CSS and DSSLS
A style sheet is a collection of formatting features that define an individual aspect of an electronic element’s output. Styles are typically used to style the HTML text of web pages, to put together cascading style sheets (style sheets) for webpages, and even to determine how the visual appearance of an item relates to its class or category. Styles allow users to control how a web page appears to the computer user and also provide information about how the user can control elements of a page. A typical style sheet includes four elements.
The first element is the title element, which identifies the style. Other elements in the style sheet are the style definition object or objects, which identify which CSS properties the style should define, and the keywords or code that describe the style. The keywords or code are embedded inside the CSS string that defines the style. In the example shown below, the keywords are “foreground”, “italic”, and “success” and the code is “text-align: vertical;”. The foreground and italic elements in the second line define styles for items that are set below the container box, while the vertical aligning style element in the third line refers to aligning text within the box.
Next, there are two types of CSS: the content attribute and the placeholders attribute. The content attribute is used to style the texts of each element, while the placeholders attribute provides a mechanism for describing the layout of the page. The placeholders allow designers to style boxes and bullets or other visual components of the page without needing to write the styles for them separately. The placeholders are generally invisible when applied to elements that do not display text, but they still exist when style elements are written directly into HTML text. The visible placeholders are referred to as background styles. Textual mode CSS is used to style words written into the source code of a CSS file.
When writing CSS, keep in mind that it is a finite construct that can be used in conjunction with other CSS tools to customize the look and feel of a site. There are two schools of thought about the placement of style objects within the style sheet. Some people believe that you should place all of your style definition, including placeholders, after the opening “head”, while others think that you should pre-load the definition and allow for comments at the end of the file. There is also a school of thought that believes you should list all style properties and values before the closing “body” of the style element. However, many developers prefer to place all CSS definitions after the opening tag of the page. This practice allows developers to reference previous definitions and learn more about the structure of the page without re-reading all of the documentation.
CSS and DSSLS are two different programming interfaces for web designers to use when designing a website. CSS is used to style HTML documents, while DSSLS is used to style CSS-only documents. Both of these web design interfaces have similarities, but each has differences as well. As an example, both of these interfaces allow you to write code that runs before the page is even downloaded. However, when DSSLS is being used, the style sheet is downloaded before the document is written. When styling HTML documents, you would want your designer to ensure that all of the HTML is included inside the style sheet, otherwise a formatting error will occur when the page is downloaded.
Another common question that new designers ask is “how do I reference different styles and how do I know what the style parameters are?” Different browsers have different settings on the CSS loader and therefore different styles will correspond to different loading settings. If you are working with a large size document, you should ensure that you have enough space left on the page to load all of your styles. Also, ensure that if you are using multiple styles, they do not conflict with one another, this is especially true for CSS.