Interview Questions and Answers

Ques 1. What is CSS?

1. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets and is a simple styling language which allows attaching style to HTML elements. Every element type as well as every occurrence of a specific element within that type can be declared an unique style, e.g. margins, positioning, color or size.

2. CSS is a web standard that describes style for XML/HTML documents.

3. CSS is a language that adds style (colors, images, borders, margins?) to your site. It?s really that simple. CSS is not used to put any content on your site, it?s just there to take the content you have and make it pretty. First thing you do is link a CSS-file to your HTML document. Do this by adding this line:

type="text/css">

The line should be placed in between your and tags. If you have several pages you could add the exact same line to all of them and they will all use the same stylesheet, but more about that later. Let?s look inside the file ?style.css? we just linked to.

h1 {
font-size: 40px;
height: 200px;
}
.warning {
color: Red;
font-weight: bold;
}
#footer {
background-color: Gray;
}

4. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a simple mechanism for adding style (e.g. fonts, colors, spacing) to Web documents. This is also where information meets the artistic abilities of a web-designer. CSS helps you spice up your web-page and make it look neat in wide variety of aspects.

Ques 2. What are Cascading Style Sheets?

A Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) is a list of statements (also known as rules) that can assign various rendering properties to HTML elements. Style rules can be specified for a single element occurrence, multiple elements, an entire document, or even multiple documents at once. It is possible to specify many different rules for an element in different locations using different methods. All these rules are collected and merged (known as a "cascading" of styles) when the document is rendered to form a single style rule for each element.

Ques 3. How do I center block-elements with CSS1?

There are two ways of centering block level elements:

1. By setting the properties margin-left and margin-right to auto and width to some explicit value:

BODY {width: 30em; background: cyan;}
P {width: 22em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto}

In this case, the left and right margins will each be four ems wide, since they equally split up the eight ems left over from (30em - 22em). Note that it was not necessary to set an explicit width for the BODY element; it was done here to keep the math clean.

Another example:

TABLE {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 400px;}
In most legacy browsers, a table's width is by default determined by its content. In CSS-conformant browsers, the complete width of any element (including tables) defaults to the full width of its parent element's content area. As browser become more conformant, authors will need to be aware of the potential impact on their designs.

Ques 4. If background and color should always be set together, why do they exist as separate properties?

There are several reasons for this. First, style sheets become more legible -- both for humans and machines. The background property is already the most complex property in CSS1 and combining it with color would make it even more complex. Second, color inherits, but background doesn't and this would be a source of confusion.

Ques 5. What is class?

Class is a group of 1) instances of the same element to which an unique style can be attached or 2) instances of different elements to which the same style can be attached.

1) The rule P {color: red} will display red text in all paragraphs. By classifying the selector P different style can be attached to each class allowing the display of some paragraphs in one style and some other paragraphs in another style.
2) A class can also be specified without associating a specific element to it and then attached to any element which is to be styled in accordance with it's declaration. All elements to which a specific class is attached will have the same style.

To classify an element add a period to the selector followed by an unique name. The name can contain characters a-z, A-Z, digits 0-9, period, hyphen, escaped characters, Unicode characters 161-255, as well as any Unicode character as a numeric code, however, they cannot start with a dash or a digit. (Note: in HTML the value of the CLASS attribute can contain more characters). (Note: text between /* and */ are my comments).

Ques 6. What is grouping ?

Grouping is gathering (1) into a comma separated list two or more selectors that share the same style or (2) into a semicolon separated list two or more declarations that are attached to the same selector (2).

1. The selectors LI, P with class name .first and class .footnote share the same style, e.g.:
LI {font-style: italic}
P.first {font-style: italic}
.footnote {font-style: italic}

To reduce the size of style sheets and also save some typing time they can all be grouped in one list.
LI, P.first, .footnote {font-style: italic}

2. The declarations {font-style: italic} and {color: red} can be attached to one selector, e.g.:
H2 {font-style: italic}
H2 {color: red}
and can also be grouped into one list:
H2 {font-style: italic; color: red}

Ques 7. What is external Style Sheet? How to link?

External Style Sheet is a template/document/file containing style information which can be linked with any number of HTML documents. This is a very convenient way of formatting the entire site as well as restyling it by editing just one file. The file is linked with HTML documents via the LINK element inside the HEAD element. Files containing style information must have extension .css, e.g. style.css.
<HEAD> <LINK REL=STYLESHEET HREF="style.css" TYPE="text/css"> </HEAD>

Ques 8. Is CSS case sensitive?

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is not case sensitive. However, font families, URLs to images, and other direct references with the style sheet may be.
The trick is that if you write a document using an XML declaration and an XHTML doctype, then the CSS class names will be case sensitive for some browsers.

It is a good idea to avoid naming classes where the only difference is the case, for example:

div.myclass { ...}
div.myClass { ... }

If the DOCTYPE or XML declaration is ever removed from your pages, even by mistake, the last instance of the style will be used, regardless of case.

Ques 9. What are Style Sheets?

Style Sheets are templates, very similar to templates in desktop publishing applications, containing a collection of rules declared to various selectors (elements).

Ques 10. What is CSS rule 'ruleset'?

There are two types of CSS rules: ruleset and at-rule. Ruleset identifies selector or selectors and declares style which is to be attached to that selector or selectors. For example P {text-indent: 10pt} is a CSS rule. CSS rulesets consist of two parts: selector, e.g. P and declaration, e.g. {text-indent: 10pt}.

P {text-indent: 10pt} - CSS rule (ruleset)
{text-indent: 10pt} - CSS declaration
text-indent - CSS property
10pt - CSS value

Ques 11. 'Fixed' Background?

There is the possibility to use the HTML tag bgproperties="fixed", but that is IE proprietary, and dependent upon the 'background' attribute (deprecated in HTML4).

