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Course Title: HTML & Web Development Fundamentals: Building Modern Websites Section Title: Integrating CSS with HTML Topic: Applying styles to HTML elements and organizing stylesheets.

Overview

Now that we've introduced the basics of CSS and linked it to our HTML document, we can start applying styles to our HTML elements and organizing our stylesheets for efficient and effective styling.

Understanding CSS Selectors

Before we dive into applying styles, it's essential to understand how CSS selectors work. CSS selectors allow us to target specific HTML elements and apply styles to them. In our previous topic, we introduced three types of basic CSS selectors:

1. Element Selectors: These selectors target HTML elements directly, e.g., p for all paragraph elements.
2. Class Selectors: These selectors target HTML elements with a specific class attribute, e.g., .header for all elements with the class header.
3. ID Selectors: These selectors target HTML elements with a specific ID attribute, e.g., #header for the element with the ID header.

Applying Styles

To apply styles to our HTML elements, we use CSS properties and values. CSS properties are the characteristics we want to style, such as color, font-size, or background-color. CSS values are the specific values we assign to these properties, such as red, 16px, or #f2f2f2.

Here's an example of applying styles to our HTML elements:

<style>
  /* Element selector */
  p {
    color: #00698f;
    font-size: 16px;
  }

  /* Class selector */
  .header {
    background-color: #f2f2f2;
    padding: 20px;
    text-align: center;
  }

  /* ID selector */
  #header {
    font-size: 24px;
    font-weight: bold;
  }
</style>

<!-- HTML code -->
<p>This is a paragraph of text.</p>

<div class="header">
  <h1 id="header">Welcome to our website!</h1>
</div>

Organizing Stylesheets

As our CSS code grows, it's essential to organize our stylesheets to make them easier to maintain and update. Here are some best practices for organizing our stylesheets:

1. Use a consistent naming convention: Use a consistent naming convention for our selectors, properties, and values to make our code easier to read.
2. Use comments: Use comments to explain what our code does and why we made certain decisions.
3. Group related styles together: Group related styles together, such as all the styles for a specific section of our website.
4. Use external stylesheets: Use external stylesheets to separate our CSS code from our HTML code and make our website easier to maintain.

Practical Exercise

Create a new HTML document and link it to an external stylesheet. Apply styles to the following HTML elements:

• All paragraph elements (<p>)
• All links (<a>)
• The header section (<header>)
• The footer section (<footer>)

Use CSS selectors, properties, and values to style these elements. Experiment with different styles and layouts to make your website look unique.

Additional Resources

• W3Schools CSS Tutorial
• MDN Web Docs CSS Documentation

What's Next?

In our next topic, we'll introduce JavaScript and its role in creating dynamic web pages. JavaScript is a programming language that allows us to create interactive web pages and dynamic web applications.

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