What is Style? Reflection

This is my reflection on “What is Style?”

As I mentioned before, HTML and Markdown are two mark-up languages that are used for web development. While it is important to have languages that define what a piece of data is and languages that can do the job with a more simplified implementation, there is a need for languages that actually deal with the appearance of a web site. This week, we covered the language Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, which allows the manipulation of the web site’s appearance. The style of a web page is best developed using CSS because of the limitations of HTML and Markdown.

First, as an introduction, I will be analyzing this web page. This web site contains information on the Cascading Style Sheets language, such as viable applications for the language, how to use the language, and information on languages other than CSS.

Viewing the page source, I can see that the doctype is displayed in HTML. However, when I look through the page source, it is clear that the CSS language has been implemented in their code as well. I see the <style> tag has been used for in-line styles in web page. Underneath the <style> tag, the following is included: .top { position:relative; background-color:#ffffff; height:68px; padding-top:20px; line-height:50px; overflow:hidden; z-index:2; } This text is only a sample of what else is displayed in the site’s page source. But what we can derive from this text, is that the CSS language was used to change specific dimensions and colors for the display on the web page. This is something that could not be accomplished with HTML and markdown by themselves. However, with the CSS language, these objectives are easily, conveniently, and efficiently achieved.

Once there is a base site, the appearance of it using just HTML or Markdown is most likely not going to be aesthetically pleasing. In fact, it would probably look like a basic Word document, before any formatting edits. Unless that is the look you are aiming for, this is where CSS comes in. For example, the font may not be what you want, so you would go in and change it with CSS. Not only the font, but the colors of the text, the bolding or italicizing of the text, and even the placement of the text can be fixed up with CSS. In addition to these changes, you decide you dislike the border’s color and the margin dimensions. So to change these things, you would use CSS. Through CSS, anything having to do with the site’s appearance can be altered.

It is not a sin to use different languages in a project when a certain language falls short for the purposes you need it for. It is this very reason why having knowledge of multiple languages is necessary. HTML and Markdown are languages that may be able to change a few things on the actual display for a web site, but CSS is going to be that language best suited for this purpose.