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| Cascading Stylesheets Advantages:
5 Reasons To Use CSS |
| Posted: 4-05-2006 |
| Author: Hilco van der Meer |
1. The content
is separated from the design
Because you are able to create a separate Stylesheet and
link it to all your webdocuments, you have great control
over how your website looks. So if you want to change
a certain aspect of your page, you only need to alter
one file: your Stylesheet!
This Of course, generates some great flexibility. This
flexibility is not available when your website is using
tables for layout, inline font tags or inline defined
colors.
A single CSS file can contain positioning, layout, font,
colors and style information for an entire web site.
2. You site uses less bandwidth and loads faster
Because stylesheets are so lightweight, your website will
load much faster. The main reason is because you do not
need table layouts anymore for the positioning of elements.
Since text loads really really fast your website will
be visible in a flash.
This means that visitors will be happier when surfing
your website. They only have to download the Stylesheet
once, and it's automatically reused for every page. So
the only thing that needs to be loaded is the actual content.
On average a website will load five to ten times faster
if it makes use of cascading style sheets.
3. Your website will automatically gain better search
engine results
With CSS, you can position any element, anywhere you want.
So if your menu is at the bottom of your HTML document,
you can bring it up using absolute positioning. The reason
this is useful is to make sure the search engine spiders
pick up the main content first.
Another advantage you automatically gain is that your
HTML code is much cleaner. So the search engine spider
will not have to separate the junk code from the real
content.
So make sure you put your logo text and your menu at the
bottom of your HTML document at put it at the top using
CSS!
4. CSS is compatible with newer browsers
Because more and more browsers are used other than Internet
Explorer on a Windows machine, you need to be sure that
your website is accessible by all major and newer browsers.
By using webstandards, defined by the w3c, you are making
sure your content is viewable in the future.
Because there are so many browsers these days, it is impossible
to test your website in all these browsers on different
configurations. Coding to standards is then the only practical
solution.
5. CSS can be used to display the same content on different
media.
Because you are able to define different stylesheets for
different media you have great flexibility in presenting
your content.
The printer for example, is a medium on itself. If someone
prints out your website, you will be able to modify the
look of it. Add an extra black and white logo, remove
the advertisements and change the colors to black and
white values. It's all done easily by using cascading
stylesheets. And the best thing is, visitors do not even
have to know you created a new Stylesheet especially for
the printer.
Stylesheets can also be created specifically for PDA's
and such. As you will understand, this adds some great
flexibility to the presentation of your web document.
Conclusion
Cascading Style Sheets are created to make things easier.
It gives you great control of your website and makes your
visitors happy when they are surfing your website.
You are prepared for the future and will gain better search
engine results automatically. Start using CSS to its full
potential today! It will suit you well.
Hilco van der Meer is known as the author of the Cascading
Style Sheets Course How To Master CSS. He's a professional
Web Designer for over 5 years now. His course aims at
easy to follow and step-by-step examples. More info can
be found at http://www.howtomastercss.com/
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