documents.
This technique can save you a lot of work. If you, for example, would like to change the background color of a website with 100 pages, a style sheet can save you from having to manually change all 100 HTML documents. Using CSS, the change can be made in a few seconds just by changing one code in the central style sheet. Let's put what we just learned into practice.
Try it yourself
Open Notepad (or whatever text editor you use) and create two files - an HTML file and a CSS file - with the following contents:
default.htm
<html> <head> <title>My document</title> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css" /> </head> <body> <h1>My first stylesheet</h1> </body> </html>
style.css
body { background-color: #FF0000; }
Now place the two files in the same folder. Remember to save the files with the right extensions (respectively ".htm" and ".css") Open default.htm with your browser and see how the page has a red background. Congratulations! You have made your first style sheet!
color: #ff0000;
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Colors can be entered as hexadecimal values as in the example above (#ff0000), or you can use the names of the colors ("red") or rgb-values (rgb(255,0,0)).
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To insert the image of the butterfly as a background image for a web page, simply apply the background-image property to <body> and specify the location of the image.
body { background-color: #FFCC66; background-image: url("butterfly.gif"); } h1 { } color: #990000; background-color: #FC9804;
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NB: Notice how we specified the location of the image as url("butterfly.gif"). This means that the image is located in the same folder as the style sheet. You can also refer to images in other folders using url("../images/butterfly.gif") or even on the Internet indicating the full address of the file:url("http://www.html.net/butterfly.gif").
Value
Description
background-repeat: repeat-x
background-repeat: repeat-y
background-repeat: repeat
background-repeat: no-repeat
For example, to avoid repetition of a background image the code should look like this:
body { background-color: #FFCC66; background-image: url("butterfly.gif"); background-repeat: no-repeat;
} h1 {
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Value
Description
Background-attachment: scroll
Background-attachment: fixed
For example, the code below will fix the background image.
body { background-color: #FFCC66; background-image: url("butterfly.gif"); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-attachment: fixed; } h1 { } color: #990000; background-color: #FC9804;
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Value
Description
The image is positioned 2 cm from the left and 2 cm down the page
The image is centrally positioned and one fourth down the page
The code example below positions the background image in the bottom right corner:
body { background-color: #FFCC66; background-image: url("butterfly.gif"); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-attachment: fixed; background-position: right bottom;
} h1 {
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Compiling [background]
The property background is a short hand for all the background properties listed in this lesson. With background you can compress several properties and thereby write your style sheet in a shorter way which makes it easier to read. For example, look at these five lines:
background-color: #FFCC66; background-image: url("butterfly.gif"); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-attachment: fixed; background-position: right bottom;
Using background the same result can be achieved in just one line of code:
background: #FFCC66 url("butterfly.gif") no-repeat fixed right bottom;
If a property is left out, it will automatically be set to its default value. For example, if backgroundattachment and background-position are taken out of the example:
background: #FFCC66 url("butterfly.gif") no-repeat;
These two properties that are not specified would merely be set to their default values which as you know are scroll and top left.
Summary
In this lesson, you have already learned new techniques that would not be possible using HTML. The fun continues in the next lesson which examines the broad range of possibilities when using CSS to describe fonts.
Lesson 4: Fonts
In this lesson you will learn about fonts and how they are applied using CSS. We will also look at how to work around the issue that specific fonts chosen for a website can only be seen if the font is installed on the PC used to access the website. The following CSS properties will be described:
When you list fonts for your web site, you naturally start with the most preferred font followed by some alternative fonts. It is recommended to complete the list with a generic font family. That way at least the page will be shown using a font of the same family if none of the specified fonts are available. An example of a prioritized list of fonts could look like this:
h1 {font-family: arial, verdana, sans-serif;} h2 {font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;}
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Headlines marked with <h1> will be displayed using the font "Arial". If this font is not installed on the user's computer, "Verdana" will be used instead. If both these fonts are unavailable, a font from the sans-serif family will be used to show the headlines. Notice how the font name "Times New Roman" contains spaces and therefore is listed using quotation marks.
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The property font-variant is used to choose between normal or small-caps variants of a font. A small-caps font is a font that uses smaller sized capitalized letters (upper case) instead of lower case letters. Confused? Take a look at these examples:
If font-variant is set to small-caps and no small-caps font is available the browser will most likely show the text in uppercase instead.
h1 {font-variant: small-caps;} h2 {font-variant: normal;}
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There is one key difference between the four units above. The units 'px' and 'pt' make the font size absolute, while '%' and 'em' allow the user to adjust the font size as he/she see fit. Many users are disabled, elderly or simply suffer from poor vision or a monitor of bad quality. To make your website accessible for everybody, you should use adjustable units such as '%' or 'em'.
