Way 2 Freshers

What is cascading order?

Cascading order is a sorting system consisting of rules by which declarations are sorted out so that there are not conflicts as to which declaration is to influence the presentation. The sorting begins with rule no 1. If a match is found the search is over. If there is no match under rule no 1 the search continues under rule no 2 and so on.

1. Find all declarations that apply to a specific selector/property and Declare the specified style if the selector matches the element if there isn’t any Let the element inherit its parent property if there isn’t any Use initial value

2. Sort by weight (! important) Increased weight take precedence over normal weight

3. Sort by origin Rules with normal weight declared in author’s style sheet will override rules with normal weight declared in user’s personal style sheets Rules with increased weight declared in user’s personal style sheet will override rules with normal weight declared in author’s style sheet Rules with increased weight declared in author’s style sheet will override rules with increased weight declared in user’s personal style sheets Author’s and user’s rules will override UA’s default style sheet.

4. Sort by selector’s specificity More specific selector will override less specific one: ID-selector (most specific), followed by Classified contextual selectors (TABLE P EM.fot) Class selectors (EM.fot) Contextual selectors - the “lower down” the more weight, (TABLE P EM), (TABLE P EM STRONG) - STRONG has more weight than EM.

5. Sort by order specified If two rules have the same weight, the latter specified overrides ones specified earlier. Style sheets are sorted out as follows: The STYLE attribute (inline style) overrides all other styles The Style element (embedded style) overrides linked and imported sheets The LINK element (external style) overrides imported style The @import statement - imported style sheets also cascade with each other in the same order as they are imported

Why shouldn’t I use fixed sized fonts ?

Only in very rare situations we will find users that have a “calibrated” rendering device that shows fixed font sizes correct. This tells us that we can never know the real size of a font when it’s rendered on the user end. Other people may find your choice of font size uncomfortable. A surprisingly large number of people have vision problems and require larger text than the average. Other people have good eyesight and prefer the advantage of more text on the screen that a smaller font size allows. What is comfortable to you on your system may be uncomfortable to someone else. Browsers have a default size for fonts. If a user finds this inappropriate, they can change it to something they prefer. You can never assume that your choice is better for them. So, leave the font size alone for the majority of your text. If you wish to change it in specific places (say smaller text for a copyright notice at the bottom of page), use relative units so that the size will stay in relationship to what the user may have selected already. Remember, if people find your text uncomfortable, they will not bother struggling with your web site. Very few (if any) web sites are important enough to the average user to justify fighting with the author’s idea of what is best.

How do you make a whole div into a link?

You can’t put ‘a’ tags around a div, but you can do this with javascript :
HTML

If you want to use an empty div with a background image as a link instead of putting your image into the html, you can do something like this:
CSS

#empty {
background-image:url(wine.jpg);
width:50px;
height:50px;
margin:auto;
}
#empty a {
display:block;
height:50px;
}
* html #empty a {
display:inline-block;
}
 
HTML
<div id="empty"><a href="#n"></a></div>

How do I have links of different colors on the same page?

Recommending people to use classes in their ‘a’ tags like this :

CSS
a.red {
color:red;
}
a.blue {
color:blue;
}
 
HTML
<a href="#" class="red">A red link</a>
<a href="#" class="blue">A blue link</a>

What is shorthand property?

Shorthand property is a property made up of individual properties that have a common “addressee”. For example properties: font-weight, font-style, font-variant, font-size, font-family, refer to the font. To reduce the size of style sheets and also save some keystrokes as well as bandwidth they can all be specified as one shorthand property font, e.g.:

H1 {font-weight: bold;
font-style: italic;
font-variant: small-caps;
font-size: 160%;
font-family: serif}
 
can be all shorthanded to a space separated list:
 
H1 {font: bold italic small-caps 160% serif}
 
Note: To make things even simpler the line-height property can be specified together with the font-size property:
 
H1 {font: bold italic small-caps 160%/170% serif}

How to use CSS building a standards based HTML template?

It should:
1. Contain: header, navigation, content, footer
2. Use well-structured HTML
3. Be error-free and encourage good coding

Let’s start with number one there:

HTML document split up in four parts all with different meaning, use the
-tag. Div is short for “division” and isn’t header, navigation and so on …

!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN">
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" type="text/css">
</head>
<body>
<div id="header">
<h1>The name of this page</h1>
</div>
<div id="navigation">
<h2>Navigation</h2>
 
< ul>
<li><a href="first.html">First</a></li>
<li><a href="second.html">Second</a></li>
<li><a href="third.html">Third</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div id="content">
<h2>Content</h2>
 
Some sample content, add your own here
</div>
<div id="footer">
 
This page is written by [Your name] and builds
n a <a href="http://friendlybit.com">
Friendlybit template</a>.
</div>
 
</body>
</html>
 
body {
background-color: Green;
}
div {
border: 3px solid Black;
padding: 7px;
width: 600px;
}
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
margin: 0;
}
 
#navigation {
float: left;
width: 150px;
}
#content {
float: left;
width: 430px;
}
#footer {
clear: both;
}

What is value?

Value is a ‘physical’ characteristic of the property. Property declares what should be formatted, e.g. FONT while value suggests how the property should be formatted, e.g. 12pt. By setting the value 12pt to the property FONT it is suggested that the formatted text be displayed in a 12 point font. There must always be a corresponding property to each value or set of values.

H1 {font: bold 180%}
In the example above the H1 selector is declared the FONT property which in its turn is declared the values BOLD and 180%.
The values suggesting alternatives are specified in a comma separated list, e.g.
H1 {font-family: font1, font2}

What is initial value?

Initial value is a default value of the property, that is the value given to the root element of the document tree. All properties have an initial value. If no specific value is set and/or if a property is not inherited the initial value is used. For example the background property is not inherited, however, the background of the parent element shines through because the initial value of background property is transparent.

<P style="background: red">Hello <strong>World </strong> </P><br />

Content of the element P will also have red background

How frustrating is it to write a specification knowing that you’re at the browser vendors’ mercy?

That’s part of the game. I don’t think any specification has a birthright to be fully supported by all browsers. There should be healthy competition between different specifications. I believe simple, author-friendly specifications will prevail in this environment.
Microformats are another way of developing new formats. Instead of having to convince browser vendors to support your favorite specification, microformats add semantics to HTML through the CLASS attribute. And style it with CSS.

How far can CSS be taken beyond the web page–that is, have generalized or non-web specific features for such things as page formatting or type setting?

Yes, it’s possible to take CSS further in several directions. W3C just published a new Working Draft which describes features for printing, e.g., footnotes, cross-references, and even generated indexes.
Another great opportunity for CSS is Web Applications. Just like documents, applications need to be styled and CSS is an intrinsic component of AJAX. The “AJAX” name sounds great.

How To Style Table Cells?

Margin, Border and Padding are difficult to apply to inline elements. Officially, the tag is a block level element because it can contain other block level elements (see Basics - Elements).
If you need to set special margins, borders, or padding inside a table cell, then use this markup: