Like many other web designers, I began laying out web pages using graphical tools and discovered the wonders of tables for layout without anyone telling me to use them. Since browser support for CSS Is better than it used to be, and tables cause problems, CSS offers you a benefit you may not have thought about before, the benefit of better SEO.

I want to say right away that quality content should be your highest priority, not SEO tricks. The advice given here will help you get better search engine results because the key to real SEO begins with good page structure and organizing your content . By understanding how search engines "see" your pages, you can build better page structure.

Search engines use what is called "top down" logic in looking at web pages. They look at your code, not the visual display that users see. Human eyes are drawn to the page content right away, even when there are other things on the page. Search engine robots do not see things the same way, but, they are logical and predictable once you understand them.

You have most likely seen search engine results that do not make sense because some obscure content gets displayed instead of the actual content of the page. I will illustrate top down logic so you can understand how to make CSS work for you.

In the mind of a search engine, the gist of your web page is determined first by what content is at the top of the page. If you start with certain words, they appear often throughout the page, and then again at the bottom so it is essentially your closing point, that, in the automated brains of a search engine is what your page is about.

Your well trained eyeballs will probably look for a title, then read the content; so to you, this is the top down logic of the page. Read your HTML code from the top down. You may be surprised how far you have to scroll before you get to the real content, and, how much other "content" a search engine will see first. If you use tables for layout, the top down logic of your code looks like it has the legs cut off and the place settings are on the floor.

Using CSS, you can organize your code so the search engines see your real content first regardless of where it appears on the page.

It has been almost ten years since CSS was first introduced to the World Wide Web and till today, Web developers and designers have not ceased to sing its praises. CSS, which stands for Cascading Style Sheets, is a stylesheet language which has been sort of a revelation for both, Web developers and designers alike. The reason for this is apparent - CSS has made Web design so much simpler by separating document structure from style. A simple process nonetheless, but the benefits reaped are profound, as you'll soon see.
As a stylesheet language, CSS requires a document written in markup language to perform its tasks. The best known markup language today is HTML, short for HyperText Markup Language. Almost everybody who has ever used the Internet has heard of HTML, even if they aren't professional Web designers. Every webpage is powered by this language and variants of it.

But, if you had been an early adopter of the Web back in the early 90s, you can attest to the fact that HTML was really bare-boned. Reason being, it was originally conceived to describe only parts of a document and had very little concern for appearance and presentation. Then came Mosaic and HTML was forced to evolve into something more than just a structural markup language due to the increasing demands for better web presentations.

Web developers and designers were clamoring for HTML to contribute more functionality like boldfacing and italicizing texts, something HTML wasn't equipped to do. But that didn't stop HTML from introducing new elements like and into its language in an attempt to satisfy the masses. The results as expected, were frustrating.

Websites were being built with extraneous HTML elements at the expense of useful content, which presented a few considerable issues, mainly, unstructured Web pages. Unstructured Web pages made and still make content indexing in search engines very grueling and this was certainly something that Web businesses seeking coveted high search engine rankings were concerned about.
What may appear to be an innocuous tag used in place of a H1 tag for page titles, can have disastrous consequences as far as search engine optimization is concerned. This can mean the difference between attaining the number one spot on Google's front page, or not being indexed at all, something that in today's new economics of commerce, can either make or break a business.

But just when website owners were resigned to the fact of having to cope with bloated HTML code on their sites, CSS presents itself with aplomb. Though it made its grand entrance onto the World Wide Web in 1996, CSS is only now starting to be recognized by the masses as a necessary element of any Web design process. Here's why.

CSS removes the presentational markup burden that HTML had to carry and allows HTML to perform what it does best - structural markup. So, what CSS does is create a much richer document appearance by separating presentation and structure. This is a sample of what CSS is capable of:

• Allows you to define the color on text
• Allows you to define the color of any element
• Gives you control over spacing of elements
• Allows you to create borders around elements
• Gives you control over the presentational style of texts. You can very easily capitalize, italicize, bold, underline, or space texts as you see fit.

Perhaps the most telling contribution of CSS is the amount of time it saves a Web designer. Where in HTML, a Web designer had to explicitly describe the presentational attributes, often repeatedly throughout the document, CSS only requires a separate stylesheet. This stylesheet acts as the centralized command center for the entire document's styles. This also makes it extremely easy for a website owner to make changes to his or her site without having to trouble the designer for a simple tweak in heading color.

This is also a huge advantage for website owners who manage large content-based sites of over a thousand pages. Because this single stylesheet can be applied to multiple pages simply by linking it, a website owner can achieve a very consistent look throughout the website and make changes to thousands of pages by editing only a single line on the stylesheet. Without CSS, this process would have necessitated a visit to every single one of those thousand or more pages to make that simple edit. Now you see why Web designers are so fond of CSS.

