CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. It controls the visual presentation of HTML, including layout, spacing, colors, typography, and responsive behavior across devices and screen sizes. In practice, CSS decisions affect accessibility and performance, so test layout and contrast across breakpoints.
What does CSS stand for?
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Overview
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. It defines how HTML elements are displayed on screen, paper, or other media. The term 'cascading' refers to the priority order in which multiple styles are applied — meaning styles can override one another based on specificity and source order.
Keyword | Meaning |
|---|---|
Cascading | Styles follow a hierarchy where later or more specific rules override earlier ones. |
Style | Defines how content appears — including color, font, spacing, and layout. |
Sheets | Refers to the documents (files or blocks) containing these styling rules. |
Example: Applying CSS to a Page
CSS
body {
background-color: #f0f0f0;
font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
}
h1 {
color: darkblue;
text-align: center;
}
In this example, CSS styles define the background color, text font, and heading color and alignment — changing the presentation without altering HTML content.
Why CSS Matters
- Separates content (HTML) from design, improving maintainability.
- Enables consistent styling across multiple pages.
- Supports responsive designs for different devices and screen sizes.
- Allows animations, transitions, and visual effects.
Practical scenario
Designing a marketing landing page, you use CSS to separate content (HTML) from presentation, add responsive layout rules, and keep typography consistent across sections.
Common pitfalls
- Sprinkling inline styles everywhere, which makes maintenance and reuse harder.
- Letting specificity conflicts creep in (later overrides that are hard to trace).
- Forgetting box sizing or base styles, causing inconsistent spacing.
External stylesheets improve caching and reuse, but can cause FOUC if loaded late. Test with throttled network and check computed styles in DevTools.
Still so complicated?
Think of CSS as the fashion designer of your webpage — HTML is the structure, and CSS dresses it up beautifully.
Summary
- CSS = Cascading Style Sheets.
- Controls the presentation and layout of web pages.
- Uses rules made of selectors and declarations.
- Provides flexibility, consistency, and separation between content and design.
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