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CSS Tutorial
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Save a lot of work with CSS!
In our CSS tutorial you will learn how to use CSS to control the style and layout
of multiple Web pages all at once.
Examples in Each Chapter
This CSS tutorial contains hundreds of CSS examples.
With our online editor, you can edit the CSS, and click on a button to view the result.
CSS Example
body
background-color:#d0e4fe;
h
color:orange;
text-align:center;
p
font-family:"Times New Roman";
font-size:20px;
CSS Introduction
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What You Should Already Know
Before you continue you should have a basic understanding of the following:
HTML / XHTML
If you want to study these subjects first, find the tutorials on our Home page.
What is CSS?
CSS stands for C ascading S tyle S heets
Styles define how to display HTML elements
Styles were added to HTML 4.0 to solve a problem
External Style Sheets can save a lot of work
External Style Sheets are stored in CSS files
CSS Demo
An HTML document can be displayed with different styles: See how it works
Styles Solved a Big Problem
HTML was never intended to contain tags for formatting a document.
HTML was intended to define the content of a document, like:
This is a heading
This is a paragraph.
When tags like , and color attributes were added to the HTML 3.2 specification, it started a nightmare for web developers. Development of large web sites, where fonts and color information were added to every single page, became a long and expensive process.
To solve this problem, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) created CSS.
In HTML 4.0, all formatting could be removed from the HTML document, and stored in a separate CSS file.
All browsers support CSS today.
CSS Saves a Lot of Work!
p
color:red;
text-align:center;
CSS Comments
Comments are used to explain your code, and may help you when you edit the source code at a later date. Comments are ignored by browsers.
A CSS comment begins with "/", and ends with "/", like this:
/This is a comment/
p
text-align:center;
/This is another comment/
color:black;
font-family:arial;
CSS Id and Class
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The id and class Selectors
In addition to setting a style for a HTML element, CSS allows you to specify your own selectors called "id" and "class".
The id Selector
The id selector is used to specify a style for a single, unique element.
The id selector uses the id attribute of the HTML element, and is defined with a "#".
The style rule below will be applied to the element with id="para1":
Example
#para
text-align:center;
color:red;
Try it yourself »
Do NOT start an ID name with a number! It will not work in Mozilla/Firefox.
The class Selector
The class selector is used to specify a style for a group of elements. Unlike the id selector, the class selector is most often used on several elements.
This allows you to set a particular style for many HTML elements with the same class.
The class selector uses the HTML class attribute, and is defined with a "."
In the example below, all HTML elements with class="center" will be center-aligned:
Example
.center {text-align:center;}
Try it yourself »
You can also specify that only specific HTML elements should be affected by a class.
In the example below, all p elements with class="center" will be center-aligned:
Example
p.center {text-align:center;}
Try it yourself »
Do NOT start a class name with a number! This is only supported in Internet Explorer.
CSS How To...
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When a browser reads a style sheet, it will format the document according to it.
Three Ways to Insert CSS
To use inline styles you use the style attribute in the relevant tag. The style attribute can contain any CSS property. The example shows how to change the color and the left margin of a paragraph:
This is a paragraph.
Multiple Style Sheets
If some properties have been set for the same selector in different style sheets, the values will be inherited from the more specific style sheet.
For example, an external style sheet has these properties for the h3 selector:
h
color:red;
text-align:left;
font-size:8pt;
And an internal style sheet has these properties for the h3 selector:
h
text-align:right;
font-size:20pt;
If the page with the internal style sheet also links to the external style sheet the properties for h3 will be:
color:red;
text-align:right;
font-size:20pt;
The color is inherited from the external style sheet and the text-alignment and the font-size is replaced by the internal style sheet.
Multiple Styles Will Cascade into One
Styles can be specified:
inside an HTML element
inside the head section of an HTML page
in an external CSS file
Tip: Even multiple external style sheets can be referenced inside a single HTML document.
Cascading order
What style will be used when there is more than one style specified for an HTML element?
