CSS
1. Short for Cascading Style Sheet, CSS is a concept first created by Håkon Wium Lie in 1994. In December 1996, CSS was made a specification by the W3C and today allows web developers to create and easily change how their web pages look and feel. For example, CSS may define how each page looks by defining the fonts used, colors, padding, etc. within a .css file. The CSS file could then be linked to from multiple pages and if the developer ever wanted to change the look or feel of those pages it would only require changes be made to the CSS file instead of each page. Below, is a basic example of CSS code, in this example the CSS code is defining the fonts, the color of the links, color of the visited links, and the color of the links when the mouse is hovering over the link.
body {
font: normal 100% "trebuchet ms", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
a {
color: #000000;
}
A:visited {
color: #005177;
}
a:hover {
color: #005177;
}
The above CSS code can be inserted into the <HEAD></HEAD> section of a pages HTML code using the below code. However, keep in mind that doing this will only change the look and feel of the page that contains the code.
<style type "text/css">
<!--
above code inserted here
-->
</style>
If you want to use the CSS code on multiple pages we suggest storing the code in a seperate CSS file and then loading it from each page. For example, the CSS code first shown on this page can be copied and pasted into a file named example.css. A CSS file can be created using any text editor or even Notepad if you're using Windows.
After the file has been saved, to load that file it must linked to in the <HEAD></HEAD> section of the HTML code using the below example.
<link rel="stylesheet" Type="text/css" href="URL or path to css file here">
If you named the file example.css and it was in the same directory as the HTML file it is being loaded from you would enter the below line.
<link rel="stylesheet" Type="text/css" href="example.css">
CSS3 is the version of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) that replaces CSS2. It introduces a number of new selectors and properties that allow for more flexibility with page layout and presentation. Some updates, such as the box-shadow property (which allows a drop-shadow to be added to an element), allow visual effects to be applied without needing images to achieve them.
2. Short for Content Scramble System, CSS is a protection scheme used to help protect copyrighted material store don DVD's from being copied.
Also see: Div, DRM, Programming definitions, Sprite, Stylesheet, Web design, XSL