This element of a single stylesheet has also allowed websites to become much smaller in size, having been stripped of all that bloated code that HTML was once guilty of serving. Lighter weight websites mean faster download and loading speeds for Web users, which can only mean that it'll only be a matter of time before they too join in with Web designers in the song of praise for CSS.

The rapid development of internet has result in constant advancement in web designing and coding. HTML has emphasized more the content of a web page rather than its aesthetics. However, times have changes and immaculate web design is a key to a website's reach and popularity. CSS has now become a key element which addresses the presentation of websites.

The idea of CSS stems from the need of eliminating the frequent use of similar tags in HTML while on the same page. The initial idea was to have one file which will define all the values for the repetitive similar tags. All the other ensuing pages could then check this single file and get formatted accordingly. This would result in lesser work load and HTML coders can leave out a majority of formatting tags in HTML. They can focus on using structural elements link paragraphs, links etc.

What It Stands for?

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. These style sheets works as an accomplice to HTML coding by addressing the issues of color, font, layout and even the entire look and feel of the website. To change a look of a particular website, all that is needed is to modify the single CSS file and every concerned HTML page will automatically display in a different manner. This makes website maintenance quick and easy.

The List of Benefits

CSS has made the entire process of coding and recoding faster and easier. It takes the hassle of defining and redefining the same things on every HTML page. The benefits of CSS translate into these:

•  With the use of CSS, web pages take lesser time to download. The time gets reduced by as much as 50% in some cases.
• HTML coders now have to type less code and the web pages are concise and look better.
• CSS helps in maintaining a consistent look of the entre website as the pages read from a single style sheet.
• The amount of errors while coding gets reduced dramatically as coders do not have to type the same code many times over.
• Site maintenance and updating the website's design is much easier.

Ushering the Future

CSS can prove to be difficult for beginners. If one urgently needs to convert PSD to CSS or other services like table-less XHTML, XHTML slicing among others, it is better to seek professional help. However, the effort of leaning it is more than worth it as it is a well designed and neat language. It is a key element in the development of future design and has been a welcome change from the days when coders would have to contend with frequent usage of presentational HTML tags.

CSS provides for greater accessibility and visibility of a website's content. It facilitates the working of the website in many of the popular browsers and even provides for website access through devices like PDAs etc. It also comes with many powerful formatting options and presents vast possibilities which were missing in the case of HTML.

 

If you're new to creating, designing, and building websites, you're trying to understand what CSS is (i.e. Cascading Style Sheets) and why it's so important.

To begin, you'll need to think of the html of your website more as the framework, like the layout of a building. The html is the rooms, the hallway, the kitchen, the living room, etc. Every house has mostly the same types of rooms. Then you can add the CSS, which is like the color of the paint, the wallpaper, the furniture, and the other more visual parts of your webpages. When you create websites, it's very important to have these two things, your html information and your CSS information, separated into two different files.
At first it doesn't make sense to have a completely separate file for the html and the CSS. Because you'll always have to go back and forth between the CSS file and the html file. You'll have to upload the files to your website into two different places (if you're trying to stay organized). Why not just put the CSS rules into the html file, right?

I thought the same way until one day it hit me. I finally understood why it's good to have the html and CSS separated out. If you wanted to change how one aspect of your website looked but the CSS was inside the html file, instead of in a separate CSS file, then you'd have to go and change every single html file. That would be a mess.

You'd have to check every single page to make sure that the CSS looked right. Re-upload every page. Make sure you did the changes the same on every single page. Most websites aren't just five pages, either; there are hundreds or even thousands of pages for one website. Wow, that sounds like fun, right? No.
So the power of an external CSS file doesn't become evident until you want to change something on your website. For changing that one thing on your entire site, all you'd have to do is make the change to the CSS file, upload it, and you're done. You should check at least one page to make sure you changed it correctly, but that's not bad. After that, it would look the same on every other page because all the other pages look back at that one CSS file.

Learn how to take a .psd file and convert it into a fully functional CSS based HTML web page. This article involves some vital issues when converting PSD to HTML.

You have the client's PSD mockup designed, now you are to convert PSD to HTML. It's that simple for a professional web designer or a developer. Firstly we begin by analyzing the layout, and after we are over with the slicing part all that is required is to put the cuttings in place. The coding part in PSD to HTML will involve how to bring all the portions all together, in such a way that they are viewable across all the browsers and under all resolutions.

The layout for all the websites are basically the same. Every website incorporates header and the footer part. Although these days, some like to have a separate space for the logo part and separate for the header part, some designs have both the portions merged together to form a header that may have everything in place. The top navigational links can be avoided as per the current demands of the client, or as per the client's taste and requirements. Then is the main part of the body. Here you can place images or text listing the company's products and services. The Column 1 and Column 2 are the side bars, and can have the links placed. All those developers who follow hand code pattern have a full control for designing the layout. But these days, there are customized themes available that doesn't requires much hard word, only the smart work to convert PSD to HTML. Finally, there is the footer part. This will have a copyrights statements, trademarks violation statements, and links for ease of use by the visitors.