Generally speaking we can say that all the styles will "cascade" into a new "virtual" style sheet by the following rules, where number four has the highest priority:
- Browser default
- External style sheet
- Internal style sheet (in the head section)
- Inline style (inside an HTML element)
So, an inline style (inside an HTML element) has the highest priority, which means that it will override a style defined inside the
tag, or in an external style sheet, or in a browser (a default value).
Note: If the link to the external style sheet is placed after the internal style sheet in HTML
, the external style sheet will override the internal style sheet!
CSS Background
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CSS background properties are used to define the background effects of an element.
CSS properties used for background effects:
background-color
background-image
background-repeat
background-attachment
background-position
Background Color
The background-color property specifies the background color of an element.
The background color of a page is defined in the body selector:
Example
body {background-color:#b0c4de;}
Try it yourself »
With CSS, a color is most often specified by:
body
background-image:url('gradient2.png');
Try it yourself »
If the image is repeated only horizontally (repeat-x), the background will look better:
Example
body
background-image:url('gradient2.png');
background-repeat:repeat-x;
Try it yourself »
Background Image - Set position and no-repeat
When using a background image, use an image that does not disturb the text.
Showing the image only once is specified by the background-repeat property:
Example
body
background-image:url('img_tree.png');
background-repeat:no-repeat;
Try it yourself »
In the example above, the background image is shown in the same place as the text. We want to change the position of the image, so that it does not disturb the text too much.
The position of the image is specified by the background-position property:
Example
body
background-image:url('img_tree.png');
background-repeat:no-repeat;
background-position:right top;
Try it yourself »
Background - Shorthand property
As you can see from the examples above, there are many properties to consider when dealing with backgrounds.
To shorten the code, it is also possible to specify all the properties in one single property. This is called a shorthand property.
The shorthand property for background is simply "background":
Example
body {background:#ffffff url('img_tree.png') no-repeat right top;}
Try it yourself »
When using the shorthand property the order of the property values is:
background-color
background-image
background-repeat
background-attachment
background-position
It does not matter if one of the property values is missing, as long as the ones that are present are in this order.
This example uses more advanced CSS. Take a look: Advanced example
More Examples
How to set a fixed background image This example demonstrates how to set a fixed background image. The image will not scroll with the rest of the page.
All CSS Background Properties
Property Description
background Sets all the background properties in one declaration
Text Alignment
The text-align property is used to set the horizontal alignment of a text.
Text can be centered, or aligned to the left or right, or justified.
When text-align is set to "justify", each line is stretched so that every line has equal width, and the left and right margins are straight (like in magazines and newspapers).
Example
h1 {text-align:center;}
p.date {text-align:right;}
p.main {text-align:justify;}
Try it yourself »
Text Decoration
The text-decoration property is used to set or remove decorations from text.
The text-decoration property is mostly used to remove underlines from links for design purposes:
Example
a {text-decoration:none;}
Try it yourself »
It can also be used to decorate text:
Example
h1 {text-decoration:overline;}
h2 {text-decoration:line-through;}
h3 {text-decoration:underline;}
h4 {text-decoration:blink;}
Try it yourself »
It is not recommended to underline text that is not a link, as this often confuses users.
Text Transformation
The text-transform property is used to specify uppercase and lowercase letters in a text.
It can be used to turn everything into uppercase or lowercase letters, or capitalize the first letter of each word.
Example
p.uppercase {text-transform:uppercase;}
p.lowercase {text-transform:lowercase;}
p.capitalize {text-transform:capitalize;}
Try it yourself »
Text Indentation
The text-indentation property is used to specify the indentation of the first line of a text.
Example
p {text-indent:50px;}
Try it yourself »
More Examples
Specify the space between characters This example demonstrates how to increase or decrease the space between characters.
Specify the space between lines This example demonstrates how to specify the space between the lines in a paragraph.
Set the text direction of an element This example demonstrates how to change the text direction of an element.
Increase the white space between words This example demonstrates how to increase the white space between words in a paragraph.
Disable text wrapping inside an element This example demonstrates how to disable text wrapping inside an element.
Vertical alignment of an image This example demonstrates how to set the vertical align of an image in a text.
