CSS Fundamentals

by Megan McDermott, 1 September 2010 - 6:19pm

This series of articles will explain how CSS works in simple language. It will not describe individual properties in detail, or tell you how to attain a specific layout. However, it will explain why those properties work the way they do. This includes:

• The absolute basics: what CSS is and how it is used
• Selectors: methods used to 'select' HTML elements for styling
• Data types: units used for numbers, lengths, colours, and URL's
• The cascade and inheritance, which determines which CSS elements apply to a particular element
• The document tree (parent-child relationships etc.)
• Element types, which describes how the basic element types are displayed (inline, block, table etc.)
• The box model, which determines how block-level elements are displayed
• The document flow, which explains how layout properties can affect the display of a page 
• Media types, which allow you to include different rule sets for different media (e.g. screen, print)