WebReference.com - Part 2 of chapter 1 of Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content from Presentation, from glasshaus (7/7)

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Cascading Style Sheets

Decreased Production Work

It may be hard to believe, but not only does the use of CSS and sound structural markup improve the experience of your site visitors and provide you with cost savings and a powerful style language, it actually makes your job easier as a web professional. By separating presentational directions from your HTML, especially when using external stylesheets, you make it easier to build and maintain sites. Your clean markup will be easier to develop initially, since the job of marking up the information in your HTML pages can be a discreet task, unfettered with concerns about color and typeface. Maintaining pages with clean HTML becomes a simple task also, saving you from the headache of searching through lines of bloated HTML for that one simple link you want to change.

Redesigning a site also becomes a much simpler task. When using an external stylesheet for a whole site, redesigning involves changing only that one document instead of editing each individual HTML page.

All of these improvements, which you gain with the use of CSS, result in cost savings that make your clients happier, and your pocketbook fatter.

Summary

CSS is an important part of the future of the Web. It is unfortunate that a style language was not available to the Web's early document authors, as it might have helped change the problematic route that HTML took, driven by author desire to control page presentation and fueled by short-sighted browser vendors eager to attract developers to their platform. But CSS is ready for the masses now, and provides a great improvement to the web professional in many areas.

In coming chapters, you'll get a detailed look at the ins and outs of developing pages with Cascading Style Sheets. You'll learn good markup practices, how to control typography, and how to use CSS to layout pages. When you've finished this book, you'll be prepared to develop the Web as it was intended to be developed, not only making your job easier and your clients happier, but also making the Web a better and more useful place.

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Created: June 20, 2002
Revised: June 20, 2002

URL: https://webreference.com/authoring/style/sheets/cssseparate/chap1/2/7.html