Below you can see an illustration of how to adjust the text size in Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. Try it yourself neat feature, don't you think?
Compiling [font]
Using the font short hand property it is possible to cover all the different font properties in one single property. For example, imagine these four lines of code used to describe font-properties for <p>:
p {
Summary
You have now learned about some of the possibilities related to fonts. Remember that one of the major advantages of using CSS to specify fonts is that at any given time, you can change font on an entire website in just a few minutes. CSS saves time and makes your life easier.
Lesson 5: Text
Formatting and adding style to text is a key issue for any web designer. In this lesson you will be introduced to the amazing opportunities CSS gives you to add layout to text. The following properties will be described:
text-indent: 30px;
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text-decoration: underline;
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The text-transform property controls the capitalization of a text. You can choose to capitalize, use uppercase or lowercase regardless of how the original text is looks in the HTML code. An example could be the word "headline" which can be presented to the user as "HEADLINE" or "Headline". There are four possible values for text-transform: capitalize Capitalizes the first letter of each word. For example: "john doe" will be "John Doe". uppercase Converts all letters to uppercase. For example: "john doe" will be "JOHN DOE". lowercase Converts all letters to lowercase. For example: "JOHN DOE" will be "john doe". none No transformations - the text is presented as it appears in the HTML code. As an example, we will use a list of names. The names are all marked with <li> (list-item). Let's say that we want names to be capitalized and headlines to be presented in uppercase letters. Try to take a look at the HTML code for this example and you will see that the text actually is in lowercase.
h1 { } li { } text-transform: capitalize; text-transform: uppercase;
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Summary
In the last three lessons you have already learned several CSS properties, but there is much more to CSS. In the next lesson we will take a look at links.
Lesson 6: Links
You can apply what you already learned in the previous lessons to links (i.e. change colors, fonts, underline, etc). The new thing is that CSS allows you to define these properties differently depending on whether the link is unvisited, visited, active, or whether the cursor is on the link. This makes it possible to add fancy and useful effects to your website. To control these effects you use so-called pseudo-classes.
What is a pseudo-class?
A pseudo-class allows you to take into account different conditions or events when defining a property for an HTML tag. Let's look at an example. As you know, links are specified in HTML with <a> tags. We can therefore use a as a selector in CSS:
a { } color: blue;
A link can have different states. For example, it can be visited or not visited. You can use pseudo-classes to assign different styles to visited and unvisited links.
a:link { color: blue; } a:visited { color: red; }
Use a:link and a:visited for unvisited and visited links respectively. Links that are active have the pseudoclass a:active and a:hover is when the cursor is on the link. We will now go through each of the four pseudo-classes with examples and further explanation.
Pseudo-class: link
The pseudo-class :link is used for links leading to pages that the user has not visited. In the code example below, unvisited links will be light blue.
a:link { color: #6699CC; }
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Pseudo-class: visited
The pseudo-class :visited is used for links leading to pages that the user has visited. For example, the code below would make all visited links dark purple:
a:visited { color: #660099; }
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Pseudo-class: active
The pseudo-class :active is used for links that are active. This example gives active links a yellow background color:
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Pseudo-class: hover
The pseudo-class :hover is used when the mouse pointer hovers over a link. This can be used to create interesting effects. For example, if we want our links to be orange and be italicized when the cursor is pointed at them, our CSS should look like this:
a:hover { color: orange; font-style: italic; }
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background-color:yellow;
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The two examples gives you an idea about the almost endless possibilities for combining different properties. You can create your own effects - give it a try!
Alternatively, you can set text-decoration along with other properties for all four pseudo-classes.
a:link { color: blue; text-decoration:none; } a:visited { color: purple; text-decoration:none; } a:active { background-color: yellow; text-decoration:none; } a:hover { color:red; text-decoration:none; }
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Summary
In this lesson you have learned about pseudo-classes, using some of the properties from the previous lessons. This should give you an idea of some the possibilities CSS provides.
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Then we want the white wine links to be yellow, the red wine links to be red and the rest of the existing links on the webpage to stay blue. To achieve this, we divide the links into two categories. This is done by assigning a class to each link using the attribute class. Let us try to specify some classes in the example above:
<p>Grapes for white wine:</p> <ul> <li><a href="ri.htm" class="whitewine">Riesling</a></li> <li><a href="ch.htm" class="whitewine">Chardonnay</a></li> <li><a href="pb.htm" class="whitewine">Pinot Blanc</a></li> </ul> <p>Grapes for red wine:</p> <ul> <li><a href="cs.htm" class="redwine">Cabernet Sauvignon</a></li> <li><a href="me.htm" class="redwine">Merlot</a></li> <li><a href="pn.htm" class="redwine">Pinot Noir</a></li> </ul>
We can hereafter define special properties for links belonging to whitewine and redwine, respectively.
a { } a.whitewine { color: #FFBB00; } a.redwine { color: #800000; }
color: blue;
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As shown in the example you can define the properties for elements which belong to a certain class by using .classname in the style sheet of the document.