While converting PSD to HTML, certain things are to keep in mind. The developers prefer defining the attributes in a separate CSS file with.css extension. This is much like a control panel, where you have a full access to modify a website. It is important to understand whether the website layout is a fixed one, or a fluid width layout where each column has a tendency to stretch. Other things to consider are to know whether the client aims to incorporate Flash introduction or Flash animation, videos, etc to make its website look attractive. If so is the case, then the PSD to HTML coders recommend not including tables in the website. The website should be totally div based as it allows loading the site faster and more efficiently.

There are infinite methodologies through we can define the efficiency of websites. There are multitude websites on the World Wide Web and each of these websites is made of a unique programming language. HTML is also a programming language which has been in use for a long time in the designing of a website. The webpages of a website which are being encoded with HTML are more functional and it also helps in the overall designing of a website. On the other hand, CSS is generally known as Cascading Style Sheets. It is widely used to explain the presentation of a document written in a markup language.

The basic difference between HTML and CSS is that HTML is the mainframe scripting language and CSS is just a fragment of HTML which helps the web developers to do crucial activities like editing, formatting, style, colours and lots more. CSS and HTML web designing is the backbone of today's websites. The programming language plays an important role in how swiftly it will float on various search engines.
If a web developer uses a dumpy and traditional programming language then it will have to endure many obstacles. It often leads to slow loading of webpages and it is the reason why visitors move away from the website. With CSS and HTML web designing an entrepreneur's website gets loaded on a browser and thus, wins the patience of visitors.

Most of the online retailers expect that their websites to rank higher on various search engines and in this scenario CSS places the content at the top in the page code so that it becomes search engine friendly. CSS and HTML are like the two faces of a coin which work together for designing a website which would be more search engine friendly. Hence the usage of CSS and HTML web designing plays a crucial role in the world of Internet.

CSS file designing requires great skill and expertise and the developers of the site should understand all the positive and negative aspects for venturing out. Planning and organizing these things is the best way to handle the issue as you can only understand the things that you need to do to develop the site and the things that need to be avoided to maintain the site and keep it moving. Keeping in mind the different benefits and advantages that can be used to develop a flawless system are:

The content of the page should be separated from the design as you are able to create a separate style sheet that helps in linking all your web documents easily. This way you also have control over the design and the way your website looks. And it sure becomes very easy if you want to alter a certain page you only need to your style sheet. This is due to your site being flexible and if you have a layout plan in your site then your site can't be flexible and it will be very difficult for you to make any changes. The CSS file has it all a sit contains all the necessary things like the font size, color, layout and positioning and nearly all the information for the entire website.

When you sue CSS files to your site uses less bandwidth and loads faster as the CSS file makes it lighter. And the real reason is that you don't need table layouts for positioning the elements. Because the text starts loading very fast everything becomes visible very fast. This way the site visitors will be able to get access to things very fast as they only need to download once and they can have the advantage of looking at all the pages. So basically if you use a CSS file then your website will load 4 to 5 times faster and make surfing easy and fast around your site.

Using CSS files will increase the results of your site in the search engines and you can easily position any element wherever you want in a second. The main reason behind this idea is t bring the search engine spiders pick up the main content very fast.

Another plus point is that this way your HTML code is much cleaner so the search engine spider will be able to locate it easily from the useless content. So you should be careful in putting your logo and menu at the end of the HTML document when you use the CSS file system as this is the way to get it fats processed.

Your site will be the best if it works easily for all browsers and using CSS files will give you this advantage as CSS is compatible with all browsers.

Coding your website according to the standard browsers helps a lot in making it accessible to the many browsers that are being used on the internet.

CSS also helps in using the same content on different media as you are able to define new style sheets due to it and you also have a great flexibility because of it.

Using cascading styles sheets has made web design enjoyable again. Being able to easy adjust and change site on a whim is very enjoyable. Using CSS Font can alter a web site appearance quickly.

Designing without tables by using CSS layouts is fast becoming the new standard on the Web because of the benefits mentioned in my previous article. Web browsers used these days are now able to render web pages proficiently. In this article I will endeavor to create a basic 2 column CSS layout which you can use for future design projects.

