Why CSS?

jaded aizen
7 min readOct 15, 2020

CSS is the style sheet language for describing the presentation and design of web pages including colors, fonts, and layouts. It is mainly designed to enable the distinction between presentation and content, including colors, layouts, and fonts. It can be used in different types of devices, like large or small screens and printers. It is independent of HTML and can be used with any XML-based markup language. The CSS specifications are mainly maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium. CSS rule-set consists of a selector and a declaration block.

Some of the rules are described below:

Example: h1 { color: white; font-style: italic }. Here,

  • Selector: h1 (It indicates the HTML element which needs to be styled)
  • Property: “color and font-style” (It defines the aspects of elements that need to be changed)
  • Declaration Block: “color: white; font-style: italic” (It describes one or more declarations separated by semicolons)
  • Values: “white and italic” (It indicates the parameters of the selected properties.

Top Uses of CSS

Below are the top 10 uses are as follows:

  • Compatibility

While using CSS, a user can be stress-free with its older language versions as it is well compatible even with the older versions. Because of this, even if the applications of CSS is developed in some older version of programming language and if the developers integrate the same with new enhancements then CSS can be easily incorporated and implemented with those changes easily. So, the changes associated with the predecessor of CSS, need not be removed and a developer can update the existing code successfully.

  • E-Commerce Domain

Uses of CSS has played a very important role in the E-Commerce Domain. There is a different scale of industries present in the E-Commerce domain and CSS has helped the application frameworks styling and look-views which are used from small to large scale industries. CSS styling can be used to associate directly with the e-commerce web. Also, different add-ins and library files that are present can be modified and updated by CSS libraries and use while creating the web applications, and the source codes associated with it can be implemented by uses of CSS in the HTML framework to develop e-commerce web platform from the scratch.

  • Website Maintenance

Another common reason, why the uses of CSS are important is, CSS plays a very important role while performing website maintenance. It makes website maintenance much easier. The CSS file makes the website look and feels more flexible and it can be altered in a more convenient manner. Also, it makes the HTML formatting and the corresponding data elements modification easier. Because of which, website maintenance becomes more convenient from the development perspective.

  • Social Media Impact

Uses of CSS in HTML frameworks are also incorporated with the social media website developments as well. Facebook applications can directly correlate with the corresponding frameworks. The HTML client library files can be implemented based on CSS stylings to develop the application and can work on different extensions. These social media-based platforms can be inter-related with the frameworks and can be used to develop few enhancements from the end user’s perspective. Thus, the CSS styling and updating the user interphase becomes easier and this creates a direct impact on the social media platforms.

  • Web-based Online Community and UI Approach

Based on the current standard, to develop any web-based application or any online community, the application of CSS can be implemented in different ways. There are different style sheet frameworks present in CSS and those can be implemented easily. Using CSS, the styling of the own online community can be developed. There are also different add-ins present and those can be incorporated by the uses of CSS frameworks to develop the look and feel of the web-based community.

CSS frameworks examples

Bootstrap, Foundation, Bulma, UIkit, Semantic UI, Susy

  • Easy Accessibility

From the accessibility point of view, applications of CSS provides much better solutions that allow users to update the user interphase to suit the business requirements. It also allows the web pages to be easily rendered by different devices like speaking browsers, PDAs etc. This actually provides a much deeper impact while considering the look and feel modification of a web page from the end-user and business perspective.

  • Image File Handling

In the case of image handling, uses of CSS provides the styling Library, and this helps to output images along with the XML to the browser. Initially, it was a bit difficult to update and style the existing image. But now using the CSS files, output images can be received in different formats like jpeg, png, and gif and this can be modified to the specified styling formats as per the requirement. This feature will also allow editing different image types and is also used to create thumbnails, watermarks, image cropping etc.

  • Handling Dynamic Website Templates

Dynamic Website Templates can be created and handled by uses of CSS in the HTML framework and it basically helps while adding and editing web pages and elements to the web server and sites. By adding CSS extension to the concerned HTML pages and incorporating the same with the server-side templates, it makes easier to handle the dynamically allocated elements. So, using these templates the handling of dynamic elements can be more organized and properly implemented by CSS frameworks. These elements can also be used to style the pages in a dynamic pattern while using the CSS templates.

  • Handling Flash Animation and Effects

With the help of CSS Flash files, flash elements can be directly placed and handled on the website. There is a presence of inbuilt frameworks and styling sheets in CSS which can be used and to handle the situation. The animations can be directly created, and effects can be updated using the frameworks. The required flash files can be processed and implemented to create movies and animation in the web pages with the help of properties.

  • End-User and Server-side Representation

CSS files can directly interact with the user end server-side response and can be used for web server-side interphase styling purposes. This allows for producing better web representation from the end user’s perspective.

Commands and Content on Cheat sheet CSS

The basic syntax of the cheat sheet CSS consists of a selector and declaration components. The selector component specifies the HTML element that has to be styled. The declaration component contains two or more properties and their specifications separated by semicolons. The declaration component always starts and ends with curly braces.

Below are the Cheatsheet CSS commands mentioned which perform different kinds of operations:

  • Box-Model: The CSS Box-Model is essentially a box that wraps around every HTML element. It consists of margins, borders, padding, and content.
  • Pseudo-Class: Is used to define a specific state of an element that involves styling an element differently when a user mouses over it, the styling of visited and unvisited links and styling of elements that are under focus.
  • Pseudo-element: Is used to style a part of an element like the first letter, word or line. It also helps in inserting content before and after the content of an element.
  • Vertical Screen height: This is to specify the extent to which the content should occupy the screen.
  • Style telephone links: It specifies the properties of links that open up as telephone numbers on the phone.
  • Navigation Bars: It is important for a website to have good navigation. CSS transforms boring HTML menus into good-looking navigation bars.

Conclusion

After discussing all the above uses of CSS, it can be concluded that CSS can be very useful while doing the web application interphase representation and styling across different domains. Thus, based on the project need, business requirements, CSS can be implemented to achieve the desired goal.

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