Quick Tip

CSS - when using more than one way to apply a style, be sure to understand style precedence. Inline styles will take precedence over embedded. Embedded will take precedence over external. For the most part, web sites are easier to work with and maintain when most if not all the styles are on an external style sheet in one place . . . then precedence is not an issue.

Tips, Tricks & Tutorials

WEB SITES

CSS & HTML
CSS page layouts consist of DIV containers formatted with styles. My tutorial (1.4 MB) will walk you through, step-by-step, writing the markup language and using Dreamweaver CS5 to get you started creating a web site from scratch. The tutorial also uses zip files (32 KB) that you will need to download.

Styles can be applied to a Web site in three ways:

Inline styles are applied directly to the element within the html code. The style and the html are mixed up together which can be cumbersome.
Embedded styles are also in the html document, but all together in the head section at the top of the page. Not as cumbersome, but the goal should be to separate the html code from the CSS code.
An External Style sheet is a separate text file that contains only the style declarations. The CSS is separated from the HTML document. The HTML file is linked to the CSS file to pick up the styles and change the appearance of the html page. The hugh advantage of external style sheets is that you can change the style in only the CSS file and it will change in ALL the linked HTML files - a big time saver.

Note that inline styles take precedence over embedded styles. Embedded styles take precedence over an external style sheet. So if you have different styles applied to the same element, the more specific style will take precedence. Inline is the most specific, embedded is less specific, and external is the least specific. See a styles quick reference guide that Tim Koets and I put together that includes information and example code for styles.