What is CSS?
The short answer is Cascading Style Sheets. Where HTML defines the content of a webpage, CSS defines the layout, colors (colours) and overall design.
This whole site is designed using CSS - not a TABLE in sight!
This allows the creation of a single layout / style as a single page of CSS; which can be re-used over an entire site (cascading).
Using the code:
To include the CSS within a page, place the CSS between these TAGS and put the whole thing in the head of your page:
<style type="text/css"> The CSS goes here </style>
To create a separate Style Sheet, copy the CSS to a notepad style program and then save the file as something like "globaltext.css". In the HEAD of your HTML page place the following code (replacing globaltext.css with whatever you named it).
<link href="globaltext.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="all"/>
There are more variables and other ways to configure the LINK command, but this is basic and will get the job done.
Resources
A great number of interesting people have more to say about CSS, it's uses and it's origins, than I. Here are some existing articles:
www.devshed.com/c/a/Style-Sheets/What-is-CSS/
www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/css/
www.webmonkey.com/webmonkey/reference/stylesheet_guide/
Tutorials
External tutorial list to follow...
