CSS Information
So you want to know what css is? Well here is the answer. It is not very fun reading but it will explain what css web design is.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a stylesheet language used to describe the presentation of a document written in a markup language. Its most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the language can be applied to any kind of XML document, including SVG and XUL.
CSS can be used locally by the readers of web pages to define colors, fonts, layout, and other aspects of document presentation. It is designed primarily to enable the separation of document content (written in HTML or a similar markup language) from document presentation (written in CSS). This separation can improve content accessibility, provide more flexibility and control in the specification of presentation characteristics, and reduce complexity and repetition in the structural content (such as by allowing for tableless web design). CSS can also allow the same markup page to be presented in different styles for different rendering methods, such as on-screen, in print, by voice (when read out by a speech-based browser or screen reader) and on Braille-based, tactile devices. CSS specifies a priority scheme to determine which style rules apply if more than one rule matches against a particular element. In this so-called cascade, priorities or weights are calculated and assigned to rules, so that the results are predictable.
Some of the benefits to CSS
Accessibility - The W3C says…
CSS benefits accessibility primarily by separating document structure from presentation. Style sheets were designed to allow precise control - outside of markup - of character spacing, text alignment, object position on the page, audio and speech output, font characteristics, etc. By separating style from markup, authors can simplify and clean up the HTML in their documents, making the documents more accessible at the same time.
I’ll also add that it’s far easier to make your site accessible using CSS. Think about all the people using cell phones and other wireless devices to connect to the interent now. Don’t you want to make your site accessible to them?
Cleaner/Less code - CSS generally requires less code than tables, a lot less. This make your code both lighter and a lot cleaner. Clean code makes a huge difference in maintaining your site.
Faster - Your pages will load quite a bit faster with CSS, and for a number of reasons. This also cuts down on your bandwidth, if you have a site that gets a lot of traffic this can make a huge difference in your bottom line.
Professional - It’s our belief that if you’re a professional web designer (in other words, you exchange money for your services) then you should be building sites strictly with CSS. If not for the reasons above (which are all more than enough reasons as a professional) then do it to keep up with the current standards and trends in the industry.