The above could be headings of any document split into chapters or paragraphs. It would be natural to assign an id to each chapter as follows:
<h1 id="c1">Chapter 1</h1> ... <h2 id="c1-1">Chapter 1.1</h2> ... <h2 id="c1-2">Chapter 1.2</h2> ...
<h1 id="c2">Chapter 2</h1> ... <h2 id="c2-1">Chapter 2.1</h2> ... <h3 id="c2-1-2">Chapter 2.1.2</h3> ...
Let us say that the headline for chapter 1.2 must be in red. This can be done accordingly with CSS:
#c1-2 { } color: red;
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As shown in the example above you can define the properties in a specific element by using #id in the stylesheet of the document.
Summary
In this lesson we have learned that through the use of the selectors, class and id, you are able to specify properties for specific elements. In the next lesson, we will take a closer look at two HTML-elements which is widely used in connection with CSS: <span> and <div>.
Lets us say we want what Mr. Franklin sees as the benefits of not sleeping your day away emphasized in red. For that purpose, we can mark the benefits with <span>. Each span is then added a class, which we can define in our style sheet:
<p>Early to bed and early to rise makes a man <span class="benefit">healthy</span>, <span class="benefit">wealthy</span> and <span class="benefit">wise</span>.</p>
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Of course you may also use id to add style to the <span>-elements. Just as long as you remember, that you'll have to apply a unique id to each of the three <span>-elements, as you learned in the previous lesson.
And in our style sheet, we can utilize the grouping in the exact same way as above:
#democrats { background:blue; } #republicans { background:red; }
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In the examples above, we have only used <div> and <span> on very simple things such as text and background colors. Both elements have the potential to do much more advanced things. However this will not be introduced in this lesson. We will look into these later in this tutorial.
Summary
In lesson 7 and 8, you have learned about the selectors id and class and the elements span and div. You should now be able to group and identify, more or less, all parts of a document, which is a big step in the direction of mastering CSS. In lesson 9 we will introduce you to the box model.
The illustration above might seem pretty theoretical to look at, so let's try to use the model in an actual case with a headline and some text. The HTML for our example is (from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights):
<h1>Article 1:</h1> <p>All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood</p>
By adding some color and font-information the example could be presented as follows:
The example contains two elements: <h1> and <p>. The box model for the two elements can be illustrated as follows:
Even though it may look a bit complicated, the illustration shows how each HTML-element is surrounded by boxes. Boxes which we can adjust using CSS. <% ' The properties which regulate the different boxes are: padding, margin and border. The next two lessons deal with exactly these three properties: ' '
' When you have finished these two lessons, you will master the box model and be able to layout your documents much finer and more precise than in the old fashion using tables in HTML. %>
Summary
In this lesson you have been introduced to the box model. In the following three lesson we will take a closer look at how to create and control elements in the box model.
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You can set the margins in the same way on almost every element. For example, we can choose to define margins for all of our text paragraphs marked with <p>:
body { } p { } margin: 5px 50px 5px 50px;
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By defining padding for the headlines, you change how much filling there will be around the text in each headline:
h1 { background: yellow; padding: 20px 20px 20px 80px; } h2 { } background: orange; padding-left:120px;
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Summary
You are now on your way to master the box model in CSS. In the next lesson, we will take a closer look at how to set borders in different colors and how to shape your elements.
The property border-color defines which color the border has. The values are the normal color-values for example "#123456", "rgb(123,123,123)" or "yellow" .
The values none or hidden can be used if you do not want any border.
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It is also possible to state special properties for top-, bottom-, right- or left borders. The following example shows you how:
h1 {
border-top-width: thick; border-top-style: solid; border-top-color: red; border-bottom-width: thick; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: blue; border-right-width: thick; border-right-style: solid; border-right-color: green; border-left-width: thick; border-left-style: solid; border-left-color: orange;
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Compilation [border]
As it is also the case for many other properties, you can compile many properties into one using border. Let us take a look at an example:
p { border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; border-color: blue;
Summary
In this lesson you have learned about the endless options CSS gives you when using borders in your pages. In the next lesson, we will look at how you define the dimensions in the box model - height and width.
width height
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Summary
Lesson 9, 10, 11 and 12 have given you an introduction to the box model in CSS. As you can probably see, the box model gives you many new options. You might have been using tables in HTML to create your layouts until now, but with CSS and the box model you should now be able to achieve elegant layouts more precisely and in accordance with the recommendations of W3C.
