What is CSS?
CSS is a simple file which controls the visual appearance of a
Web page without compromising its structure. Using CSS we can
control our font size, font color, link color and many other
attributes on our web page. This will make our HTML code much
more readable and the page size will be reduced.
Why to use it and how to use it properly
If you don?t use CSS on your web pages and you have many tables
and content on them, chances are that your HTML file size will
be quite big. Fact is that we live in a busy world, and people
are not will to wait more than 5 seconds web page to load.
From the other side some web developers implement the CSS on
wrong way. They write their CSS in HTML code of the page, like
this:
<html> <head> <title>My Page</title>
<style> A { font-family: Verdana; font-size:8pt;
color:black; text-decoration:none } </style> ?..
What is wrong with this technique? Well, imagine that you have
site with more than 50 pages. One day, you decide that you want
to change font color and colors of the links on your site. You
will have to edit ALL the pages on your site, and do to that you
will need time, because you place your CSS in your web page.
Better way is to save your visual attributes in separate,
external CSS file, and to link that file with your page like
this:
<html> <head> title>My Page</title>
<link href="myStyle.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
?.
Using this technique, you can change the look of your site
within minutes, regardless of the number of pages, because your
visual attributes are saved in ONE external CSS file. Edit that
file, and you are done.
Benefits
Which are the benefits of using CSS? List is quite long and I
will list here only the most important.
- Your web page will load faster - Web page will become more
search engine friendly - You can change you site appearance
within minutes - You can write separate CSS file for handheld
devices which will be called up instead of the regular CSS file
- You can forget about creating printer friendly version of your
site using separate CSS file when user chooses to print the web
page. Avoiding standard HTML commands like: <font
color="#0000ff"><font size=2>Product</font>
will help us to reduce file size, but that is not the only
benefit. Using CSS word product in this example will be moved
more close on the top of the document. Search engine will pick
up more content and less code.
Imagine that you have 3 columns table on your page. When you see
the code, you will notice that first come code for your table,
and after that it come your content. Positioning your 3 columns
using CSS instead of standard inline elements:
<table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0"
cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td width="381" height="150"
valign="top" bgcolor="FFEDD4"> My Product </td> <td
height="150" valign="top" bgcolor="FFEDD4"> ?..
When CSS is used, your code might look like this:
<div id="leftcontent"> My Product </div>
Again your code is much more clear, and your content is moved on
the top of your document, making your HTML page search engine
friendly, and reducing your file size.
Content is one of the most important factors in Search Engine
Optimization, and you will benefit with removing the unnecessary
code in your HTML and create search engine friendly web page.
Validate it Browser war is far behind us. Reality is that most
of the people today use Internet Explorer, but you should try to
be on safe side and ensure that your CSS code is valid. Not all
browsers interpret the CSS on same way. You can validate your
CSS here: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
About the author:
Zoran Makrevski Sea
rch Engine Positioning Firm SEO.Goto.gr
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