With CSS, you can declare the background like:

BODY {
font-family : "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
background-image: url(images/yourimage.gif);
background-repeat: no-repeat; /*no-tiling background*/
background-position: center;
background-attachment: fixed;
background-color: #hexcolor;
color : #hexcolor;
margin: 10px;
}

that shows a background-image in the center of the element, non-scrolling and non-repeating - in IE or NN6. NN 4.xx gets the non-repeat-part right, but stuffs the picture in the upper left corner and scrolls ...

Ques 12. What is embedded style? How to link?

Embedded style is the style attached to one specific document. The style information is specified as a content of the STYLE element inside the HEAD element and will apply to the entire document.

Ques 13. What is ID selector?

ID selector is an individually identified (named) selector to which a specific style is declared. Using the ID attribute the declared style can then be associated with one and only one HTML element per document as to differentiate it from all other elements. ID selectors are created by a character # followed by the selector's name. The name can contain characters a-z, A-Z, digits 0-9, period, hyphen, escaped characters, Unicode characters 161-255, as well as any Unicode character as a numeric code, however, they cannot start with a dash or a digit.

#abc123 {color: red; background: black}

This and only this element can be identified as abc123

Ques 14. What is contextual selector?

Contextual selector is a selector that addresses specific occurrence of an element. It is a string of individual selectors separated by white space, a search pattern, where only the last element in the pattern is addressed providing it matches the specified context.

TD P CODE {color: red}

The element CODE will be displayed in red but only if it occurs in the context of the element P which must occur in the context of the element TD.

TD P CODE, H1 EM {color: red}

The element CODE will be displayed in red as described above AND the element EM will also be red but only if it occurs in the context of H1

P .footnote {color: red}

Any element with CLASS footnote will be red but only if it occurs in the context of P

P .footnote [lang]{color: red}

Any element with attribute LANG will be red but only if it is classed as "footnote" and occurs in the context of P

Ques 15. How do I have a background image that isn't tiled?

Specify the background-repeat property as no-repeat. You can also use the background property as a shortcut for specifying multiple background-* properties at once. Here's an example:

BODY {background: #FFF url(watermark.jpg) no-repeat;}

Ques 16. What does \ABCD (and \ABCDE) mean?

CSS allows Unicode characters to be entered by number. For example, if a CLASS value in some Russian document contains Cyrillic letters EL PE (Unicode numbers 041B and 041F) and you want to write a style rule for that class, you can put that letter into the style sheet by writing:

.\041B\041F {font-style: italic;}
This works on all keyboards, so you don't need a Cyrillic keyboard to write CLASS names in Russian or another language that uses that script.

The digits and letters after the backslash (\) are a hexadecimal number. Hexadecimal numbers are made from ordinary digits and the letters A to F (or a to f). Unicode numbers consist of four such digits.

If the number starts with a 0, you may omit it. The above could also be written as:

.\41B\41F {font-style: italic;}
But be careful if the next letter after the three digits is also a digit or a letter a to f! This is OK: .\41B-\41F, since the dash (-) cannot be mistaken for a hexadecimal digit, but .\41B9\41F is only two letters, not three.

Four digits is the maximum, however, so if you write:
.\041B9\041F {font-style: italic;}

Ques 17. Why do style sheets exist?

SGML (of which HTML is a derivative) was meant to be a device-independent method for conveying a document's structural and semantic content (its meaning.) It was never meant to convey physical formatting information. HTML has crossed this line and now contains many elements and attributes which specify visual style and formatting information. One of the main reasons for style sheets is to stop the creation of new HTML physical formatting constructs and once again separate style information from document content.

Ques 18. What are the advantages/disadvantages of the various style methods?

External Style Sheets
Advantages

* Can control styles for multiple documents at once
* Classes can be created for use on multiple HTML element types in many documents
* Selector and grouping methods can be used to apply styles under complex contexts

Disadvantages

* An extra download is required to import style information for each document
* The rendering of the document may be delayed until the external style sheet is loaded
* Becomes slightly unwieldy for small quantities of style definitions

Embedded Style Sheets
Advantages

* Classes can be created for use on multiple tag types in the document
* Selector and grouping methods can be used to apply styles under complex contexts
* No additional downloads necessary to receive style information

Disadvantages

* This method can not control styles for multiple documents at once

Inline Styles
Advantages

* Useful for small quantities of style definitions
* Can override other style specification methods at the local level so only exceptions need to be listed in conjunction with other style methods

Disadvantages

* Does not distance style information from content (a main goal of SGML/HTML)
* Can not control styles for multiple documents at once
* Author can not create or control classes of elements to control multiple element types within the document
* Selector grouping methods can not be used to create complex element addressing scenarios

Ques 19. What is inline style? How to link?

Inline style is the style attached to one specific element. The style is specified directly in the start tag as a value of the STYLE attribute and will apply exclusively to this specific element occurrence.

<P STYLE="text-indent: 10pt">Indented paragraph</P>

Ques 20. What is imported Style Sheet? How to link?

Imported Style Sheet is a sheet that can be imported to (combined with) another sheet. This allows creating one main sheet containing declarations that apply to the whole site and partial sheets containing declarations that apply to specific elements (or documents) that may require additional styling. By importing partial sheets to the main sheet a number of sources can be combined into one.
To import a style sheet or style sheets include the @import notation or notations in the STYLE element. The @import notations must come before any other declaration. If more than one sheet is imported they will cascade in order they are imported - the last imported sheet will override the next last; the next last will override the second last, and so on. If the imported style is in conflict with the rules declared in the main sheet then it will be overridden.

<LINK REL=STYLESHEET HREF="main.css" TYPE="text/css">
<STYLE TYPE="text=css">

<!--@import url(http://www.and.so.on.partial1.css);
@import url(http://www.and.so.on.partial2.css);
.... other statements
-->
</STYLE>

Ques 21. What is a Style Sheet?

