CSS Tutorial
CSS Tutorial
CSS Tutorial
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets and was created by Håkon Wium Lie in 1996 for web developers to change the layout, colors, and fonts of websites.
CSS is a style sheet or presentation language used for layout, formatting, and beautifying documents written in HTML. CSS is commonly used with HTML to style web pages and user interfaces. You can use CSS to modify the color, background, borders, padding, margins, fonts, icons, positioning, and other properties of HTML elements in web documents.
This tutorial covers all versions of CSS, including CSS1, CSS2, and CSS3, and provides a comprehensive introduction to CSS, from the basics to advanced concepts. This tutorial will teach you about the CSS box model, selectors, the cascade, color, sizing units, layout, Flexbox, Grid, pseudo-elements and pseudo-classes, borders, shadows, focus, functions, gradients, animations, filters, lists, transitions, overflow, backgrounds, text, and typography.
CSS Examples
This tutorial teaches you each CSS concept through appropriate examples that you can execute in your browser without the help of any external HTML editor.
The HTML and CSS code below is editable, and you can change the values of the code.
<html>
<head>
<style>
div{ background-color: lightgrey; width:100%; padding:5px}
h1{color: #40a944; text-align: center;}
p{ font-family: verdana;font-size: 20px;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div>
<h1>CSS Example</h1>
<p>This is a paragraph.</p>
</div>
</body>
Why Learn CSS
Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS for short, is a simple design language designed to simplify the web design process.
Learning CSS is a must for students and professionals, especially those working in web development. Here are some key benefits of learning CSS:
- Create beautiful websites – CSS controls the appearance of web pages. Using CSS, you can control the color of text, font style, spacing between paragraphs, column size and layout, background https://coder-cafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/images or colors used, layout design, display variations on different devices and screen sizes, and a variety of other effects.
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Becoming a Web Designer – If you want to become a professional web designer, HTML and CSS design are essential skills.
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Controlling Web Pages – CSS is easy to learn and understand, yet it provides powerful control over the presentation of HTML documents. Typically, CSS is used in conjunction with the markup languages HTML or XHTML.
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Learning Other Languages – Once you’ve mastered the basics of HTML and CSS, other related technologies like JavaScript, PHP, or Angular will become much easier to understand.
CSS Applications
As mentioned earlier, CSS is one of the most widely used styling languages. Here are some examples of CSS in action:
- Save Time – You can write CSS once and reuse the same style sheet across multiple HTML pages. You can define a style for each HTML element and apply it to any number of web pages.
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Pages load faster – If you use CSS, you don’t need to write HTML tag attributes every time. You can simply write a CSS rule for a tag and apply it to all occurrences of that tag. Therefore, less code means faster download times.
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Easy to maintain – To make global changes, simply change the style, and all elements in all web pages will automatically update.
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Styling Better Than HTML – CSS has a wider range of properties than HTML, so you can give your HTML pages a better look.
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Multi-Device Compatibility – Style sheets allow content to be optimized for multiple types of devices. By using the same HTML document, you can serve different versions to handheld devices like PDAs and cell phones, or to print.
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Global Web Standards – Now that HTML attributes are deprecated, it’s recommended to use CSS. Therefore, it’s a good idea to start using CSS in all your HTML pages to make them compatible with future browsers.
Audience
This CSS tutorial will help students and professionals make their websites or personal blogs more attractive. We recommend reading this tutorial in the order listed in the left menu.
Today, HTML and CSS are essential languages for anyone involved in web development, including web developers, web designers, graphic designers, content managers, and project managers.
Prerequisites
Don’t worry, you don’t really need to be a computer geek to learn CSS. CSS is a very accessible styling and presentation language that anyone can learn as they go. You just need to be familiar with the following:
- Basic text processing using any text editor.
- How to create directories and files.
- How to navigate between directories.
- Browsing the web using a popular browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox.
- Developing simple web pages using HTML or XHTML.
If you’re new to both HTML and XHTML, we recommend starting with our HTML tutorial or XHTML tutorial.
Frequently Asked Questions about CSS
There are some very frequently asked questions (FAQs) about CSS, and this section attempts to briefly answer them.
What are the different versions of CSS?
There are three versions of CSS – CSS1, CSS2, and CSS3. CSS1 is the oldest version, released in 1996, while CSS3 is the latest version, containing new features and functionality, and was released in 2012.
What is the latest version of CSS?
The latest version of CSS is 3.0. As of June 2012, over 50 CSS modules have been released from the CSS-3 Working Group.
Where do we use CSS?
CSS is used everywhere, including web pages, RSS feeds, web chat, embedded devices, and more.
Will we have CSS4?
The claims about CSS4 are false. There has never been a CSS4, and there never will be a CSS4. CSS4 does not exist.
What are the different ways to include CSS in a web page?
We can include CSS in three different ways:
(a) Using an external CSS file
(b) Including it via the <style>...</style> tag
(c) Using the style attribute of an HTML element.
What is the syntax of CSS?
CSS syntax consists of selector{property1:value1,property2:value2…} . Selectors are used to select HTML elements to which CSS styles are applied. CSS properties are separated by semicolons.
Thus, a CSS rule consists of two main parts: a selector (‘h1’) and a declaration (‘color: red’).
What tags are used for CSS?
<style> tags are used to define style information (CSS) for a document.
How many properties are there in CSS?
CSS has over 100 different properties, and you can assign them an infinite number of different values.
How long does it take to learn CSS?
Learning CSS is easy. You can learn CSS in a week or two. However, it may take months of practice before you become an expert. How long it takes to learn CSS also depends on how you plan to use it. Following our CSS tutorial will give you the confidence you need to use CSS and design and develop an outstanding website.
How to start learning CSS?
Here are some quick tips to help you get started learning CSS.
- First and foremost, commit to learning CSS.
- Follow our tutorial step by step from the beginning.
- Read more articles, watch online courses, or buy a book about CSS and web development to further your knowledge.
- Try developing a small website using CSS and HTML.
Where is the best place to learn CSS?
You can learn CSS using our simple and best CSS tutorial. We’ve removed all unnecessary complexity while teaching CSS concepts. You can start learning CSS now.