CSS or Cascading Style Sheets is a great tool to add a unique look to your web pages. CSS enhances fonts, colors, and even the spacing of your web pages. It is a useful tool to let you separate your HTML content from your style. For example, you can use your HTML file to create and organize the content, but all of the visual presentation including the background, fonts, colors, link effects, text formatting, and spacing are created with a CSS file.
Benefits of CSS
As discussed, CSS makes it easy for you to separate the style and layout of your HTML files from their informational content. This means you can determine the look of your site in one file, and change the whole site by modifying that single file. It also means you can make your HTML changes by accessing one file.
This structure provided by CSS also means that you can work with your web pages so that they look good on any browser. For example, a page on Mozilla can look very different than a page seen on internet explorer. CSS eliminates that difference.
CSS gives you more control over how your pages look because it is a more detailed mechanism than HTML. HTML wasn’t designed for style, it was designed for document structure. CSS was designed for style. This means it is easier for you as a business owner seeking brand development and recognition to define your “look” and give it a unique and consistent feel.
Users say that CSS also prints better than HTML documents. Important if visitors are accessing your content, which they hopefully are, printing it, and taking it with them or better yet – sharing it with their friends and associates. Additionally, the pages allow visitors to print the entire page as opposed to the partial pages that HTML often prints.
CSS decreases your page size significantly, making it easier for your visitors to load your site and all relevant graphics and copy. It also means that your web pages can be seen quickly and clearly with handheld browsers. This is huge because many people are now surfing the internet on their cell phones, smart phones, and PDAs. If your site doesn’t load quickly, chances are people are going to leave. If your site is quickly and clearly accessible – you may have a new customer! Additionally, it will take up less space on your server if you’re running close to your limit – and save you less money if you’re being charge by bandwidth. This is because CSS requires less code.
CSS enables you to position the code for your content at the top making your page search engine friendly. Properly marked up, HTML pages can easily found and properly categorized by search engines.
It is also fairly easy for anyone to learn because CSS already uses well-known coding elements and principals.
The benefits of CSS include making your web site:
• Faster to create
• Easier to maintain or change
• More adaptable to fit new and emerging technologies
• Compact
• Neater and cleaner in the HTML code
How do I use CSS ?
Cascading Style Sheets can be used in two ways – internally or externally. When used internally the CSS code is placed within the ‘head’ tags of each HTML file. The HTML code basically looks just like this:
2. Using the @import method, appearing as:
So what method do you choose? That depends on what you need. For example, internal is used when a designer needs to style only one page, or different pages with different styles. Web page designers tend to prefer an external cascading style sheet. This is because, as noted earlier in the benefits list, you will only need to edit one CSS file to change the entire website. Webmasters also find external is better because they are easier to maintain, they’re more compact, and generally the appearance is easier to control and stylize.
Potential Concerns
Not all browsers can read CSS. This is a real concern; however, the percentage has decreased to the point where less than 1% of browsers are affected. What sites are affected? Older browser versions, created before CSS was standard, including Netscape 4.0. Because the vast majority of browsers are significantly newer than this, and because the World Wide Web Consortium has recommended the use of CSS, making it a widely acceptable and recognizable mechanism around the world, all concerns about using CSS are negligible.
Bottom Line
CSS is a tool that will make your web pages easier to organize and maintain, your website easier to change, your brand potentially stronger, your website more compact and easier to load, your search engine optimization will improve, oh and your pages will just look better. There really isn’t a reason to not experiment with CSS and integrate it into your web site. Once you begin using and designing with CSS, you’ll likely find building sites is more fun, faster, and they look amazing.
CPC: Click based advertising like google adsense (main purpose) where you will get paid per click on ads on your site.
CPM: Paid per thousand views such as adsdaq where you are paid a certain amount per thousands ad views.
Private Advertising: involves selling ad space on your site directly. I find this method very effective as if you sell ad space you will have guaranteed revenue.
Affiliate: The highest potential advertising form, where in you ‘plug’ a site/product and with each sale you get a certain percentage commission, example company –click bank
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. It is a language used to describe the style and presentation of a document written in a special language called the markup language. Web pages written in Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) and Extensible HTML (XHTML) are examples of markup languages commonly used. A markup language is concerned with formatting the content of a webpage whereas the style sheet language pertains to the presentation and design of the page. The CSS specifications are maintained by a standards body known as the World Wide Web Consortium or W3C. Due to this fact, CSS is sometimes also referred to as W3C CSS.
The primary purpose of CSS is to separate the content and presentation aspects of a web page. This carries a significant number of advantages that really promote the readability of the page by conforming to a pre-defined and consistent interface design. CSS helps in a lot of other ways too. People access the internet using different network connections. Not all of these connections are fast. It is not uncommon for people to run out of patience if a web page takes too long to load. This might force them to go elsewhere for their information needs and this would lower your internet traffic. Before CSS, tables were used extensively in HTML pages for the presentation of information. These tables can be cumbersome to use and don’t always result in good visual presentation. CSS not only improves the look of web pages but pages designed with CSS also load faster than those designed with tables. CSS can lower web page sizes by as much as 60% which translates to less waiting time. CSS-designed pages are also displayed progressively as they are downloaded while table-designed pages need to be downloaded fully before they can be displayed.