Style sheets are the way that standards-compliant Web designers define the layout, look-and-feel, and design of their pages. They are called Cascading Style Sheets or CSS. With style sheets, a designer can define many aspects of a Web page:

* fonts
* colors
* layout
* positioning
* imagery
* accessibility

Style sheets give you a lot of power to define how your pages will look. And another great thing about them is that style sheets make it really easy to update your pages when you want to make a new design. Simply load in a new style sheet onto your pages and you're done.

Ques 22. What is alternate Style Sheet? How to link?

Alternate Style Sheet is a sheet defining an alternate style to be used in place of style(s) declared as persistent and/or preferred .
Persistent style is a default style that applies when style sheets are enabled but can disabled in favor of an alternate style, e.g.:

<LINK REL=Stylesheet HREF="style.css" TYPE="text/css">

Preferred style is a default style that applies automatically and is declared by setting the TITLE attribute to the LINK element. There can only be one preferred style, e.g.:

<LINK REL=Stylesheet HREF="style2.css" TYPE="text/css" TITLE="appropriate style description">

Alternate style gives an user the choice of selecting an alternative style - a very convenient way of specifying a media dependent style. Note: Each group of alternate styles must have unique TITLE, e.g.:

<LINK REL="Alternate Stylesheet" HREF="style3.css" TYPE="text/css" TITLE="appropriate style description" MEDIA=screen>
<LINK REL="Alternate Stylesheet" HREF="style4.css" TYPE="text/css" TITLE="appropriate style description" MEDIA=print>

Alternate stylesheet are not yet supported.

Ques 23. How can you set a minimum width for IE?

To set a minimum width, the CSS property is 'min-width'. This can be very useful and works well in good browsers. IE doesn't understand 'min-width'. However, it has a proprietary property called 'expression' which allows us to feed it javascript via a stylesheet. Below is how to set a (780px) minimum width for IE...


<!--[if gte IE 5]> <style type="text/css">
body {
width:expression(documentElement.clientWidth < 780 ? (documentElement.clientWidth == 0 ? (body.clientWidth < 780 ? "780px" : "auto") : "780px") : "auto" );
}
</style>
<![endif]-->

As the property is non-standard, it won't validate with the W3C validator, so if we put it in the head like this (above) - in an IE conditional comment - the validator will ignore it and the page will get a clean bill of health.

Ques 24. Which browsers support CSS?

It depends on your definition of "support." If you are interested in those browsers which makes some attempt at supporting CSS, no matter how partial or bug-ridden, then the list is:

* Internet Explorer 3.0 and above
* Navigator 4.0 and above
* Opera 3.6 and above
* Konqueror
* Arena
* Emacs-w3
* Amaya
* Lexicon
* XPublish by Media Design in�Progress

If instead you're interested in those browsers which are known to do a credible job of bug-free and mostly completel support for CSS1, then the list narrows somewhat dramatically:

* Internet Explorer 5.0 for Macintosh and above
* Internet Exporer 5.5 for Windows and above
* Netscape Navigator 6.0 and above
* Opera 4.0 and above

While none of these browser can be claimed to have a perfect implementation of CSS1, they are all quite good and can be relied upon to operate in a consistent fashion for most of CSS1.

Ques 25. How do I place text over an image?

To place text or image over an image you use the position property. The below exemple is supported by IE 4.0. All you have to do is adapt the units to your need.

<div style="position: relative; width: 200px; height: 100px">
<div style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 200px">

</div>
<div style="position: absolute; top: 20%; left: 20%; width: 200px">
Text that nicely wraps
</div>
</div>

Ques 26. what CSS is, why not start coding?

CSS is sort of like scripting language made for the web. In contrary with HTML, DHTML, JavaScript, VBScript and many others. CSS is strictly for formatting your web-page and now many new browser support it. (NOTE: Older browser do not support CSS, so please check your browser version and make sure whether it supports it or not. You may have to update your current Browser.)

The way the code goes into your Web-page is through a variety of ways. The way CSS works is that is the code is set between the tags. You can put the CSS code after which is what most people do. Now, here are the following ways of making your webpage with CSS enabled features:

1.) Writing your CSS code within your HTML source code. This is how it would look like:

<html><head><title>My First CSS!</title>
<!-- Now begin the CSS coding! -->
<STYLE TYPE = \"text/css\">
<!--
body {
background-color: #eeeee;
}
p {
text-align: left;
color: black;
font: Verdana;
font-size: 80%;
}
a {
text-decoration: none;
color: black;
font-weight: bold;
}
a:hover {
text-decoration: underline;
color: red;
font-weight: bold;
}
-->
</STYLE>
<!-- End CSS code -->
</head><body></body></html>

2.) Linking to your CSS file. This tells the webpage to find the .css file and use it as the CSS code. Here is the code that would allow you to do:

<html><head><title>CSS</title>
<link href=\"style.css\" rel=\"stylesheet\" type=\"text/css\" />
</head><body /></html>

As you can see from the code above, the <link> tag is pretty helpful. What it does is that it links to the style.css file which has all the css code. Just like embedding an image throught he <img> tag.

Now to explain a bit from the first example. CSS code isn\'t very hard to understand.Take for example the body { ..} part. What it does is that it formats how the tag in HTML would work. That is a very simple way of formatting the body tag with the CSS. To help you understand better, here is a simple syntax for CSS:

selector { property1: value1; property2: value2;}

The \"selector\" sort of relates to the html tags used for outputting etc...

We all know that is a tag used for links. You will see in the example about a:hover and a itself.
What a does it just sets the characteristics of the format. You can set how you want a link to appear using the font size, weight etc..

Then comes the \"a:hover\". What does is also pretty self explanatory. It acts on when a person moves the mouse cursor over the links.

Ques 27. Why does my content shift to the left on some pages (in FF)?

That'll be the pages with more content? The ones that have a vertical scrollbar? If you look in IE there's probably a white space on the right where there would be a scrollbar if there were enough content to require one. In Firefox, the scrollbar appears when it's needed and the viewport becomes about 20px smaller, so the content seems to shift to the left when you move from a page with little content to one with lots of content. It's not a bug or something that needs to be fixed, but it does confuse and irritate some developers.