All CSS Text Properties
CSS Font Families
In CSS, there are two types of font family names:
generic family - a group of font families with a similar look (like "Serif" or "Monospace")
font family - a specific font family (like "Times New Roman" or "Arial")
Generic family Font family Description
Serif (^) Times New Roman Georgia
Serif fonts have small lines at the ends on some characters
Sans-serif (^) Arial
Verdana
"Sans" means without - these fonts do not have the lines at the ends of characters
Monospace (^) Courier New Lucida Console
All monospace characters have the same width
Font Family
The font family of a text is set with the font-family property.
The font-family property should hold several font names as a "fallback" system. If the browser does not support the first font, it tries the next font.
Start with the font you want, and end with a generic family, to let the browser pick a similar font in the generic family, if no other fonts are available.
Note : If the name of a font family is more than one word, it must be in quotation marks, like font- family: "Times New Roman".
More than one font family is specified in a comma-separated list:
Example
p{font-family:"Times New Roman", Times, serif;}
Try it yourself »
For more commonly used font combinations, look at our Web Safe Font Combinations.
Font Style
The font-style property is mostly used to specify italic text.
This property has three values:
normal - The text is shown normally
italic - The text is shown in italics
oblique - The text is "leaning" (oblique is very similar to italic, but less supported)
Example
p.normal {font-style:normal;}
p.italic {font-style:italic;}
p.oblique {font-style:oblique;}
Try it yourself »
Font Size
The font-size property sets the size of the text.
Being able to manage the text size is important in web design. However, you should not use font size adjustments to make paragraphs look like headings, or headings look like paragraphs.
Always use the proper HTML tags, like
- for headings and
for paragraphs.
The font-size value can be an absolute, or relative size.
Absolute size:
Sets the text to a specified size
Does not allow a user to change the text size in all browsers (bad for accessibility reasons)
Absolute size is useful when the physical size of the output is known
Relative size:
Sets the size relative to surrounding elements
Allows a user to change the text size in browsers
If you do not specify a font size, the default size for normal text, like paragraphs, is 16px (16px=1em).
Set Font Size With Pixels
Setting the text size with pixels gives you full control over the text size:
Example
body {font-size:100%;}
h1 {font-size:2.5em;}
h2 {font-size:1.875em;}
p {font-size:0.875em;}
Try it yourself »
Our code now works great! It shows the same text size in all browsers, and allows all browsers to zoom or resize the text!
All CSS Font Properties
Property Description
font Sets all the font properties in one declaration
font-family Specifies the font family for text
font-size Specifies the font size of text
font-style Specifies the font style for text
font-variant Specifies whether or not a text should be displayed in a small-caps font
font-weight Specifies the weight of a font
CSS Links
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Links can be styled in different ways.
Styling Links
Links can be styled with any CSS property (e.g. color, font-family, background, etc.).
Special for links are that they can be styled differently depending on what state they are in.
The four links states are:
a:link - a normal, unvisited link
a:visited - a link the user has visited
a:hover - a link when the user mouses over it
a:active - a link the moment it is clicked
Example
a:link {color:#FF0000;} /* unvisited link */
a:visited {color:#00FF00;} /* visited link */
a:hover {color:#FF00FF;} /* mouse over link */
a:active {color:#0000FF;} /* selected link */
Try it yourself »
When setting the style for several link states, there are some order rules:
a:hover MUST come after a:link and a:visited
a:active MUST come after a:hover
Common Link Styles
In the example above the link changes color depending on what state it is in.
Lets go through some of the other common ways to style links:
Text Decoration
The text-decoration property is mostly used to remove underlines from links:
Example
a:link {text-decoration:none;}
a:visited {text-decoration:none;}
a:hover {text-decoration:underline;}
a:active {text-decoration:underline;}
Try it yourself »
Background Color
The background-color property specifies the background color for links:
Example
a:link {background-color:#B2FF99;}
a:visited {background-color:#FFFF85;}
a:hover {background-color:#FF704D;}
a:active {background-color:#FF704D;}
Try it yourself »
