What the heck is CSS? What every web site owner should know—part two

What the heck is CSS?

Cascading Style Sheets, better known as CSS allows web designers to add styles and other formatting to web pages by creating classes or modifying existing HTML tags.
OK, well then, what the heck does that mean?

Well, to really understand CSS it is important to understand at least the very most basic elements of HTML. HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. It is the basic language of the Internet. What HTML does in a nutshell is add links and pictures to, modify, and format simple text documents hence its name. For the purposes of this article I am going to assume that you already know a little bit about HTML. If not click here for a crash course in HTML.

But I have digressed…

CSS can be used in many different ways. It can be written and saved in a separate file that can be accessed by several pages, added to the head section of a web page, or written "in-line". How and where the CSS is written and attached to the web page determines how you can use it within the web site.

By attaching a stand-alone CSS file two one or more web pages, you can make changes directly to the CSS file and it will affect all the files that are attached to it. In other words; let's say that you have a CSS file that is attached to every page in your web site. If you have a CSS style that formats whenever text is applied to as bold, 14 point, red, with the verdana font in your CSS file and you would like to change it from red to black, all you need to do is change the style within the CSS file. The change that you made will change all of the text from every page in your web site that has that particular style applied to it, from red to black.

By adding the CSS styles to the head of an HTML file; any changes you make to the CSS will affect only that document. For clarity's sake; if you have a style named emphasisText that does the same thing as the above paragraph and you change the font color from red to black it will only affect all the text that has had that style applied to it within that particular document.

When you add a CSS style in-line it will only affect the text that is directly applied to. Therefore, CSS can be used both broadly and very precisely depending upon your needs.

As I said before CSS can be applied as a style, class, or modifier. When it is used in-line it is typically refer to as a style, otherwise it is either a class or modifier.

The easiest way to use it is as a simple HTML tag modifier.
When you define a CSS style that modifies an HTML tag; every time that HTML tag is used the CSS style is applied. For example; if you modified the bold tag to not only bold the enclosed text, but to also italicize it and make it red, then, every time the bold tag is used the text will appear bold, italic and red.

Are you still with me? OK, hang in there. Take a deep breath if you need to…

If you want to create a style that is not attached to any particular HTML tag than you would create a class. A class is a set of styles that can be applied to text are images accordingly.

Classes can be very simple or very complicated. They can be applied without having to modify an HTML tag across the entire document and/or web site.

Now I must admit that CSS can get pretty complicated. Not only is it more in depth then your standard HTML, styles are applied in a certain order. They can overlay one another. Sometimes, they can be hard to keep track of. A style applied directly to a text or image (or any other element for that matter) takes precedence over a class applied to an entire page, which in turn, takes precedence over a style applied to an attached style sheet.

To make matters worse… Many times styles may have the same name, but be located in different areas. This can have unexpected and undesired results. These and other issues can be difficult to track down. Even so, CSS provides an extraordinarily powerful tool that gives web developers are enormous amount of power over their code. Ultimately, despite any complicated issues they can create, it does help to simplify web design and when used properly saves a lot of time.

The actual mechanics of CSS are a little bit outside of the skill of this particular article, but if you subscribe to this blog or join as a member (it's free and easy) my website (click here) I will soon include; and in depth tutorial, a step by step walkthrough with images and some cool and useful CSS code snippets that you can cut copy and paste and your own site (the code snippets will be available only to members of my website).

As usual, if you have any questions or comments then please feel free to e-mail me or post into the comments section. Even better, if you post them to my community forum I will make an extra effort to take care of you.

A crash course in HTML

Unless you've spent the last 20 years under rock you've probably heard of HTML. However, in less your extremely tech-savvy or a web developer you may not have any idea what it is or what it does.

I'm here to fix all that… HTML is an acronym that stands for hypertext markup language. HTML is not really a programming language. All it does is format text. It accomplishes this by using special tags enclosed in angle brackets. Different tags do different things. I.e. The bold tag formats the enclosed text as bold. Not really rocket science huh?

Most (but not all) HTML tags will have an opening tag and a closing tag. The opening tag is placed at the start of the text that you would like formatted and the closing tag is placed at the end everything in between will be affected by that tag. For instance if you want to format a portion of text in Italics the HTML code would look like this;

The quick brown fox ‹I› jumped over ‹/I› the lazy dog.