If, for some reason, you'd like Firefox to always have scrollbars - whether they're needed or not - you can do this :

CSS html {
height:100.1%;
}

Ques 28. How do I combine multiple sheets into one?

To combine multiple/partial style sheets into one set the TITLE attribute taking one and the same value to the LINK element. The combined style will apply as a preferred style, e.g.:

<LINK REL=Stylesheet HREF="default.css" TITLE="combined">
<LINK REL=Stylesheet HREF="fonts.css" TITLE="combined">
<LINK REL=Stylesheet HREF="tables.css" TITLE="combined">

Ques 29. What is attribute selector?

Attribute selector is a selector defined by 1) the attribute set to element(s), 2) the attribute and value(s), 3) the attribute and value parts:

1a) A[title] {text-decoration: underline}
All A elements containing the TITLE attribute will be underlined

1b) A[class=name] {text-decoration: underline}
The A elements classed as 'name' will be underlined

2) A[title="attribute element"] {text-decoration: underline}
The A elements containing the TITLE attribute with a value that is an exact match of the specified value, which in this example is 'attribute element', will be underlined

3) A[title~="attribute"] {text-decoration: underline}
The A elements containing the TITLE attribute with a value containing the specified word, which in this example is 'attribute', will be underlined

Ques 30. What is parent-child selector?

Parent-child selector is a selector representing the direct descendent of a parent element. Parent-child selectors are created by listing two or more tilde (~) separated selectors.

BODY ~ P {background: red; color: white}
The P element will be declared the specified style only if it directly descends from the BODY element:
<BODY> <P>Red and white paragraph </P> </BODY>

BODY ~ P ~ EM {background: red; color: white}
The EM element will be declared the specified style only if it directly descends from the P element which in its turn directly descends from the BODY element:

<P> <EM>Red and white EM </EM> </P>

Ques 31. How can I specify background images?

With CSS, you can suggest a background image (and a background color, for those not using your image) with the background property. Here is an example:

body {
background: white url(example.gif) ;
color: black ;

If you specify a background image, you should also specify text, link, and background colors since the reader's default colors may not provide adequate contrast against your background image. The background color may be used by those not using your background image. Authors should not rely on the specified background image since browsers allow their users to disable image loading or to override document-specified backgrounds.

Ques 32. How do I have a fixed (non-scrolling) background image?

With CSS, you can use the background-attachment property. The background attachment can be included in the shorthand background property, as in this example:

body {
background: white url(example.gif) fixed ;
color: black ;
}

Note that this CSS is supported by Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Firefox Opera, Safari, and other browsers. In contrast, Microsoft's proprietary BGPROPERTIES attribute is supported only by Internet Explorer.

Ques 33. What are inline, block, parent, children, replaced and floating elements?

Inline
elements which do not have line breaks. Can occur in block elements or other inline elements, cannot contain block elements.
Inline elements in HTML 3.2; EM, STRONG, DFN, CODE, SAMP, KBD, VAR, CITE, TT, I, B, U, STRIKE, BIG, SMALL, SUB, SUP, A, IMG, APPLET, FONT, BASEFONT, BR, SCRIPT, MAP, INPUT, SELECT, TEXTAREA.

Inline elements in HTML 4.0; EM, STRONG, DFN, CODE, SAMP, KBD, VAR, CITE, ABBR, ACRONYM, TT, I, B, BIG, SMALL, SUB, SUP, A, IMG, OBJECT, BR, SCRIPT, MAP, Q, SPAN, BDO, INPUT, SELECT, TEXTAREA, LABEL, BUTTON, (INS, DEL).

Inline elements in HTML 4.0 Transitional; EM, STRONG, DFN, CODE, SAMP, KBD, VAR, CITE, ABBR, ACRONYM, TT, I, B, U, S, STRIKE, BIG, SMALL, SUB, SUP, A, IMG, APPLET, OBJECT, FONT, BASEFONT, BR, SCRIPT, MAP, Q, SPAN, BDO, IFRAME, INPUT, SELECT, TEXTAREA, LABEL, BUTTON, (INS, DEL).

Block
elements which do have line breaks. May occur in other block elements, cannot occur in inline elements, may contain both block and inline elements.

Block elements in HTML 3.2; H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6, ADDRESS, P, DL, DT, DD, UL, OL, DIR, MENU, LI, DIV, CENTER, BLOCKQUOTE, PRE, HR, ISINDEX, TABLE, FORM.

Block elements in HTML 4.0; P, H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6, UL, OL, PRE, DL, DIV, NOSCRIPT, BLOCKQUOTE, FORM, HR, TABLE, FIELDSET, ADDRESS, (INS, DEL).

Block elements in HTML 4.0 Transitional; P, H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6, UL, OL, DIR, MENU, PRE, DL, DIV, CENTER, NOSCRIPT, NOFRAMES, BLOCKQUOTE, FORM, ISINDEX, HR, TABLE, FIELDSET, ADDRESS, (INS, DEL).

Parents and children
elements which either contain (parents) or are in the content of (children) other elements, e.g. <P>text<STRONG>text</STRONG>text</P>. P is a parent of STRONG. STRONG is a child of P. If not specified otherwise, children will inherit parent's properties.
Replaced
elements which content is replaced. For example content of the IMG element is replaced with an image, content of the INPUT element is replace with a field.
Floating
elements which follow the flow of a parent - inline elements.

Ques 34. Which set of definitions, HTML attributes or CSS properties, take precedence?

CSS properties take precedence over HTML attributes. If both are specified, HTML attributes will be displayed in browsers without CSS support but won't have any effect in browsers with CSS support.

Ques 35. How do I eliminate the blue border around linked images?

in your CSS, you can specify the border property for linked images:

a img { border: none ; }
However, note that removing the border that indicates an image is a link makes it harder for users to distinguish quickly and easily which images on a web page are clickable.

