Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) has been significant in styling Web text. However, CSS is now crucial in “positioning and styling content at all levels related to local, global, or in-line” (Eccher, 2011). Effective application of the CSS design can ensure that a single CSS document can control all styles of the entire Web site.
CSS designs styling and structures provide simple ways of adding, deleting, and editing contents (Gasston, 2011). These designs also enable the designer to make changes in a single page which then cascade to the entire site. The designs also have relatively low weight and download size (Meyer, 2011). However, CSS designs experience challenges with many browsers and their different versions (Pouncey and York, 2011).
This creates many bugs, which translate to workarounds and hacks for the designer (Collison, 2006). These chapters’ summaries provide highlights of how Web designers can use CSS designs in order to develop highly professional Web sites.
Low-Content CSS Design
This chapter presents a two-column layout that offers the designer an opportunity to put a floating
The mouseover menu needs JavaScript for an image switching task. CSS design gives the designer a chance to switch the background image with another image during the design process.The designing process begins with the creation of the initial CSS container and XHTML framework. The designer creates many CSS style sheets commented into different sections. These contain different and general styles in comment tags such as the “formatting of theandtags, hyperlinks, and fonts” (Eccher, 2011). There are also rules that defineandtags.
These rules and designs give the designer flexibility in designing more than a single site with a similar default code. Troubleshooting also involves easy steps that save time and consume little download size. The designer also nests tags for quick recognition when there are additional codes added later.
Addition of the header content may involve mortising more than two images together. The CSS container enables designers to move all elements at once to a suitable position, and the tags can stretch to full width in their positions. The designer applies the shorthand background rule when setting background images, hyperlinks, and menu.
The designer can also add second-level pages in order to maintain consistency and reduce downloads (cache certain images). CSS sites reduce the number of nested tables. This is a simple design that relies on a header and two columns beneath it to mortise images and put the content where necessary.
Medium-Content CSS Design
This approach differs from the previous one. It has three columns in the homepage with mortised images in the right part of the page. The designer saves these images as one lighter background image to form a part of the second-level pages.
The designer specifically assigns a second style sheet to these pages and eliminates any problems of interpretation by appending the end. The designer achieves layout flexibility based on the number of contents used in two or three column structures in the second-level pages.
This design has two basic overall columns. These include left and right sides with the menu and additional nested tags for positioning and styling the content. This design is complex than low-content design as it relies on a three-column instead of a two-column design.
The design also uses mortised images on the top half of the homepage to enable users view and click images. The design also relies on the browser. It depends on the screened version for providing the background image. The technique enables the designer to put content freely over the image. The design also has two second-level templates. These templates contain both two and three columns.
In the construction of a second-level page containing three columns, the designer creates a design that has the capability of supplementing pages with few contents in the right column. This is the first second-level template created with the menu items. The three-column design has a lot of information.
High-Content CSS Design
This is the hybrid design of both low-content and medium-content CSS designs. It also has several characteristics that make it unique. High-content design has many contents and requires many rules during creation. The homepage output products for high-content design use the technique of wrapping. This technique can serve different sites and conditions as output contents in the same manner.
The menu also assumes horizontal position, and it also has limited space. Thus, users must depend on the search-form in the left column to get most of the contents. The design also provides flexibility in coping and modifying the site elements to function as a different design.
High-content design can work either as a liquid or fixed design. The header also occupies all areas of the design. This implies that the designer can edit, add, or delete items without modification of other areas of the site (Siegel, 1997).
This design also has many
tags than both low-content and medium-content designs. From a structural perspective, all three CSS designs need the same number of
tags when constructing their infrastructures. However, the difference is in their placements. The high-content design has a horizontal header container with a three-column format below the header.
References
Collison, S. (2006). Beginning CSS Web Development: From Novice to Professional. New York: Apress.
Eccher, C. (2011). Professional Web Design: Techniques and Templates, (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Gasston, P. (2011). The Book of CSS3: A Developer’s Guide to the Future of Web Design. San Francisco, CA: No Starch Press.
Meyer, E. (2011). CSS Pocket Reference. San Francisco, CA: O’Reilly Media.
Pouncey, I. and York, R. (2011). Beginning CSS: Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design. London: Wrox.
Siegel, D. (1997). Creating Killer Web Sites. New York, NY : Hayden Books.