HTML & CSS Direct Study

The Differances of CSS1 and CSS2

Cascading Style Sheets was first developed in order to help web designers develop consistent pages with less coding. Before CSS was released web designers had to insert the style into each page on the web site. This could be very time consuming and also leave room for error, leaving pages inconsistent.

CSS1 was introduced 13 years ago. Two years later an updated version (CSS2) came along, furthermore as we look into the future CSS3 is on the horizon. Looking back on web pages that were designed years ago it is easy to see how far we have traveled in designing esthetically pleasing web pages. With the new development in both CSS2 and CSS3 web pages can rise to an entirely new level.

CSS1 had basic features including limited font selections, usage of tables, and restricted positioning elements. While these features gave designers a new tools to use they only provided some flexibility in design. With the development of CSS2 designers were given many more useful resources.

CSS2 surround the concepts of accessibility. Below are a few ways that CSS2 allows designers to be creative, efficient, and effective.

• Aural Style Sheets -- Not only can web site be viewed, but they can now be heard. This allows to add another aspect to enrich the viewer experience of the web page. This feature also allows for blind viewers to access and use your page. Pages that have aural capabilities can be used in cars and other instances where reading may not be a good option.
• Paging -- This element allows for media to be placed on web pages such as slide shows, automated books, or paper. Features like this allow for designers to be able to effect how printing marks are viewed and modified.
• Media Types -- By having different rules set up for different media types the page handles each media type different, instead of lumping them together. The different types of media are aural, braille, hand held, screen, print, and others.
• International -- CSS2 can now appropriately handle international documents including bidirectional text or specific language features like language-sensitive quotation marks.

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