Ques 36. Why call the subtended angle a "pixel", instead of something else (e.g. "subangle")?

In most cases, a CSS pixel will be equal to a device pixel. But, as you point out, the definition of a CSS pixel will sometimes be different. For example, on a laser printer, one CSS pixel can be equal to 3x3 device pixels to avoid printing illegibly small text and images. I don't recall anyone ever proposing another name for it. Subangle? Personally, I think most people would prefer the pragmatic "px" to the non-intuitive "sa".

Ques 37. Why was the decision made to make padding apply outside of the width of a 'box', rather than inside, which would seem to make more sense?

It makes sense in some situations, but not in others. For example, when a child element is set to width: 100%, I don't think it should cover the padding of its parent. The box-sizing property in CSS3 addresses this issue. Ideally, the issue should have been addressed earlier, though.

Ques 38. How to use CSS to separate content and design ?

The idea here is that all sites contain two major parts, the content: all your articles, text and photos and the design: rounded corners, colors and effects. Usually those two are made in different parts of a webpage?s lifetime. The design is determined at the beginning and then you start filling it with content and keep the design fixed.

In CSS you just add the nifty <link>-tag I?ve told you about to the head of your HTML document and you have created a link to your design. In the HTML document you put content only, and that link of yours makes sure it looks right. You can also use the exact same link on many of your pages, giving them all of them the same design. You want to add content? Just write a plain HTML document and think about marking things up like ?header? instead of ?big blue header? and use CSS to make all headers look the way you want!

Ques 39. Some examples of good and bad coding. What?s wrong with this?

<font size="3">Welcome to my page</font>

Comment: The font-tag is design and design shouldn?t be in the HTML document. All design should be in the CSS-file! Instead do this:

In the HTML:
<h1>Welcome to my page</h1>

In the CSS:
h1 { font-size: 2em; }

One more example:

<b>An error occurred</b>

This looks right doesn?t it? But if you look up what <b> stands for you quickly find bold. But bold is certainly design, so it still doesn?t belong in the HTML document. A better choice is <em> that stands for emphasis or simply ?this piece of text is important?. So instead of saying ?this text looks like this? you are saying ?this text is important? and you let the looks be decided by the CSS. Seems like a minor change, but it illustrates how to select your tags. Use this instead:

In the HTML:
<em>An error occured</em>

In the CSS:
em {
font-weight: bold;
color: Red;
}

One last example:

<table>
<tr><td><a href="">first link</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><a href="">second link</a></td></tr>
...
</table>

Ques 40. Can CSS be used with other than HTML documents?

Yes. CSS can be used with any ny structured document format. e.g. XML, however, the method of linking CSS with other document types has not been decided yet.

Ques 41. Can Style Sheets and HTML stylistic elements be used in the same document?

Yes. Style Sheets will be ignored in browsers without CSS-support and HTML stylistic elements used.

Ques 42. What are pseudo-classes?

Pseudo-classes are fictional element types that do not exist in HTML. In CSS1 there is only one element type which can be classed this way, namely the A element (anchor). By creating three fictional types of the A element individual style can be attached to each class. These three fictional element types are: A as unvisited link, A as active link and A as visited link. Pseudo-classes are created by a colon followed by pseudo-class's name. They can also be combined with normal classes, e.g.:

A:link {background: black; color: white}
A:active {background: black; color: red}
A:visited {background: transparent; color: black}

<A HREF....>This anchor (or rather these anchors) will be displayed as declared above</A>

A.foot:link {background: black; color: white}
A.foft:active {background; black: color: red}
A.foot:visited {background: transparent; color: black}

<A CLASS=foot HREF....>This anchor and all other anchors with CLASS foot will be displayed as declared above</A>

Ques 43. How do I design for backward compatibility using Style Sheets?

Existing HTML style methods (such as <font SIZE> and <b>) may be easily combined with style sheet specification methods. Browsers that do not understand style sheets will use the older HTML formatting methods, and style sheets specifications can control the appearance of these elements in browsers that support CSS1.

Ques 44. As a reader, how can I make my browser recognize my own style sheet?

Netscape
It is not possible to do this in Netscape yet (as of version 4.0.)
Internet Explorer 3.0 (Win95/NT)
[It is possible to do this at least in Windows95/NT, but no user interface is provided. Unknown how this might be accomplished on other operating systems.]

1. Open the Registry editor (Start..Run..regedit..ENTER)
2. Under the 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\InternetExplorer\Styles' key, Edit..New..String Value
3. The new value should be called 'StyleSheet Pathname'
4. For the value, type in the full directory path of your .css style sheet.

Internet Explorer 4.0 (Win95/NT)

1. Under the View menu, select 'Internet Options'.
2. Under the 'General' tab, choose the 'Accessibility' button.
3. Choose the 'Format documents using my style sheet' check box and 'Browse...' to the location of your .css style sheet.

Ques 45. How do I get rid of the gap under my image?

Images are inline elements, which means they are treated in the same way as text. Most people kind of know this - they know that if you use 'text-align:center' on an image it will be centred. What many people don't realise is that this means you will have a gap underneath an image. This gap is for the descenders of letters like j,q,p,y and g. To get rid of this gap you need to make the image block-level - like this :

CSS
img {display:block;}

One problem that this can cause is when you want to have a few images next to each other - if they are block-level, they won't be next to each other. To get around that, you can use float:left. Of course, this might present another problem - maybe you don't want the image to float left. In this case, you can use an unordered list like this :

CSS
ul, li {
list-style-type:none;
padding:0;
margin:0 auto;
}
ul {
width:150px;
}
li {
float:left;
}
HTML
<ul>
<li><img src="wine.jpg" height="50" width="50" alt="wine" /></li>
<li><img src="wine.jpg" height="50" width="50" alt="wine" /></li>
<li><img src="wine.jpg" height="50" width="50" alt="wine" /></li>
<li><img src="wine.jpg" height="50" width="50" alt="wine" /></li>
<li><img src="wine.jpg" height="50" width="50" alt="wine" /></li>
<li><img src="wine.jpg" height="50" width="50" alt="wine" /></li>
<li><img src="wine.jpg" height="50" width="50" alt="wine" /></li>
<li><img src="wine.jpg" height="50" width="50" alt="wine" /></li>
<li><img src="wine.jpg" height="50" width="50" alt="wine" /></li>
</ul>

Ques 46. Why use Style Sheets?

