CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets.
CSS describes how HTML elements are to be displayed on screen, paper, or in other media.
CSS saves a lot of work. It can control the layout of multiple web pages all at once.
CSS can be added to HTML elements in 3 ways:
- Inline – by using the style attribute in HTML elements
- Internal – by using a
<style>element in the<head>section - External – by using an external CSS file
The most common way to add CSS, is to keep the styles in separate CSS files.
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.
This example sets the text color of the <h1> element to blue:
Example
<h1 style="color:blue;">This is a Blue Heading</h1>
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:
<!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>
External CSS
An external style sheet is used to define the style for many HTML pages.
With an external style sheet, you can change the look of an entire web site, by changing one file!
To use an external style sheet, add a link to it in the <head> section of the 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>
An 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 how the “styles.css” looks:
body {
background-color: powderblue;
}
h1 {
color: blue;
}
p {
color: red;
}