What is CSS?¶
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. While HTML provides the structure of a webpage and javascript allows us to add functionality, CSS controls the style. When we connect our CSS to HTML, we reunite content and presentation into a coherent webpage.
This separation is important, though. It allows us as writer-designers to focus on content and presentation separately, even if they will be reunited in the final product. Further, it allows us to apply stylistic changes more efficiently. Just as the styles pane allows us to apply to documents created in Microsoft Word or Google Docs, CSS allows us to designate that we want all headings to be a certain font, size, color, etc. instead of manually modifying the style of each individual heading.
For an example of the enormous control of presentation that CSS provides, check out CSS Zen Garden. The HTML is the same in each example; only the CSS has been modified.