Style sheets allow a much greater degree of layout and display control than has ever been possible thus far in HTML. The amount of format coding necessary to control display characteristics can be greatly reduced through the use of external style sheets which can be used by a group of documents. Also, multiple style sheets can be integrated from different sources to form a cohesive tapestry of styles for a document. Style sheets are also backward compatible - They can be mixed with HTML styling elements and attributes so that older browsers can view content as intended.

Ques 47. What does the "Cascading" in "Cascading Style Sheets" mean?

Style Sheets allow style information to be specified from many locations. Multiple (partial) external style sheets can be referenced to reduce redundancy, and both authors as well as readers can specify style preferences. In addition, three main methods can be employed by an author to add style information to HTML documents, and multiple approaches for style control are available in each of these methods. In the end, style can be specified for a single element using any, or all, of these methods. What style is to be used when there is a direct conflict between style specifications for an element?
Cascading comes to the rescue. A document can have styles specified using all of these methods, but all the information will be reduced to a single, cohesive "virtual" Style Sheet. Conflict resolution is based on each style rule having an assigned weight according to its importance in the scheme of things. A rule with a higher overall importance will carry a higher weight. This will be used in place of a competing style rule with a lower weight/importance. A hierarchy of competing styles is thus formed creating a "cascade" of styles according to their assigned weights. The algorithm used to determine this cascading weight scale is fairly complex.

Ques 48. What is CSS rule 'at-rule'?

There are two types of CSS rules: ruleset and at-rule. At-rule is a rule that applies to the whole style sheet and not to a specific selector only (like in ruleset). They all begin with the @ symbol followed by a keyword made up of letters a-z, A-Z, digits 0-9, dashes and escaped characters, e.g. @import or @font-face.

Ques 49. What is selector?

CSS selector is equivalent of HTML element(s). It is a string identifying to which element(s) the corresponding declaration(s) will apply and as such the link between the HTML document and the style sheet.
For example in P {text-indent: 10pt} the selector is P and is called type selector as it matches all instances of this element type in the document.
in P, UL {text-indent: 10pt} the selector is P and UL (see grouping); in .class {text-indent: 10pt} the selector is .class (see class selector).

Ques 50. What is CLASS selector?

Class selector is a "stand alone" class to which a specific style is declared. Using the CLASS attribute the declared style can then be associated with any HTML element. The class selectors are created by a period followed by the class's name. The name can contain characters a-z, A-Z, digits 0-9, period, hyphen, escaped characters, Unicode characters 161-255, as well as any Unicode character as a numeric code, however, they cannot start with a dash or a digit. (Note: in HTML the value of the CLASS attribute can contain more characters).It is a good practice to name classes according to their function than their appearance.

.footnote {font: 70%} /* class as selector */

<ADDRESS CLASS=footnote/>This element is associated with the CLASS footnote</ADDRESS>
<P CLASS=footnote>And so is this</P>

Ques 51. What is CSS declaration?

CSS declaration is style attached to a specific selector. It consists of two parts; property which is equivalent of HTML attribute, e.g. text-indent: and value which is equivalent of HTML value, e.g. 10pt. NOTE: properties are always ended with a colon.

Ques 52. What is 'important' declaration?

Important declaration is a declaration with increased weight. Declaration with increased weight will override declarations with normal weight. If both reader's and author's style sheet contain statements with important declarations the author's declaration will override the reader's.

BODY {background: white ! important; color: black}

In the example above the background property has increased weight while the color property has normal.

Ques 53. What is cascade?

Cascade is a method of defining the weight (importance) of individual styling rules thus allowing conflicting rules to be sorted out should such rules apply to the same selector.

Declarations with increased weight take precedence over declaration with normal weight:

P {color: white ! important} /* increased weight */
P (color: black} /* normal weight */

Ques 54. Are Style Sheets case sensitive?

No. Style sheets are case insensitive. Whatever is case insensitive in HTML is also case insensitive in CSS. However, parts that are not under control of CSS like font family names and URLs can be case sensitive - IMAGE.gif and image.gif is not the same file.

Ques 55. How do I have a non-tiling (non-repeating) background image?

With CSS, you can use the background-repeat property. The background repeat can be included in the shorthand background property, as in this example:

body {
background: white url(example.gif) no-repeat ;
color: black ;
}

Ques 56. CSS is clearly very useful for separating style from content. But apparently people tend to have problems when using it for layouts. Would you say this is because people have not yet understood how to properly do layout in CSS, or is it CSS that is lacking in this area? What can be done to improve the situation? --- Would the web benefit from HTML and CSS being complemented with some kind of "layout language"?

Layout and style should be tackled by the same language and the two are intertwined. Trying to split the two is like splitting the HTML specification in two, one specification describing inline elements and the other describing block elements. It's not worth the effort. CSS is capable of describing beautiful and scalable layouts. The CSS Zen Garden has been a eye-opening showcase of what is possible today. If MS IE had supported CSS tables, another set of layouts would have been possible. So, there is still lots of potential in the existing CSS specifications which should be the next milestone.

