CSS Basics2

HTML elements can be:

Block level

These elements begin and end lines (they use line breaks)

Inline

These elements affect page content within a line

Invisible

These elements are not displayed on the screen

Trees develop as you nest these element in your page markup

This important for the way that stylesheets work because of inheritance and cascading

HTML document tree

A style sheet is a document that contains rules that instruct a browser to render a page in a certain way

The rules of a style sheet are listed in one of three ways:

Gathered together in a separate, non-HTML document with the extension .css

Here's an example - this is the style sheet used for these demonstration pages (this link opens a new window. Close it to return to this page)

Gathered together in the <head> of the content document

Used individually in the <body> of the content document

Stylesheet rules affect a document when the browser applies them to the tree structure of the document

The way the rules are "inherited" is determined by two factors

Inheritance: the "parent-child" relationship among page elements

The cascade: the placement of the rules and the order of the style elements

You are here: http://memex.lib.indiana.edu/hrosenba/www/Workshops/CSS/Demo/cssbasics2.html
Last updated 3.15.06 - H. Rosenbaum