If we for example would like to have a text wrapping around a picture, the result would be like this:
How is it done?
The HTML code for the example above, look as follows:
<div id="picture"> <img src="bill.jpg" alt="Bill Gates"> </div> <p>causas naturales et antecedentes, idciro etiam nostrarum voluntatum...</p>
To get the picture floating to the left and the text to surround it, you only have to define the width of the box which surrounds the picture and thereafter set the property float to left:
#picture { float:left; width: 100px; }
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Now the desired width of the columns is set to e.g. 33%, and then you simply float each column to the left by defining the property float:
#column1 { float:left; width: 33%; } #column2 { float:left; width: 33%; } #column3 { float:left; width: 33%; }
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The property clear can assume the values left, right, both or none. The principle is, if clear, for example, is set to both for a box, the top margin border of this box will always be under the lower margin border for possible floating boxes coming from above.
<div id="picture"> <img src="bill.jpg" alt="Bill Gates"> </div> <h1>Bill Gates</h1> <p class="floatstop">causas naturales et antecedentes, idciro etiam nostrarum voluntatum...</p>
To avoid the text from floating up next to the picture, we can add the following to our CSS:
#picture { float:left; width: 100px; } .floatstop { clear:both; }
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Summary
Floats are useful in many situations and will often be used together with positioning. In the next lesson we will take a closer look at how to position a box, either relative or absolute.
The principle behind CSS positioning is that you can position any box anywhere in the system of coordinates. Let's say we want to position a headline. By using the box model (see lesson 9) the headline will appear as follows:
If we want this headline positioned 100px from the top of the document and 200px from the left of the document, we could type the following in our CSS:
h1 { position:absolute; top: 100px; left: 200px;
As you can see, positioning with CSS is a very precise technique to place elements. It is much easier than trying to use tables, transparent images or anything else.
Absolute positioning
An element which is positioned absolute does not obtain any space in the document. This means that it does not leave an empty space after being positioned. To position an element absolutely, the position property is set as absolute. You can subsequently use the properties left, right, top, and bottom to place the box. As an example of absolute positioning, we choose to place 4 boxes in each corner of the document:
#box1 { position:absolute; top: 50px; left: 50px;
} #box2 {
} #box3 {
} #box4 {
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Relative positioning
To position an element relatively, the property position is set as relative. The difference between absolute and relative positioning is how the position is being calculated. The position for an element which is relatively positioned is calculated from the original position in the document. That means that you move the element to the right, to the left, up or down. This way, the element still obtains a space in the document after it is positioned. As an example of relative positioning, we can try to position three pictures relatively to their original position on the page. Notice how the pictures leave empty spaces at their original positions in the document:
#dog1 { position:relative; left: 350px; bottom: 150px; position:relative; left: 150px; bottom: 500px;
} #dog2 {
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Summary
In the previous two lessons, you learned how to float and position elements. These two methods give you many opportunities to construct your pages without having to use some of the old-fashioned methods with tables and transparent images in HTML. Use CSS instead. It is more precise, gives you more advantages, and it is also far easier to maintain.
In this case, the numbers follow on another (1-5) but the same result can be obtained by using 5 different numbers. The important thing is the chronological sequence of the numbers (the order). The code in the card example could look like this:
#ten_of_diamonds { position: absolute; left: 100px; top: 100px; z-index: 1; } #jack_of_diamonds { position: absolute; left: 115px; top: 115px; z-index: 2; } #queen_of_diamonds { position: absolute; left: 130px; top: 130px; z-index: 3; } #king_of_diamonds { position: absolute; left: 145px; top: 145px; z-index: 4; } #ace_of_diamonds { position: absolute; left: 160px; top: 160px; z-index: 5; }
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The method is relatively simple but the possibilities are several. You can place images on text or text above text etc.
Summary
Layers can be used in many situations. For example, try to use z-index to create effects in headlines instead of creating these as graphics. For one thing, it is faster to load text and for another, it provides a potentially better ranking in search engines.
CSS validator
To make it easier to observe the CSS standard, W3C has made a so-called validator which reads your stylesheet and returns a status listing errors and warnings, if your CSS does not validate. To make it easier for you to validate your stylesheet, you can do it directly from this webpage. Simply replace the URL with the URL of your stylesheet below and click to validate. You will then be informed by the W3C site if there are any errors found.
If the validator does not find any errors; this picture will be shown, which you can put on your website to illustrate that you are using validated coding: