CSS what?

There is a technology being developed by W3C to further the seperation from data and its formatting within HTML. The technology is called Cascading Style Sheets[CSS] and its implications and goals are both realistic and easily integratable into current websites and projects.

The following article goes into very brief detail of what CSS is and how it is affecting us[you & I]. If you are looking for a down and dirty tutorial to learn how to use CSS then check out our other topics of discussion.

What does CSS do?

CSS provides all ranges of people publishing on the web - from web developers to plain ol' joes - with an easily integrated formatting language for HTML/XHTML/and XML. These are prevalent technologies for providing information on the internet and when coupled with CSS provide an oustanding ability for the user to configure their site for a consistent look and feel. CSS helps sreamline design which when used correctly provides for easy site-wide formatting changes. In other words : CSS allows the person using it to change the way the site looks without needing to do a lot of cut and pasting or redundant file edits. [This site uses CSS throughout and for the most part site updates happen easily and most of the code is both reusable and extremely manageable.]

Do I have CSS?

Browsers today, including the most recent version of Internet Explorer, Opera, Amaya, Mozilla, as well as a few others already come with CSS support built in.

How old is CSS?

CSS is quite old. Since standardizing anything takes many years it is not common to see technology implemented as soon as it becomes proposed. Such technologies never take off because of insufficient financial backing, insufficient corporate backing, and overall insufficient user knowledge. This is to say that standards are very consumer/user driven and the effect of how well any technology is adopted rests on - above all - the knowledge that technology is out there. CSS, luckily, has been adopted quite recently and many sites and, most importantly, people are begining to see the benefits of using CSS for reasons of code reusability, code manageability, and the downright coolness of CSS.

CSS is it for me?

CSS should definitely be learned... as web sites and programs move towards complete data and formatting seperation - via such technologies as XML - the need for a standardized, well-supported, and user-definable formatting capable technology will become only become more and more obvious. Since CSS has already gone through the standardization process we[users] are extremely lucky to be able to benefit from this and similar technologies.

So, CSS is here to stay?

CSS is definitely here to stay. Stylesheets provide an extremely configurable technology for formatting documents on the web. An interesting technology to watch for is XSLT which is the big brother of CSS and supports the idea of seperation of data and formatting as well as newer technologies being deployed for XML - such as Templatization and code meshing. XML/XHTML/XSLT/and CSS are at the fore-front of the way we[the users/consumers] as well as corporations provide content in an efficient, widely accepted, and extremely cool manner.

Down and Dirty[a CSS Tutorial]
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