The first Cascading Style Sheets specification was introduced as early as in December 1996. So CSS is no more an up-and-coming technology. More and more number of websites has been accepting this style sheet language and majority of browsers have come in terms with supporting various features offered by it. The reasons for using CSS are many. But there are certain loopholes too that may irritate you.

CSS is all about separating the presentation aspect from the content of the web page. Some may argue that HTML can be used to address both style and content aspects of a web page. If you have some artistic sense, you can build stylish web pages with the help of <font> tag of HTML. So why will people go for CSS? Yes, that’s true that HTML can make your web pages stylish and presentable. But its stylish capabilities can be used to a certain extent only. Beyond that, you are helpless.

On the other hand, using external style sheet, you can change the look and feel of your entire site. You need to edit a solitary file only and the change is reflected all over the place. Let’s take an example into consideration. Suppose you want to alter the font style of your site from Times New Roman to Arial. In case of HTML, you have to modify the <font> tag found on each and every page. It is quite tedious and time-consuming. But with CSS, this task is quite simple and fast. Just change the style sheet and all your web pages have their font style transformed to Arial.

Though there is increased emphasis on decentralization, CSS makes designing easy, efficient and time-saving by centralizing your website style into one style sheet only.

If you keep persisting with CSS for styling your website, then you will find your site increasingly usable for your visitors. You straightway require eliminating all your space consuming body attributes and font tags from your HTML pages and transferring them into an external style sheet. In this way, your HTML files will be lot smaller in size and the style sheet will be loaded only once. All succeeding requests will be handled from the user’s cache. As a result, you will save on bandwidth speed and your site gets loaded faster.

Every technology like JavaScript, VBScript and ActiveX faces the problem of cross-browser compatibility. CSS is no exception either. But unlike other technologies, CSS never loses its functionality even in case of lack of browser support. Users can anyway view your rough content without any styling.

The drawback associated with CSS is its costliness. As many old browsers are still not supporting CSS. So in order to bring cross-browser compatibility, you need to eleiminate the style from the HTML code. But you will not be able to do that. It means you have to bear additional financial burden to write code that suits for a specific set of browsers.

In the web world, more importance is given to designing for the lowest common denominator. CSS is yet to be a member of the lowest common denominator while designing sites. But with its wide array of features and functionality, you will do the right thing by adopting CSS for designing your site.

Tags: Reasons to Use CSS