For Web designers, cascading style sheets (CSS) is an essential and mandatory coding language for controlling the presentation of a modern web site. Combined with proper HTML markup, CSS allows for precise control over web page appearance. Because a style sheet can be linked to many web pages, changing one element in a style sheet can affect the look of an entire site.

This introductory course includes demonstrations and hands-on exercises covering the application and syntax of CSS; hand-coding CSS properties for font and text formatting; backgrounds; the box model; creating vertical and horizontal navigation menus and two and three column page-layouts. Inheritance and specificity are also discussed. At the end of the class, students will be able to design table-less Web pages by applying cascading style sheets and will understand the techniques, which adhere to current CSS specifications.

At the end of the class, students will be able to design table-less web pages by applying cascading style sheets and will understand the techniques, which adhere to current CSS specifications.

Learning Outcomes

At the conclusion of the course, you should be able to

• Separate a page's content from the visual presentation of the page.
• Create external, embedded, and inline styles.
• Understand and make use of CSS selectors such as classes, IDs, attributes, and pseudo classes.
• Apply CSS properties for font and text formatting, lists, and backgrounds.
• Understand the basics of Inheritance and Specificity.
• Understand the basics of the box model.
• Design horizontal and vertical navigation.
• Create two and three column layouts using CSS.
• Use absolute, relative and fixed positioning properties.
• Write valid CSS code.

Topics Include

• Tools and techniques to write and validate CSS
• Separating a page's content from the visual presentation of the page
• External, internal, and inline styles
• CSS selectors such as element, class, ID, pseudo-class and attribute selectors
• CSS properties for font and text formatting, lists and backgrounds
• Inheritance and Specificity
• The Box Model
• Styling Tables
• CSS for Printing
• Horizontal and vertical navigation bars
• Creating two and three column layouts
• Positioning including relative, absolute and fixed
• Working with the z-index

Working knowledge of:

• “HTML Fundamentals" or equivalent experience.

Additional Information

Free Text editor is required (details will be explained in Module lecture)