Cascading Style Sheets?

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a mechanism for adding style (e.g. fonts, colors, spacing, and layout positioning) to Web documents. You create just one CSS style sheet (a simple text file). Then all pages in your site will read the CSS sheet and follow your style rules.

The governing body of the web, the W3C (http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/), recommended the use of CSS in December 1996, yet many web sites still do not use CSS.

Benefits of Using CSS

  1. Recommended method. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) created CSS to replace HTML tables, font tags, frames, and all the hacks of such HTML elements.
  2. Faster download times. Half of the HTML code in each page can be eliminated resulting in a file size about 50%. A CSS file is downloaded to the browser once, stored there, and re-used for every page.
  3. Shorter development time. We can tweak many design aspects of a milti-page site by editing one CSS file. This takes only a few seconds -- no longer do we need to edit every page. Previously, if we wanted to change the color of headings or size of type, we would have had to edit every instance of these elements on every page!
  4. Greater style options. Hundreds of attributes of typography, borders, margins, which were impossible control HTML methods; can be used and controlled with precision with CSS.
  5. Improvements in accessibility. Without building separate versions of your site, you can accommodate multiple audiences - people reading your site on their cell phone, Web TV, very old computers, even blind persons. When someone prints a web page, CSS can make a simpler printer-friendly version be delivered to a printer automatically.
  6. Logistics. The design of Web pages is separated from the text content. Design is kept in a CSS file separate from web pages. This means different contributors can be involved in creating/editing the site's pages, without having to apply any font, color, spacing… to their content. In addition, each page on the site always keeps a uniform consistent look because of the style sheet.
  7. Better search engine rankings. Search engines will spider your Web page more effectively because there is none of the usual HTML formatting tags mixed in with your content, and more likely give you a higher page ranking.

For more details, see this CSS article on the Macromedia web site.