A Cascading Stlye Sheet (we'll just call it CSS from now on) is a set of rules that govern how the content on your page is presented to the viewing public.
This gives numerous major benefits e.g. you could have different style sheets for a PDA or mobile phone or printing purposes or for the visually impaired. Each sheet would simply say how your layout should be presented - in other words write once - use many times.
As the information is stored in a file that is simply linked to each page that requires it, updating is made much much easier e.g. if you change the font on how your links are presented in the external style sheet, every linked page is instantly updated.
This in turn helps you to easily preserve consistency throughout your design so then when 'the client says "oh just one more thing can you make all of the links green" it really is as easy as altering one thing in the style sheet as against having to track down every link in your 40 page Internet site to change them manually one by one - only for 'the client' to phone up the next morning and say "oh sorry did I say green - I meant red".
CSS allows you to separate the content from the presentation tags and this is a good thing?
CSS is the future and it is already here - standards are changing with new accessibility rules - XHTML and CSS are the way forward. eh! where did the X(HTML) come from " he's never mentioned that before" - well XHTML is a reformulisation of HTML - but we'll talk about that as we progress through the course.
It would be an excellent idea for you all to investigate XHTML and CSS outside of the session time as it is very important that you gain a deeper understanding of these areas.
If you click the link below marked demonstration you can see how to create a simple Cascading style sheet. You can also download the files and CSS sheet for this Dreamweaver Tutorial site so that you can practice with it and hopefully make a better job of it than I have. Then maybe I can borrow your CSS file and make my site look better. You can tell if your CSS is compliant by visiting the link provided below.
