Cascading Style Sheets [CSS] offers a powerful new tool to web developers that helps simplify the complex task of maintaining web sites, and provides great new layout and design features for web pages without the need for plugins, long download times and expensive tools.
Why, then, after 18 months (CSS was first supported by Internet Explorer 3 in late 1996) do so few web developers take advantage of this fabulous web standard?
There are a number of important answers to this question.
First, CSS only really works in the latest version of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. Until recently, this represented a small percentage of web browsers in the world. As we all know, the percentage of surfers who use the latest version of a browser is always increasing. So what was almost inaccessible 6 months ago, is widely accessible today. If you have resisted using or learning style sheets because it is a new technology, keep in mind that probably half the web browsers in common use today support style sheets.
Secondly, even though the major browsers have supported style sheets for
some time, this support is less than perfect. Many web developers I talk with
believe that support is hopelessly inadequate, but this isn't really true.
What is true is the process of trial and error which accompanies trying to
make a style sheet work in all major browsers can be time consuming, and extremely
frustrating.
One of the major reasons why we developed Style Master was to help web developers address this confusion. We have also developed the Browser Rap Sheets, to help those new to style sheets avoid many of the frustrating pitfalls of developing for inconsistent browser support.
Thirdly, and very importantly, style sheets can be a little tricky to understand
at first. Cascading style sheets work a little differently from style sheets
you might be familiar from with word processors and page layout tools.
To address this third major hurdle, we have developed this tutorial.
This tutorial introduces the concepts and ideas associated with CSS. We also have a more hands-on introduction to working with style sheets. We recommend you take a look at this tutorial first, then turn to the hands-on tutorial, to get some practical experience.
In this part we took a brief look at the technology of style sheets, and asked why they aren't everywhere on the web.
In the next installment, we'll ask "what exactly is a style sheet?"