Style Sheets - Making Your Life Easier
Created by Tim Franz, NCWHS Business Teacher
June 16, 2005

"Want to change the font for every one of your 1,000 pages?  Use Style Sheets!
Otherwise you are going to make yourself mad!" - Tim Franz, Normal West High School

Home Design Elements Style Sheets Redesigning Links
 

Hexadecimals

 · based on RGB color scheme
 
·  #FF5520
 
·  # must be at the start
 
·  FF represents RED value
 
·  55 represents GREEN value
 
·  20 represents BLUE value
 
·  00 is weakest
 
·  FF is strongest 
 
·  A0 is stronger than 0A
 
·  pure RED is #FF0000
 
·  pure GREEN is #00FF00
 
·  pure BLUE is #0000FF
 

Try These!

   #FF8800
   #336699
   #00FF77
  Style Sheets - What Are They?  
  Style Sheets, or Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, is a way to make changing fonts, colors, borders, and other webpage elements easier.  It starts with making what is called a style sheet, a file with a .css extension (instead of .htm or .html for a webpage file).  This .css file holds in it one or more styles or properties.  After this .css file is created, you may link any or all of your .html pages to this .css file.  Any subsequent changes you make to the properties of the .css file will automatically be updated in your .html files.  
     
  Confused? - Here is an example  
  a { color: #0000FF; font-family: Verdana; text-decoration: none }  
     
  The above can be broken down with the following elements:  
 
  1. a - this stands for anchor, which is the tag which creates a hyperlink.  So, you are changing the properties of your hyperlinks.
  2. color: #0000FF - this changes the color of the hyperlink to blue (click here for an explanation of the hexadecimal system of colors).
  3. ; - the semicolon separates the different properties
  4. font-family - this changes the font for the hyperlink to Verdana, one of the most popular web fonts.
  5. text-decoration: none - this gets ride of the outline for the hyperlink - some people like the underline and come to expect it, while others think it is annoying and use text effects like mouse overs.
 
  Still Confused - Don't worry, Front Page does some of the work for you!  
  Luckily you don't have to completely understand the coding of style sheets to make it work for you in Front Page.  Here is what you have to do:  
 
  1. Open a new document
  2. Go to the Format menu and choose Style
  3. On the left, choose one of the styles that you want to change (like body - this can change your font for your pages, as well as the background)
  4. Click on the Modify button
  5. Choose the Format button on the bottom left
  6. Choose one of the available categories - you will learn which ones do what when you explore - for now choose something basic like font.
  7. Make any changes you want to the font - you can make as many changes as you want
  8. After you have made the changes to whatever styles you want, choose File, Save As.
  9. On the bottom of the File, Save As dialog box, choose the drop down box that says Save As Type.
  10. Choose CSS Files, and save it with a name that makes sense to you
  11. When you do this your file will change.  Get rid of the unnecessary code so that all you see is something like this:
    a { color: #0000FF; font-family: Verdana; text-decoration: none }
    a:hover { font-family: Verdana; color: #FF0000 }
    body { font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt; color: #000000 }
    h6 { font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: bold }
    table { font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt }
  12. Now, another new document
  13. Go to the Format menu and choose Style Sheet Links
  14. Choose Add and find your .css file

After you have completed this process you might not notice any immediate change.  However, as you use elements in your document that are part of your .css file you will see that it is working.  If you want to change any part of your .css document later you can, and those changes will affet your .html documents.

WARNING:  Any time  you make a change a font or background color or anything else in an individual document that .css code will be over-ridden.  In other words, if your .css file says your font will be red and you type words in, highlight, and choose pink font, the font will be pink.  The only way to get it back to red would be change it to red or go into the code and get rid of the <text> tag.

 

 

 

Style Sheet Resources

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