As if you didn’t already have enough technical terms to deal with, now everyone is talking about CSS and you may find yourself wondering what it is, why it matters, and more importantly, what it can do for you.
CSS, otherwise known as Cascading Style Sheets, is simply a way to tell a web browser how to display the elements on an HTML page. It offers more precise control and is supported by all browsers today.
Ideally, your CSS should be contained in a separate file, which is then linked to within the and head tags of each web page, as such:
<link rel='stylesheet' href='/style.css' type='text/css' media='all' />
The first, and most significant advantage in using CSS this way is that it puts all of your formatting into a single file. This means that rather than editing each individual page, you only have to change one file, which can save you a lot of time and effort when you make changes. For example, instead of using cumbersome tables to control your layout, you can use CSS to position and style elements, and the best part is that if you’ve set it up properly from the beginning, you can change your entire design by just modifying your CSS file. A great example of this is CSS Zen Garden. In each example, the HTML remains the same, the only thing that has changed is the external CSS file; it allows complete control over the appearance of an HTML document. The learning curve can be steep, but once you have a solid understanding, you can create more compelling designs in far less time than ever before.
CSS can help improve your search engine optimization (though just slightly) by reducing the ratio of code to text, which makes your content more relevant in the eyes of the search engines, resulting in more traffic. Less code also means a faster load loading page; another factor in how a web page ranks, but also a factor in your page view numbers because people will usually spend more time on a faster website.
By now, it’s probably obvious that you need a solid understanding of CSS. To get started, you can find tutorials on every aspect of CSS at W3Schools.com and for more advanced learning and interaction with experts on the subject, you’ll want to bookmark CSS Tricks, by Chris Coyier. That information along with a few books
