What is CSS: A Simple Beginner’s Guide

Key Takeaways

• The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) work with the hypertext markup language (HTML) to create visually appealing web page elements.
• CSS uses styling rules to indicate the design modifications.
• Learning CSS can benefit web designers, developers, small business owners, bloggers, and digital marketers.

When building a website, the hypertext markup language (HTML) serves as the foundation that organizes and structures the content. But to make your website stand out and be truly eye-catching, you need to customize the web page elements with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

Think of your website's HTML as the blueprint, and CSS as the finishing touches that add color, style, and personality to it.

Learning CSS for web design can be overwhelming for beginners, but we've got you covered. In this blog, we’ll walk you through CSS basics and show you simple ways to add designs to your web pages.

What is CSS?

CSS is the language that adds styles to your website. It makes your text colorful, your image positions perfect, and your layout visually appealing. Without CSS, your web page would look like a plain document.

There are three ways to apply CSS to your website's HTML:

• Inline CSS. This method directly applies styles to individual HTML elements using the style attribute. This technique is generally unsuitable for large projects as it can become challenging to manage.
• Internal CSS. Styles are within the tag in your HTML document's section. This method helps style a single page.
• External CSS. This method involves storing styles in a separate .css file and linking it to your HTML document using the tag. This is the most common method for larger websites as it organizes and reuses your code.

How does CSS work?

Before we break down how CSS works, let's first discuss how it relates to HTML to understand why we use it.

As mentioned, HTML provides your web page's overall structure and content. It uses tags to differentiate, define, and organize elements. For example:

• Headings use <h1>, <h2>, etc.
• Paragraphs use <p>
• Images use <img>
• Links use <a>

Although HTML provides the basic web page content, it doesn't control how the content looks. This is why we use CSS to modify these elements. For instance, CSS can change:

• Text font size, type, and color
• Spacing between text and images
• Content layout

The web browser reads both HTML and CSS and combines them to render a fully designed page. When you load a web page, the browser loads the HTML code first and then applies the CSS styling rules.

For example, this is the web page's HTML:

<h1>Welcome to My Website!</h1>

It would look like this on the web page:

To modify this text's appearance, you can use the corresponding CSS after the HTML code:

h1 { color: pink; font-size: 50px; }

body { background-color: black; }

Let's break down these CSS elements:

• Selector (h1). This is the indicator of the HTML element you want to style. Selectors target elements using a tag name (e.g., h1, p, and div), a class name (e.g., .my-class), and an ID (e.g., #my-id). It is also possible to use more complex combinations.
• Declaration block ( { } ). These curly braces define and contain the property or attribute you want to modify.
• Property (color, font size, and background color). These are the specific characteristics and attributes you want to change. In the example above, we want to change the h1 element's color and font size, which is why we include those properties within the declaration block. Take note that you can modify many CSS properties, not just color and size.
• Value (pink, black, and 50px). These are values you want to apply to the properties. In the example above, we want to change the text's color, size, and background. So, we use values (pink, 50px, and back) to specify the changes we want to see. Values can be keywords, lengths, percentages, and other property-specific data types.

Let's apply these changes to the "Welcome to my Website!" HTML text example earlier. The H1 will now look like this:

As you can see in the screenshot, the CSS elements changed the text's font size, color, and background. What makes CSS a powerful tool is that it offers many options for customizing your content's appearance.

Here's another example:

Let's say you want to move the h1's location into the middle of the page:

1. You can retain "h1" as the selector.
2. Place the property (text-align) inside the declaration block. As mentioned, this will include the modification you want to achieve with your website element.
3. After placing the property, include the value (center) to specify where to align the text.

It will also help to include comments after the property value to indicate what the code does for readability. This change will not affect the CSS's rendering, nor will it alter the other existing property values in the code.

The code will look like this:

h1 { color: pink; font-size: 50px; text-align: center; /* Center the text horizontally */ }

body { background-color: black; }

Now, the web page text will look like this:

This is just the simple version of what CSS can do. As you continue to practice and improve your CSS skills, you will discover more ways to improve your web page's design.

Key advantages of using CSS

It's a fact that CSS benefits web developers and web designers, but did you know that it can benefit bloggers, content marketers, and small business owners, too? Below are some positive effects CSS provides:

It simplifies web design

For web designers and developers

• Cleaner code. CSS separates design from the actual content, which makes your code more readable and easier to maintain. This saves developers and designers a lot of time.
• Centralized styling. CSS can define all HTML elements simultaneously instead of embedding style attributes within each. This helps reduce redundancy and ensures consistency throughout your web pages.

For bloggers, content marketers, and business owners

• Easier customization. If your site uses content management systems (CMS) like WordPress, you can use the CSS editor to personalize your website's layouts, colors, and fonts beyond the pre-built themes.
• Consistent branding. As mentioned, CSS can simultaneously modify your HTML elements, which then gives your blog or business site a cohesive look that leads to stronger brand recognition.

It improves user experience

For web designers and developers

• More responsive design. CSS has a media queries feature that lets you automatically adjust your website's design for different screen sizes, so it looks good on any device.