The use of CSS is particularly beneficial in reaching millions of users of devices other than personal computers like mobile phones and handheld internet devices. A CSS-less web page would look awful on the small screen of such devices. CSS enables us to create a page specifically for these devices with the minimum of effort. In this way, CSS has led to widespread accessibility of information. Modern HTML pages can be quite complex which is an impediment to the indexing function of search engines on the internet. CSS-designed pages reduce this complexity and allow your pages to rank higher in search results. CSS also helps in printing pages you might find interesting. Typical HTML pages get printed with unnecessary interface elements like menus. CSS can be used to define special print-friendly pages that contain only the content you are interested in printing.
With all these great advantages, the only fly in the ointment is the less than stellar implementation of the W3C CSS standard in popular web browsers. As of this writing, no web browser out there conforms completely to the CSS specification. Browsers with good CSS support include Firefox, Safari and Opera. The worst offender in rendering CSS-driven web pages is also ironically the most used web browser in the world – Internet Explorer. However, with developers of these browsers working fervently to improve CSS standards compliance, it won’t be too long before anyone opening any page on any browser will be welcomed by consistency in design and appearance thanks to the magic of CSS.
As a webmaster/blogger you should be aware of the advertising network run by google, google adsense.
Adsense is a widely used ad program that is very easy to manage (doesnt really require managment once setup) and is a good place to start in making revenue from your site. Earnings from adsense vary but it also gives you large potential.
With adsense, basically;
-you pick a certain style ad
-you put adsense code on your site
-adsense automatically places relevant ads on your site within the code space
-you make money when those ads are clicked on by visitors
Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant, unobtrusive Google ads on their website’s content pages and earn money. Because the ads are related to what your users are looking for on your site, you’ll finally have a way to both monetize and enhance your content pages. Learn more about AdSense for content.
It’s also a way for web site publishers to provide Google search to their site users, and to earn money by displaying Google ads on the search results pages. Find out more about AdSense for search.
The program is free, and combines pay-per-click and pay-per-impression advertising – meaning you get paid for valid clicks on the ads on your site or search results pages as well as impressions on your content pages. So go ahead and try this program. If you comply with our program policies, just complete our online application and select either or both of AdSense for content pages and AdSense for search. One application gets you approved for both AdSense and AdSense for search – you can decide to use any combination of these products on your pages.
CSS has become a new platform in developing website nowadays. The novelty of CSS has redefined the limits of the webpage viewing experience. Once can see some websites at relatively easier way and at the same time fashionably tailor fit that would totally make it irresistibly chic.
While the appearance has been totally developed, another good thing about CSS is that you can find the World Wide Web as a functional and increasing database. This means that you can grab the file of one website and transfer it to another. Like if you have a video in the Youtube and you want to put it in your Myspace page. It can possibly be done with the use of CSS tools. In this way, there is a greater manipulation in the internet user than it was before the age of Web 2.0
While most of the advanced techniques in web development is only limited to the few elite who has undergone some training in advanced web development, it is a good thing that a website emerged to make advanced information on web development especially with CSS accessible to all. And that website is the www.css-faq.com. The goal of the website is to become the ultimate source of information for web developers, whether one is beginning to develop the website and advanced one alike.
While there can be a lot of website about CSS in the internet, css-faq.com is committed to get one the latest information about web development in its CSS news. In this way, one cannot be behind what is the latest happening in CSS.
For those web developers who are after a catalogue of design for their website, it is best to view the site’s CSS gallery. Here, one can find a number of very interesting and neatly designed CSS templates that would suit everyone’ style. You cannot have that in an ordinary website.
For beginners, a mini-tutorial about CSS can be found in its CSS for beginners section. A great depth of information is found in this section. While CSS cannot be taught in just one setting, beginners will have to take the labor of studying CSS to make themselves a fully expert of this web development tool.
If the craving for information is not enough, one can interactively join the CSS forum section. Forums have been popular nowadays because of the craving for information. With this made possible, one can be able to communicate with other web experts to consult about some matters regarding CSS. And while getting the information, it would be absolutely free of charge. What makes it free? It is because of the feeling of being in community. CSS forums would make one feel that he belongs to a community and this where one can get help from others. With this forum, a new community of web developers emerged in one setting.
Getting the best source of information in web development is a web developer’s ultimate dream. While some sites cater on the basic information without getting to much grasp in the content, css-faq.com would be one’s FAQ site for CSS.
Posted by The New Webmaster in Search Engine Optimization on Monday, December 1, 2008 | no responses