1. Divide your page into sections - the div id tags allows you to create distinct divisions on your web page.
They are identified with a unique id. You can then add a style (css selector) that specifically applies to the div of that id. Remember to include the DOCTYPE (to render your page accurately in the browsers) and meta tags (enables search engines to spider your pages).wrapper: is the div that wraps around all the other divs like a container for the page elements. header: defines the top banner of the page main: defines the main content of the page nav: defines the navigation of the page footer: defines the footer and sub-navigation of the page

2. Create the CSS code - the CSS code styles the page as a centered 2 column CSS layout with a navigation bar and a footer. The div#wrapper style creates the centered box which acts as a container for the rest of the page content. The width: 80% rule sets the width of the div. The background-color:#FFFFFF rule creates a white background for the div. The margin-top: 50px and margin-bottom: 50px rules create a space of 50 pixels for the top and bottom margins for the div itself.

The proper way to center a block-level element with CSS is to set margin-left: auto and margin-right: auto. This instructs the browser to automatically calculate equal margins for both sides, thus centering the div. The border: thin solid #000000 rule adds a border around the outer div. The rest of the CSS code styles the divs for the header, footer, nav, and main content.The div#header and div#footer styles set margins and padding for those divs. In addition, div#header includes the text-align: center rule to center the header text, and div#footer includes the border-top: thin solid #000000 rule to create a border along the top edge of the div to replace the horizontal rule above the footer in the table-based layout.

The div#nav and div#main styles create the two columns in the middle of the centered box. In the div#nav style, the float: left rule pushes the div to the left side of its parent element (the wrapper div), and the width: 25% rule sets the div's width to 25 percent of the parent element. With the nav div floated to the left and limited to a set width, it leaves room for the main div to move up to the right of the nav div, thus creating the two-column effect. The div#main style includes the margin-left: 30% rule to keep the main text aligned in a neat column instead of spreading out below the nav column. The main div's left margin is set to a value slightly larger than the width of the nav div.

If links are placed elsewhere on the page they will inherit the same properties as above..a blue link that hovers to red. What if you wish to create another set of links that are a different color and on passing your mouse over them they are underlined.

4. Create the bottom navigation - to include this in the section of the page, I use div#footer and code each link accordingly. To make the list go horizontally I use: display: inline; Now that I have finished creating my style sheet I want to shorten the code on page by linking it to my external style sheet. Here's how:

5. Create an external style sheet - copy and paste all the css code (without these tags: ) into notepad and label it something like "style sheet". Place this style sheet between the head tags of your web page. This will reduce the code on your page so it will load fast tlus the search engines can more easily spider your web page.

6. Add content to your page - after you have got your page looking correctly, you can add more content to it. Adjustments can easily be made to any style on the page (or your whole site) by simply editing one style sheet.

7. Upload your files - be sure to upload your web pages and style sheet to the root directory of your server.

8. Validate your code - be sure to validate your xhtml
code: http://validator.w3.org/ and css code:
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/ and make corrections where necessary.

9. Check browser compatibility and screen resolution - check that your page renders well in the popular browsers (IE6, NN7, Firefox) If you are beginning with CSS layouts, implement then slowly by making small changes to your pages i.e. creating a style sheet for your main headers and fonts only. As you
become more familiar with CSS you may eventually build all your future sites with CSS layouts.

CSS, short for Cascading Style Sheets, is a method of web design that allows the web designer to control the display of the site from a single file included into each page. Cascading Style Sheets separate the style of a page such as layout, colour and fonts from the content of the page such as text and images.

A style sheet is a file, much like an HTML file. Style sheets can be opened and edited or created in any text editor (we use Scintilla Text Editor because it has syntax highlighting for many languages).

Using CSS you can implement changes across your entire site quickly from the one CSS file. You can update colours and fonts, positioning, etc easily from this one CSS file. This change will cascade across every page on the site. The CSS file can be referenced by each html file on the site.

Using CSS you can alter the appearance of any HTML element on your page. This is very useful to change their default look. For instance, the h1 tag displays huge, black, "ugly" text. However, due to the importance of the h1 tag for SEO purposes, you really don't want to abandon them completely. Using CSS you can alter completely the appearance of the h1 (or any other) tag.

Table-less design is used to control page layout without using HTML tables. Rather, the "tables", ie, positioning and text are controlled using CSS. This has many advantage, some are listed below.

Advantages of CSS

CSS has far more style attributes than HTML. Your sites content to code ratio is maximised. By removing the style info and placing it in a separate file, the content to code ration is maximised which has great advantages from a SEO point of view.

Your pages may load faster. Many web browsers (depending on user settings) cache content (store local copies on your hard drive). This means that once the style sheet is cached, your web browser may use the local copy for subsequent page views. This saves time and bandwidth.

Change display based on the media:

There is flexibility in presenting the content. You can use a style sheet for different media. So, If the user is browsing on a mobile device with a smaller screen you could display content differently. Similarly, if a user wants to print a page, you could use CSS to format the page for a printer. This might include removing navigation bars, etc

Disadvantages of CSS

Not all browsers render Style Sheets equally. Some Style Sheet element may be supported while others not.
There is relief thought; latest versions of browsers are becoming more standards-compliant