Talk:Cascading Style Sheets

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Cascading Style Sheets article.
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Cascading Style Sheets is a former featured article candidate. Please view the links under Article milestones below to see why the nomination failed. For older candidates, please check the archive.
February 10, 2005 Featured article candidate Not promoted

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[edit] Spam links to http://december.com removed

User:Yurik has recently made changes to all the code examples in this article, which on the face of it look quite nice. On the other hand, in doing so s/he has also magically created dozens of hyperlinks to a web site at http://december.com.

I propose that, whether or not that was the main purpose of the colour-scheming, it should be reverted asap, and so have done so. If it were possible to have the coloured syntax highlighting without the commercial spam, then I'd be happy with it. Equally, if the links were to the relevant articles with WP, or even to the non-commercial international standards pages at http://w3.org. --Nigelj 17:57, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi. Being a dev of mediawiki, i obviously did not want any spam links :). This is an unneeded feature of the syntax highlighting plugin, and we should address it for the entire wiki, rather than removing it here. Once the main plugin settings are fixed, all such links will disappear. In the mean time, i will put it back as its visual benefits clearly outweigh the almost invisible junk links that will be soon removed. --Yurik 18:19, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
Bug entered at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9955. --Yurik 18:37, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Justify

Please, add to CSS-file "Justify" for the all texts. You must to see not have to think.)) A Wiki isn't place of text-garbages. We can to do nice for the readers.

[edit] Column (typography)

Would anyone be interested in expanding and sourcing content for Column (typography), specifically the section on web layout? Thanks for your consideration.-Andrew c 00:15, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] CSS commands list

There should be at least an external link to a list of all (or most) CSS commands. Please add it. --DorTheScripter 22:39, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

There are several such links in the article already. ¦ Reisio 04:14, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reworking

Doing quite a bit of work on this article right now. Main thing is trying to refocus it away from teaching people the language. Chris Cunningham 12:30, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, I see no discussion and no consensus here. Apart from your confusing use of two names (Thumperward or Chris Cunningham depending whether you are editing or discussing your own edits) and your instruction to Czert to "Feel free to remove anything you like from it", I wonder just why you have decided single-handedly to dumb down the article in this way. It is not in order to add more referenced material: on 16 July there were eight references, now there are nine. What you have done is remove all the carefully chosen examples that demystified CSS scripting, showing its capabilities and its shortcomings and you did this with helpful edit summaries like, "more example killing", mostly during the single day 18th July.
If you don't have some pretty good justifications for each major deletion, backed up with a WP policy that says that technical articles should not include examples, I believe that many of these should be reverted back in. --Nigelj 18:22, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not meant to be a how-to reference, and this was little but. I'm trying to get the article into a state where a reader who was looking to find out what CSS was and what it is used for can comfortably read it and go away informed, rather than aiming the article at would-be Web authors who need to grep for example code. The "referenced material", a set of tutorials, was much of the same. if you feel that this information was of more use here than the dozen or so introductory guides to CSS it was mostly taken from, then please help the Wikibooks project out by taking the advice of template:howto and moving it over there. As for my user name, I'd rather tag my personal comment with my real name, and I don't feel this is a massive mental burden on my fellow Wikipedians. Chris Cunningham 20:09, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
I tend to agree that removing the examples makes this a less useful article. It is good for the introduction to say what CSS is, and what it is used for, but examples are appropriate not to teach the language, but to help give a technical understanding. Saying that CSS is used to encode web style is not useful for people who would like to understand how it works internally. Without the examples, readers will only gain a superfluous understanding of the language, rather than a technical understanding, which is appropriate to Wikipedia.
If you are unhappy with your username, perhaps you should change it. Your inconsistancy makes it impossible to tell that the editor and the commenter are the same person without editing. 206.196.177.118 20:36, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
The link can be found by hovering over my signature. I've been mulling over a full user name change, but that's beside the point of this discussion. I am not opposed to the idea of including examples in the article. What I am opposed to is Nigelj's assertion that these "major deletions" which "dumb down the article" should be "reverted back in". I feel that those who wish to add examples would be better off starting again rather than by restoring poorly-written content in a blanket fashion. Chris Cunningham 10:14, 27 July 2007 (UTC)


A first-time reader's two cents: I would really appreciate having as many examples as possible. I think for many people, specific examples help them to learn a concept. I like to see examples from which I can then generalize. I understand things much more quickly this way. Thanks. --Paul Gentry (not logged in) 198.81.125.18 15:17, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Complicated Precedence Rules as a Limitation?

