The CSS File
If you have been using templates from various designers over the years, you may have noticed that many are now using CSS rather than themes to format and style pages. There are many benefits:- Pages load faster because redundant coding is removed from each page.
- You can change many colors, fonts, and more on all of your pages by editing only one CSS page.
- Because style sheets are designed to "cascade", you can easily add extra items to single pages or to blocks of text.
- Many old HTML tags are being "deprecated" or phased out of current browser standards. By using CSS today, your web pages will be remain viewable as new browsers are introduced.
Style sheets are designed to be easy to edit. However, keep in mind that we have taken care to coordinate the colors to enhance the main design used in the template package. If you wish to change colors and other attributes, you will change the look of each page in your template.
CSS is an excellent addition to plain HTML. With plain HTML you define the colors and sizes of text, tables and div areas throughout your pages. If you want to change a certain element you will therefore have to work your way through the document and change it. With CSS you define the colors and sizes in "styles". Then as you write your documents you refer to the styles. Therefore: if you change a certain style it will change the look of your entire site. Another big advantage is that CSS offers much more detailed attributes than plain HTML for defining the look and feel of your site.
Finally, CSS can be written so the user will only need to download it once - in the external style sheet document. When surfing the rest of your site the CSS will be cached on the users computer, and therefore speed up the loading time.
The biggest benefit of CSS is how easy it is to read. It actually makes sense! When you see something in the style sheet that looks like this - border: 1px solid #000000 - you know at a glance that it's a solid border that is 1 pixel wide and is black.