Cascading Style sheets-Are they good?

[dcpsoguy]

I am wondering, are they good? Will they make your webpage look better? What is so good about cascading style sheets?

 

[jaywallen]

You might look at cascading style sheets as a means of applying the idea of templates to Web site management. By using CSS you can enforce formatting rules on a given type of page wherever it is located throughout the site by simply changing the "template". (Meaning you don't have to do a big, hairy find/replace on all of the pages.) You can even let users choose the interface or appearance they like best on your Web sites.

If you're asking if this is the way to go for someone who's learning the nitty-gritty of Web page authoring, then the answer would be yes. Sort of. Internet Explorer 5 and up have pretty decent, though by no means complete, support for CSS. Netscape browsers are totally awful in their CSS implementation, at least for pre-version-6. Opera appears to be so-so.

If you're interested in getting a tool to help you learn to use CSS, try Top-Style. You can get it at the Bradsoft site. There's a lot of useful information on that site that can tell you much better than I can about the advantages and features of CSS. And I believe there's a functionally limited freeware version of the software available for download there, too.

Regards,
Jim

 

[Descend492]

CSS are going to be the way of the future in my opinion. Learning the basics (the font and size tags and all that) is a must, but implementing CSS into your pages rather than these basics should be the way to go.

 

[Moonbender]

The basic CSS tags are fantastic, but the more complicated ones (position for example) are difficult to work with if you want them to work on more than one browser. That's too bad, because you can create great effects (which otherwise would require pictures) by using the more complex CSS.

Anyway, if you're at least a bit into HTML there's no way around CSS, and it shouldn't be difficult to learn anyways.