I can't see how precedence rules can be a limitation just because they are complicated. Some mechanisms need to be complicated in order to be effective. --Czert 11:35, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

That whole section needs entirely redone using some actual sources. Feel free to remove anything you like from it. Chris Cunningham 12:09, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Limitations

I changed the formatting of the first two items to match the rest of the items in the section. I removed a third item because it did not seem to be a limitation of CSS:

  • Although the CSS standards have been in place for years, websites using CSS layout have been slow to catch on with many webmasters who have not found the need (or desire) to update their sites with the latest standards.

—Ryan 09:00, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Is this section necessary at all? From my point of view, it is highly subjective while also (at least partially) being addressed by current work on CSS. It barely seems to help, instead it might mislead people ("look CSS is so limited"). (Several sub topics like for example print styles could probably use some attention instead.) --K. 09:00, 11 Mar 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New Resource

The book "Professional CSS, Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design" written by Christopher Schmitt, Mark Trammell, Ethan Marcotte, Dunstan Orchard and Todd Dominey is a wonderful book authored by some of the masters. Do you think I could possibly add it to the CSS resources list? You can check it's web site out at http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/productCd-0764588338.html.

Pcboy 21:57, 10 October 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Limitations

  • Complexity
For larger sites, style sheets can grow to become extremely long and complex making editing and overall site management somewhat more difficult and tedious than if a basic table layout were used.

As complex and large as Wikipedia's website, it's mostly CSS layout. Table layout does not make it any easier to manage.

Wordhunter 17:44, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Wordhunter is quite right. I designed my first few websites using table layouts, and I can quite assure that CSS stylesheets, when properly managed, can drastically ease the managing process. And if your stylesheets do get unmanageably long, split the code up over two external documents. Nothing complex about it. :-) Pcboy 16:20, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
Removed. Thanks for catching this. Chris Cunningham 16:29, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cascading

The article says "CSS style information can be either attached as a separate document or embedded in the HTML document," but there is nothing here about the relative priority given to the different places where style information can be attached. That is, there is really nothing here about the cascading aspect of Cascading Style Sheets.

For example, http://www.htmlite.com/CSS001b.php says "Any embedded CSS command will over-ride an external CSS command of the same tag," but I know there are other rules besides that, and I also don't think that site looks like a citable source.

If I had the right sources to cite offhand, I'd write something, but as it happens I came here hoping to look it up. My guess is that someone involved in working on this page knows and could easily add this. - Jmabel | Talk 19:39, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Useless sentence?

I'm a first-time reader of this article, attempting to learn something about CSS, and as such, I find the following sentence in the Syntax section to be practically meaningless:

"A pseudo-class selects entire elements, such as :link or :visited, whereas a pseudo-element makes a selection that may consist of partial elements, such as :first-line or :first-letter."

I re-read this sentence 5 times to make sure that I wasn't just missing something. I'm not sure what is meant by "entire element" vs. "partial element" and this is not explained in the article above this sentence. Perhaps it was explained in some prior version. I think an example in the Syntax section would help out HUGELY (or at the least, a BNF version of the syntax, although the lay-person would probably not understand that). I noticed on this discussion page that some examples have been removed from this page. If there was one here, please put it back in! Examples are enormously helpful for understanding the topic. Remember, if you're an expert on a topic, that most likely impedes your ability to decide what is useful for the first-time reader (and therefore, the material that should appear at the beginning of the article). Thanks. -- Paul Gentry (not logged in)198.81.125.18 15:11, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] General style and tone

[edit] Lack of basics

What program is used to create a file with css extension? Teemu Ruskeepää (talk) 07:43, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Any text editor. CSS files are just plaintext files, with a .css file extension, so no need for any sort of specialised program.81.68.90.181 (talk) 00:35, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New Resources

Would you be willing to add http://www.learn-css-tutorial.com to your list of Resources? You have a great set of resources on your site and I know you will be very impressed with our free tutorial, written by us.Jthurber (talk) 20:33, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Is CSS a programming language?

The Wikibook about CSS is called 'CSS Programming', but I really don't think CSS is a language. Does it "define and manipulate data structures or control the flow of execution"[1]? This article doesn't really clarify it, and although I'm not sure that it really needs to, it seems that there might be some confusion out there. Should something be added to the article? —Sam Wilson (Australia) (talk) 23:59, 22 May 2008 (UTC)