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By: Mark Rapor, Thu Nov 16th, 2006
Once upon a time, developing web pages was a very complicated task. Developers had to rely on tables to display data. And for sites to work well in different platforms and browsers, there were table tricks, _Javascript "hacks," and spacer images.
But with (CSS), web pages can be easily maintained, loaded faster, and viewable on multiple web enabled devices. CSS simply is a mechanism to add style (fonts, colors) to Web documents. The main feature of CSS is that its content is separated from its presentation. This means that a consistent look and feel can be applied throughout the entire site, using just a common source. Modifying your header color in a single CSS file automatically updates the look of the pages. Separating content from presentation allows for the copying of the CSS file into other pages, without any hassle.
CSS has risen to popularity for its accessibility. Multiple web-enabled devices such as cell phones and TV-based browsers can access the same source pages displayed in different styles. Printing from CSS allows a page to be modified, to fit the printing format. This is one of the foremost strengths of CSS: to modify and display pages in the different instances. One page could serve many purposes.
For users, the advantage is the faster downloading. Since CSS needs less code, pages can display more quickly on screen. Being a small-size file, this would also gain savings in bandwidth. Development time is less since there's minimal effort in creating new pages.
There are very minimal drawbacks such as the transition from developers using tables to CSS and browser compatibility. Older versions of browsers may encounter problems in downloading CSS pages. But don't worry! These problems aren't show stoppers.
Mark Rapor is the author. More information can be found at .