For bloggers, content marketers, and business owners

• Better readability and accessibility. CSS allows you to fine-tune important web page elements like font sizes and spacing, which can improve readability, accessibility, and overall user experience.
• Longer site visits and engagement. Since CSS can help improve user experience, it can translate into higher engagement and longer visit durations.
• Better user retention. A clean and intuitive website lessens bounce rates by helping visitors find the information they need quickly and easily.

It provides control and flexibility

For web designers and developers

• Advanced layout techniques. CSS tools like Flexbox and Grid empower web designers and developers to bring their ideas and creative visions to life without using excessive HTML or JavaScript.

For bloggers, content marketers, and business owners

• More creative freedom. CSS features make rebranding or refreshing your website's appearance easier without undergoing major structure changes. It will be easier to adjust your website’s content (e.g., making it holiday-themed or seasonal) without completely redoing the entire site’s HTML.

It enhances SEO

For web designers and developers

• Better search engine crawling. CSS files ensure proper HTML structure, which enables search engine bots to crawl and index your content.

For bloggers, content marketers, and business owners

• Higher search results ranking. A crawlable website that loads quickly has a better chance of ranking higher in search engine results.

Is there a disadvantage to using CSS?

CSS is a handy tool, but it has its drawbacks. Here are several potential disadvantages of using CSS features:

• Browser compatibility issues. Different browsers may interpret CSS slightly differently, sometimes causing inconsistencies in your website appearance. This is still solvable through cross-browser testing.
• Complexity. CSS can become challenging to manage as websites become more complex, especially in large projects. A poorly organized and modified CSS file can lead to style conflicts and make maintenance difficult. This is why methods like CSS architecture are used.
• Learning curve. While basic CSS is relatively easy to learn, mastering advanced techniques, responsive design, and CSS architecture requires more time and effort.
• Performance issues. Inefficient and poorly made CSS files can do more harm than good. They can slow down page loading times. Sometimes, poorly structured CSS can increase file sizes and require more browser processing.

What can't you do with CSS?

Although CSS is a powerful tool for styling and layout, it has limitations:

• Access or manipulate files on the server. CSS files don't have access to file systems.
• Replace, remove, or change the underlying HTML structure. CSS can't replace HTML elements since these two work together. Without HTML elements, CSS won't have anything to modify.
• Handle data processing and server-side logic. Since CSS works in the user's browser (client-side), it can't interact with databases, handle user authentication, or perform other server-side tasks. You can use other markup languages, like Python, PHP, and Node.js.
• Create content using complex logic. CSS can't perform complex calculations or conditional logic like other markup languages.

Make your website stand out with CSS

CSS and HTML work together to create visually stunning websites and web pages that function properly. HTML is in charge of structuring the content, and CSS modifies these elements. With CSS, you can customize and create a responsive page that improves user experience across multiple devices.

Learning CSS can enhance your website, whether customizing a design or troubleshooting an issue.

If you need help with advanced CSS or web development, we have expert services and tools to support you. And if coding isn't your thing, we have a website builder that allows you to design a stunning professional website—no coding required.

What is CSS FAQ

What is the most popular CSS?

Since CSS is constantly evolving, there isn't a specific popular version. However, several CSS frameworks and techniques are popular among developers and designers because of their effectiveness. Here are a few examples:

• CSS Frameworks. Popular options include Bootstrap (responsive grid and UI components), Tailwind (utility-first styling), Foundation (flexible grids), Bulma (modern and clean design), Skeleton (mobile-first approach), Milligram (lightweight and fast), and UIkit (speed and responsiveness).
• CSS Techniques. Flexbox is great for one-dimensional layouts, while CSS Grid is ideal for creating complex, responsive grid structures.

What are common mistakes in CSS?

Some of the common CSS mistakes include:

• Overusing !important. Although !important is a reliable way to override other styles, relying too much on it makes it harder to debug style and can lead to conflicts.
• Neglecting responsive design. Not using media queries, flexible units, or CSS Flexbox/Grid can ruin your page layout on smaller screens. Remember also to consider phones and tablets when designing your website.
• Using too many inline styles. Applying styles directly to HTML can clutter your code and make it harder to maintain. It's best to keep your HTML structure and CSS styles separate.
• Not optimizing large CSS files. Large CSS files can slow your page load times. It's important to combine stylesheets to avoid this issue.

How do I troubleshoot CSS issues?

If something looks wrong on your webpage, here are a few ways to figure out what's going on with your CSS:

• Use your browser’s DevTools. Right-click on the element you want to check and select "Inspect Element." This will show you the HTML and CSS that's affecting it.
• Look for typographical and syntax errors. In some cases, a small mistake like missing punctuation or an incorrect property name could break styles. Remember to double-check everything. You can also use tools like the W3C CSS validator to catch the errors.
• Clear cache and refresh. Browsers sometimes can cache old styles, which leads to conflicts. To resolve this, clear your cache and try opening your web page in an incognito or private window to see if the issues persist.
• Try debugging techniques. Temporarily remove styles or add "border: 1px solid red;" to elements to create visual boundaries and identify layout and spacing issues.