DevGuru CSS Quick Reference

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a declarative language that is used to enhance the HTML language. CSS is user friendly and was purposely designed to be very readable and writable. The terminology of CSS is lifted from the terminology of desktop publishing. A minimum amount of coding can Create sophisticated web pages that have a common theme in appearance. The early History of style sheets can be described as slightly chaotic. In particular, browser compatibility proved to be a major issue for the first developers who delved into CSS. To help rectify this problem, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published a set of standards in December 1996 referred to as the "Cascading Style Sheets, Level 1" standards. This was followed in December 1998 by the "Cascading Style Sheets, Level 2" standards. Level 2 was a major revision that almost doubled the size of the CSS language by adding 42 new properties. This Quick Reference documents the Level 2 standards, which are commonly referred to as CSS2. Internet Explorer Version 5.5, and to a lesser extent Netscape 6, are fairly compatible with most of the W3C Cascading Style Sheet Level 2 standards. The key word here is most. Neither Internet Explorer nor Netscape recognize all of the W3C standards for Level 1 or Level 2. Further complicating matters is the FACT that some companies have created proprietary properties that only work on their browser. So, browser compatibility issues still remain a problem for all versions of all browsers available on the Internet. Therefore, while coding, a developer would be wise to view his or her Web pages on a variety of browsers.