Ques 57. I always wanted to have "included" substyles or "aliases" in my CSS definition, to save redundancy.
(For includes)

.class1 { color:#ff0000; }
.class2 { background-color:#ffffff; }
.class3 { include:class1,class2;font-weight:bold; }

(For aliases)

@alias color1 #ff0000;
@alias color2 #ffffff;
@alias default_image url('/img/image1.jpg');

.class1 { color:color1; }
.class2 { background-image:default_image;background-color:co lor2; }

This way we could change colors or images for a whole webpage
by editing a reduced number of lines.
Had you considered any of these ideas in the past? If so, why were they rejected?

Yes, aliases and constants have been considered. CSS is already an indirection. Instead of putting properties and values directly on elements, it associates properties and values with selectors. What you (and others) are proposing is to add another layer of indirection. By doing so, one could possible write shorter, more manageable style sheets. However, there are also some downsides. It requires a new syntactic construct (@alias) and implementations must be able to remember a list of aliases.

Ques 58. Styles not showing?

There are different ways to apply CSS to a HTML document with a stylesheet, and these different ways can be combined:

* inline (internal) (Deprecated for XHTML)
* embedded (internal)
* linked (external) and
* @import (external)

Note: An external stylesheet is a text file that contains only CSS Styles. HTML comments are not supposed to be in there and can lead to misinterpretation (> is the CSS "Child" selector!).

Ques 59. How do I quote font names in quoted values of the style attribute?

The attribute values can contain both single quotes and double quotes as long as they come in matching pairs. If two pair of quotes are required include single quotes in double ones or vice versa:

<P STYLE="font-family: 'New Times Roman'; font-size: 90%">
<P STYLE='font-family: "New Times Roman"; font-size: 90%'>

It's been reported the latter method doesn't work very well in some browsers, therefore the first one should be used.

Ques 60. Why is my external stylesheet not working ?

There may be several different reasons behind that, but one very common mistake is to have an external stylesheet that contains HTML markup in some form.

An external stylesheet must contain only CSS rules, and if required, correctly formed CSS comments; never include any HTML syntax, such as <style type="text/css">?
CSS comments are defined as anything that is placed between
/* (the comment start mark) and
*/ (the comment end mark). I.e. as follows?

/* This text right here is a correct CSS comment */

CSS comments may span multiple lines in the stylesheet. Nesting of CSS comments is not allowed.

Another reason for external stylesheets (and even embedded and inline stylerules) not to function as expected may be that you have tried to make use of some CSS-features that are not supported in the browser you are using.

External stylesheets shall also be served from the www-server with a MIME-type of 'text/css' in its 'Content Type:' HTTP header.
You may need to negotiate with your server admin to add this MIME type to your server if you are not able to configure the server yourself.

Ques 61. What can be done with style sheets that can not be accomplished with regular HTML?

Many of the recent extensions to HTML have been tentative and somewhat crude attempts to control document layout. Style sheets go several steps beyond, and introduces complex border, margin and spacing control to most HTML elements. It also extends the capabilities introduced by most of the existing HTML browser extensions. Background colors or images can now be assigned to ANY HTML element instead of just the BODY element and borders can now be applied to any element instead of just to tables. For more information on the possible properties in CSS, see the Index DOT Css Property Index.

Ques 62. How do I make my div 100% height?

You need to know what the 100% is of, so the parent div must have a height set. One problem that people often come up against is making the main page fill the screen if there's little content. You can do that like this :
CSS
body, html {
height:100%;
}
body {
margin:0;
padding:0;
}
#wrap {
position:relative;
min-height:100%;
}
* html #wrap {
height:100%;
}

Here, the #wrap div goes around your whole page - it's like a sub-body.

You need to use 'min-height' rather than 'height' for Firefox because otherwise it will set it to 100% of the viewport and no more. Internet Explorer, being well... crap, treats 'height' as it should be treating 'min-height' which it doesn't recognise. (You can target IE by preceding your code with ' * html ').

To make floated divs within this #wrap div 100% of the #wrap div... well that's more difficult. I think the best way is to use the 'faux columns' technique which basically means that you put the background in your body rather than your columns. If the body has columns and your floats don't then it looks like your floated content is in a column that stretches to the bottom of the page. I've used this technique in my layout demos.

The problem is often not that the columns aren't 100% height, but that they're not equal lengths. Columns usually don't start from the top of the page and end at the bottom - there's often a header and a footer or sometimes, more interesting designs don't have a recognisable columnar layout, but do require div boxes to be equal heights. This can be done with the aid of a couple of images and some css or with some javascript.

Ques 63. What is property?

Property is a stylistic parameter (attribute) that can be influenced through CSS, e.g. FONT or WIDTH. There must always be a corresponing value or values set to each property, e.g. font: bold or font: bold san-serif.

Ques 64. How do I write my style sheet so that it gracefully cascades with user's personal sheet ?

You can help with this by setting properties in recommended places. Style rules that apply to the whole document should be set in the BODY element -- and only there. In this way, the user can easily modify document-wide style settings.

Ques 65. What are pseudo-elements?

Pseudo-elements are fictional elements that do not exist in HTML. They address the element\'s sub-part (non-existent in HTML) and not the element itself. In CSS1 there are two pseudo-elements: \'first-line pseudo-element\' and \'first-letter pseudo-element\'. They can be attached to block-level elements (e.g. paragraphs or headings) to allow typographical styling of their sub-parts. Pseudo-element is created by a colon followed by pseudo-element\'s name, e.g:

P:first-line
H1:first-letter

and can be combined with normal classes; e.g:

P.initial:first-line

First-line pseudo-element allows sub-parting the element\'s first line and attaching specific style exclusively to this sub-part; e.g.:

P.initial:first-line {text-transform: uppercase}

<P class=initial>The first line of this paragraph will be displayed in uppercase letters</P>

First-letter pseudo-element allows sub-parting the element\'s first letter and attaching specific style exclusively to this sub-part; e.g.:

P.initial:first-letter { font-size: 200%; color: red}

<P class=initial>The first letter of this paragraph will be displayed in red and twice as large as the remaining letters</P>

Ques 66. As a developer who works with CSS every day, I find one complication that continues to bother me in my daily work. Support for CSS has always been good on the horizontal scope, but vertical positioning has always been quite complicated. Alone the procedure to affix a footer to the bottom of a screen in dependance of the amount of content is unnecessarily difficult. The old table method provided much easier methods for this. What are your thoughts on this and do you see improvement following in future CSS revisions?

