Concept of CSS

CSS is a standardized approach primarily designed to distinguish the visual presentation aspects (like background color, font size, and spacing) from the actual content. Although it can be utilized across various document types, it is predominantly employed to deliver visual formatting for web pages.

By separating content from presentation, CSS enhances flexibility, enabling authors to create a unified style guide applicable to numerous documents. This significantly reduces the time and effort required for updates. Moreover, the application of CSS permits a document to maintain a purely semantic structure, eliminating the necessity for presentational elements.

Statements, Properties, and Values

In CSS, the fundamental unit is the declaration, which represents the smallest indivisible component in your documents. A declaration essentially involves assigning a value to a property.

To put it simply, each declaration answers a specific question: What should the width of this element be? How thick is the border? What color should the background have? What size should the font in this paragraph be? This is how you establish the appearance of your document: by creating declarations for each property you wish to define.

However, CSS follows a particular syntax that every declaration must adhere to. Each declaration consists of the property name followed by a colon (":") and then the corresponding value. When multiple declarations exist within the same block, each must be separated by a semicolon (";"). Therefore, it is customary for authors to place a semicolon at the end of each declaration, even if there are no subsequent statements. The following outline illustrates the components of a CSS declaration.

Here is an example showcasing a series of declarations formatted accordingly. A line break is also included after each declaration for enhanced readability.

This video serves as an introduction to the basics of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), guiding you through foundational concepts and practical applications.

This follow-up video delves deeper into CSS, elaborating on key concepts and offering practical insights into its usage in web design.