What is CSS?

CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is a stylesheet language used to describe the presentation of a document written in a markup language like HTML or XML. It controls how web pages look, including their layout, colors, fonts, and overall visual design.

The House Analogy

Think of it like this:

• HTML is the structure of your house – the walls, rooms, and doors.
• CSS is the decoration – the paint colors, the furniture, the curtains, and how everything is arranged.

Key Concepts in CSS

• Selectors: Patterns used to select HTML elements you want to style.

  p {
    color: red;
  }

• Properties: The style attributes you want to change, such as color, font-size, or margin.
• Values: The settings for those properties. For example, blue or #0000FF for the color property.

How CSS Works (Cascading)

The "Cascading" in CSS refers to the order in which styles are applied. When multiple rules apply to the same element, the browser uses the following logic:

1. Importance: !important rules have the highest priority.
2. Specificity: More specific selectors (like IDs) override less specific ones.
3. Source Order: If specificity is the same, the later rule wins.
4. Inheritance: Some properties (like font-family) are passed from parent elements to their children.

Why is CSS Important?

• Separation of Concerns:Content (HTML) is separated from presentation (CSS).
• Consistency: Apply the same styles across multiple pages.
• Accessibility: Improves usability for all, including users with disabilities.
• Responsiveness: Allows websites to adapt to different screen sizes.

Conclusion

CSS is an essential part of modern web development. It gives developers the tools to separate structure from design, maintain consistency, and build responsive, accessible, and visually appealing websites.