In the above example the words " jumped over" would appear in Italics when viewed in a browser.

Easy cheesy see? Piece of cake right?

There is a handful of HTML tags that are used a lot and a few more that you don't see very often. So there really is not very much to learn to understand basic HTML. It does however get complicated when you start to add different elements such as cascading style sheets, scripting language and SQL amongst others. That however is beyond the scope of this humble blog posting… If you are interested in learning more be sure to check out my comprehensive HTML tutorial located here http://realestatetechonline.com/Tutorials/LearnHTML/tabid/96/Default.aspx

It can show you in far greater depth what you need to know and give you a thorough understanding of how HTML, browsers and web pages in general work. Armed with this knowledge, you can accomplish much. By understanding the basics you are sure to become a much more effective website owner.

Feel free to leave any comments or questions that you may have and I will do my best to answer them for you. Until next time; keep surfin'!

What every website owner should know

It is of little known fact that I am writing a book. The book is titled What Every Website Owner Should Know —Tips Tricks And Secrets To Success Online. I have recently sent the book off to my editor. I think that this book is unique because it is written for people like small business owners, office managers, or people that are self employed. Essentially anybody that needs or wants a website, but does not have a technical background nor the time to figure it all out themselves. I will release the book soon and I hope that it helps those of you that buy a copy get a jumpstart on your website.

Meanwhile, here are a few points that you should keep in mind if you are considering having a website developed for you...

Organize your thoughts —take your time and write down an outline of your thoughts. Make sure to include:

• Your Objective —what you hope to accomplish


• A Short List Of Websites—that you admire and why you like them


• Your Contact Information


• A List Of E-mail Addresses that you would like your webmaster to setup for you


• A List Of Pages that you would like to include


• A List Of Important Keywords regarding your site


• Passwords And User Names that may be relevant


• If You Already Have A Domain Name, Then Make Sure To Include:
  
  
  
  • The Registrar's Name
  
  
  • Your Login Information


• If You Already Have A Web Hosting Account Be Sure To Include
  
  
  
  • The Web Hosting Company's Name
  
  
  • The Ftp Information Including:
    
    
    
    • The FTP Server Address
    
    
    • Login Information
  
  
  • The Type Of Hosting Account—for example Unix, linux, or Microsoft
  
  
  • The Type Of Databases Available—for example MS SQL, MySQL, Oracle, etc…


• Whatever important information regarding your business that you can think of. This can be virtually anything about your business that you deem important. Try to be as thorough as possible, as this will help your webmaster build a strong foundation for your website. The more information that you can includ the better.

Additionally, if you have any photographs or images that you would like to use on the website, organize them as well. If they already on your computer so much the better. If they're not, make sure to give them to your webmaster anyway. If you want to physically keep the photographs and do not own a scanner, you can probably have them scanned inexpensively at your local copy and print store.

If possible include a caption or description for each one. This will also help your webmaster by clarifying how you want to use the picture or what it is about.

If you do not have suitable pictures or images, there are several web sites that provide stock photography at reasonable prices. If you take the time for images you like they will go long way in producing a website that you're happy with.

The service that I like to use is called istockphoto.com. There are literally millions of images to choose from. These images have been contributed by thousands of professional photographers from all over the world. The images are priced by size and resolution. Small images cost about a dollar and ultra large high resolution images suitable to print large murals usually cost about 10 to 15 dollars.

All you have to do is signup and purchase some credits, then you can download your desired images. Chances are, in less you all are planning to do some printing you will only need small to medium sized images at normal resolution.

Hopefully, this is enough to get you started on the right foot. If you stayed till end and subscribe to my blog I will continue to post excerpts from my buck and additional tips tricks and secrets that will help you be successful online.

Good luck, I wish you the best in your endeavors, and I hope that your efforts payoff. If you have any questions feel free to e-mail me and I will do my best to get you an answer. Even better, you can post your question to my community forum and we'll see if we can get answered for you there. All you have to do is simply register and then you will be able to post your questions. If you do register and post your question to you my community forum, I promise I will get to it, email is another story.