Indeed, the CSS formatting model allows more control horizontally than vertically. This is due to (typically) having a known width, but an unknown height. As such, the height is harder to deal with. However, CSS2 fixed positioning allows you to place content relative to the viewport (which is CSS-speak for window) instead of the document. For example, by setting position: fixed; bottom: 0 on an element, it will stick to the bottom. This works in Opera, Safari and Mozilla-based browsers. IE6 doesn't support it, however. It remains to be seen if IE7 will support it.

Ques 67. How can I make a page look the same in e.g. NS and MSIE ?

The simple answer is, you can't, and you shouldn't waste your time trying to make it exactly the same. Web browsers are allowed, per definition, to interpret a page as they like, subject to the general rules set down in the HTML and CSS specifications. As a web author you can not have a prior knowledge of the exact situation and/or medium that will be used to render your page, and it's almost always rather counterproductive to try to control that process. There is no necessity for a well-written page to look the same in different browsers. You may want to strive to ensure that it looks good in more than one browser, even if the actual display (in the case of graphical browsers) comes out a bit different. "Looking good" can be achieved by adopting sensible design and guidelines, such as not fixing the size or face of your fonts, not fixing the width of tables, etc? Don't fight the medium; most web users only use one browser and will never know, or bother to find out, that your page looks different, or even "better", in any other browser.

Ques 68. Is there anything that CAN'T be replaced by Style Sheets?

Quite a bit actually. Style sheets only specify information that controls display and rendering information. Virtual style elements that convey the NATURE of the content can not be replaced by style sheets, and hyperlinking and multimedia object insertion is not a part of style sheet functionality at all (although controlling how those objects appear IS part of style sheets functionality.) The CSS1 specification has gone out of its way to absorb ALL of the HTML functionality used in controlling display and layout characteristics. For more information on the possible properties in CSS, see the Index DOT Css Property Index.
Rule of Thumb: if an HTML element or attribute gives cues as to how its contents should be displayed, then some or all of its functionality has been absorbed by style sheets.

Ques 69. Can I include comments in my Style Sheet?

Yes. Comments can be written anywhere where whitespace is allowed and are treated as white space themselves. Anything written between /* and */ is treated as a comment (white space). NOTE: Comments cannot be nested.

Ques 70. What is the difference between ID and CLASS?

ID identifies and sets style to one and only one occurrence of an element while class can be attached to any number of elements. By singling out one occurrence of an element the unique value can be declared to said element.

CSS
#eva1 {background: red; color: white}
.eva2 {background: red; color: white}

HTML - ID
<P ID=eva1>Paragraph 1 - ONLY THIS occurrence of the element P (or single occurrence of some other element) can be identified as eva1</P>
<P ID=eva1>Paragraph 2 - This occurrence of the element P CANNOT be identified as eva1</P>

HTML - CLASS
<P class=eva2>Paragraph 1 - This occurrence of the element P can be classified as eva2</P>
<P class=eva2>Paragraph 2 - And so can this, as well as occurrences of any other element, </P>

Ques 71. How do you make a tool tip that appears on hover?

The most simple way is to use the 'title' attribute like this...

HTML
like this

CSS
a.tooltip {
position:relative;
cursor:help;
}
a.tooltip span {
display: none;
position:absolute;
top:1.5em;
left:0;
width:15em;
padding:0 2px;
}
a.tooltip:hover {
display:inline;
}
a.tooltip:hover span {
display:block;
border:1px solid gray;
background-color:white;
}

HTML

<a class="tooltip" href="#n">Karl Marx-info goes here-</a>

Without this part... a.tooltip:hover {
display:inline;
}

..it won't work in IE.

The "#n" in the link is to prevent the page from jumping to the top if the link is clicked. The "href" part is necessary as it won't work in IE without it.

Ques 72. Which characters can CSS-names contain?

The CSS-names; names of selectors, classes and IDs can contain characters a-z, A-Z, digits 0-9, period, hyphen, escaped characters, Unicode characters 161-255, as well as any Unicode character as a numeric code. The names cannot start with a dash or a digit. (Note: in HTML the value of the CLASS attribute can contain more characters).

Ques 73. What browsers support style sheets? To what extent?

Microsoft's Internet Explorer version 3.0 Beta 2 and above supports CSS, as does Netscape Communicator 4.0 Beta 2 and above and Opera 3.5 and above. Take note that the early implementations in these browsers did not support ALL of the properties and syntax described in the full CSS1 specification and beyond. Later versions have been getting much closer to full CSS1 compliance, but then comes the next hurdle - CSS2...it was such a big leap over CSS1 that it has taken the browsers years to come close to supporting a majority of CSS2's features. Mozilla and Opera's current versions both offer excellent CSS standards compliance. The Macintosh version of Internet Explorer is said to be very impressive in its CSS capabilities as well, but PC IE lags behind these implementations. Quite a few other implementations of CSS now exist in browsers that are not as widely-used (such as Amaya, Arena and Emacs-W3), but coverage of features in these documents currently only covers Internet Explorer, NCSA Mosaic, Netscape and Opera browsers.

Ques 74. How to make text-links without underline?

a:link, a:visited {text-decoration: none}

or



...will show the links without underlining. However, suppressing the underlining of links isn't a very smart idea as most people are used to having them underlined. Also, such links are not spotted unless someone coincidentally runs a mouse over them. If, for whatever reason, links without underline are required background and foreground colors can be instead declared to them so that they can be distinguished from other text, e.g.;

a:link, a:visited {text-decoration: none; background: red; color: blue}

or



Both background and foreground colors should be specified as the property that is not specified can be overridden by user's own settings.