Introduction - Free CSS Tutorial
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a fantastic tool to add layout to your websites. It can save you a lot of time and it enables you to design websites in a completely new way. CSS is a must for anyone working with web design.
This tutorial will get you started with CSS in just a few hours. It is easy to understand and it will teach you all the sophisticated techniques.
Learning CSS is fun. As you go along through the tutorial, remember to take enough time to properly experiment with what you learn in each lesson.
Using CSS requires basic experience with HTML. If you are not familiar with HTML, please start with our HTML tutorial before moving on to CSS.
Which software do I need?
Please avoid using software such as FrontPage, DreamWeaver or Word with this tutorial. Advanced software will not help you learn CSS. Instead, it will limit you and slow down your learning curve significantly.
All you need is a free and simple text editor.
For example, Microsoft Windows comes with a program called Notepad. It is usually located in Accessories in the start menu under Programs. Alternatively, you can use a similar text editor e.g. Pico for Linux or Simple Text for Macintosh.
A simple text editor is ideal for learning HTML and CSS because it doesn't affect or change the codes you type. That way, your successes and errors can only be attributed to yourself - not the software.
You can use any browser with this tutorial. We encourage you to always keep your browser updated and use the latest version.
A browser and a simple text editor is all you need.
Lesson 1: What is CSS? Maybe you already heard about CSS without really knowing what it is. In this lesson you will learn more about what CSS is and what it can do for you. CSS is an acronym for Cascading Style Sheets. What can I do with CSS? CSS is a style language that defines layout of HTML documents. For example, CSS covers fonts, colours, margins, lines, height, width, background images, advanced positions and many other things. Just wait and see! HTML can be (mis-)used to add layout to websites. But CSS offers more options and is more accurate and sophisticated. CSS is supported by all browsers today. After only a few lessons of this tutorial you will be able to make your own style sheets using CSS to give your website a new great look. What is the difference between CSS and HTML? HTML is used to structure content. CSS is used for formatting structured content. Okay, it sounds a bit technical and confusing. But please continue reading. It will all make sense to you soon. Back in the good old days when Madonna was a virgin and a guy called Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web, the language HTML was only used to add structure to text. An author could mark his text by stating "this is a headline" or "this is a paragraph" using HTML tags such as
.
As the Web gained popularity, designers started looking for possibilities to add layout to online documents. To meet this demand, the browser producers (at that time Netscape and Microsoft) invented new HTML tags such as for example which differed from the original HTML tags by defining layout - and not structure.
This also led to a situation where original structure tags such as were increasingly being misused to layout pages instead of adding structure to text. Many new layout tags such as