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)!
Using CSS
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
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>Live preview
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.
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>Live preview
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>Live preview
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;
}Tip
With an external style sheet, you can change the look of an entire web site, by changing one file!
CSS Colors, Fonts and Sizes
Here, we will demonstrate some commonly used CSS properties. You will learn more about them later.
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
<!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>Live preview
CSS Border
The CSS border property defines a border around an HTML element.
Tip
You can define a border for nearly all HTML elements.
p {
border: 2px
solid powderblue;
}CSS Padding
The CSS padding property defines a padding (space) between the text and the border.
p {
border: 2px
solid powderblue;
padding: 30px;
}CSS Margin
The CSS margin property defines a margin (space) outside the border.
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://example.comLive preview
Example
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/html/styles.css">Live preview
Example
<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css">Live preview
You can read more about file paths in the chapter HTML File Paths .
Chapter Summary
- Use the HTML style attribute for inline styling
- Use the HTML <style> element to define internal CSS
- Use the HTML <link> element to refer to an external CSS file
- Use the HTML <head> element to store <style> and <link> elements
- Use the CSS color property for text colors
- Use the CSS font-family property for text fonts
- Use the CSS font-size property for text sizes
- Use the CSS border property for borders
- Use the CSS padding property for space inside the border
- Use the CSS margin property for space outside the border
Tip
You can learn much more about CSS in our CSS Tutorial .
HTML Style Tags
| Tag | Description |
|---|---|
| <style> | Defines style information for an HTML document |
| <link> | Defines a link between a document and an external resource |
For a complete list of all available HTML tags, visit our HTML Tag Reference .