ptg16476052The Role of CSS in Web Design 43515
The Role of CSS in Web Design
As a web developer, skilled in HTML, CSS, and possibly other web languages and tech-
nologies, you have a web development process. Even if you haven’t planned it out for-
mally, you’ve got a method that works for you, whether it’s as simple as sitting down and
designing whatever strikes your fancy or as complex as working on a team with multiple
developers, each with their own responsibilities.
Adding CSS to your repertoire has made you an even better web developer than before;
your skill set has expanded, and the types of designs you can create are nearly limitless.
The next step is to integrate your CSS skills into your web development process. I’m not
going to tell you exactly how you’ll do that—people have their own methods—but I’ll
help you think about how you can go about using CSS in your web designs.
In a few cases, you might be able to develop your style sheets completely separately from
your HTML pages. More commonly, you’ll use an iterative process, in which you make
changes to the style sheet, then changes to the HTML page, and then go back to the style
sheet for a few more tweaks until you’re satisfied with the results. The adaptive nature
of style sheets makes it easy to create these kinds of changes, and you may find yourself
continuing to perfect your styles even after you post your content on the Web.
You might not be starting with a blank slate and an uncreated
website when you begin using CSS. Redesigns are common in
web development, and you may want to take advantage of a
new site design to convert to a CSS-based presentation. It can
sometimes be harder, but it’s certainly possible to keep the
same look and feel of your site when converting it to use CSS. If
you’re using a content management system (CMS) that automati-
cally generates your website from a database, converting to style
sheets may be a snap. CSS is very compatible, on a conceptual
level, with the idea of templates as used by content management
systems.NOTEAs mentioned at the start of this lesson, CSS design involves balancing a number of fac-
tors to arrive at the best compromise for your site and its users. Questions will arise as
you work with CSS on any site, and you’ll need to answer them before you go on. Here
are several of these key questions to help you plan your site:
n Which browsers will you support? By “support,” I mean investing the effort to
work around the quirks of certain older browsers. There are a number of work-
arounds for these temperamental browsers, plus ways to exclude certain browsers