Right at the outset I mentioned linking style sheets and web pages, but we haven't looked at that in any detail. That is the subject of this final session.
Once you have a style sheet, there are two ways of associating a web page with it. The first, as we have been doing during these lessons, is to link the page to the style sheet.
The other is to embed the style sheet in the head of the web page.
Which is preferable? If you think about one of the most important advantages of style sheets, the ability to update and overhaul the appearance of a site without modifying the web pages themselves, then you'll agree that linking is to be preferred, as otherwise, when you alter your style sheet, you'll have to edit it in every page. This negates a lot of the advantage of separating content and presentation.
When might embedding be a good idea? If your pages are to be downloaded, and read off-line, then users will be unlikely to locate and download any style sheet. So when they come to read the page off-line, no style. Netscape Navigator makes matters worse, as it fails to load a page if the style sheet can't be found.
But overall, linking is much to be preferred.
Let's now look at how you do it.
To link a web page to a style sheet using Style Master
1. choose from the menu
2. locate the page you want to link to the current style sheet in the Open dialog box, then click
Style Master adds the necessary code to your web page, and the web page is now linked to the style sheet.
To embed a style sheet in a web page using Style Master
1. choose from the menu
2. locate the page you want to embed this style sheet in, then click
Style Master embeds the content of this style sheet in the head of the document you chose.
We are almost done now. Next we will take a quick overview of how far we have come, and think about where you can go next, to really master style sheets.