UNIT
E: EXPLORING CSS FORMATTING
Cascading style sheets (CSS) allow you to
format your Web files efficiently without adding
HTML formatting tags and attributes to the
document body. You apply CSS styles by creating
and using CSS style rules---special
instructions that describe the formatting you want to apply to each element.
When HTML was introduced, it was not
intended as a formatting language, but rather as a method of making
documents
available to users on a variety of operating systems. Over the years,
formatting elements, such as
<font>…</font> were introduced to make HTML documents more
appealing to the general public. With
new elements being introduced
yearly, the need to standardize HTML led to Extensible Hypertext Markup
Language (XHTML).
Well-formed XHTML documents use CSS to format page output. In addition to
making
pages more attractive, CSS formatting enables designers to create pages that
are accessible to a
wider range of display devices,
such as computer screens, personal digital assistants (PDAs),
and digital
phone displays.