The benefits of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
CSS has been around for several years and is supported by all the major browsers available today, including Internet Explorer for the PC and Mac, Fire fox, Safari and Opera. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are used within the HTML behind your Web site as a way of controlling how each page is laid out and what elements on it look like. For instance, you can use CSS to make headings in your copy a standard size across your site.
There are lots of benefits of using CSS to control your Web site:
Makes your Web pages quicker
By using CSS and writing your HTML code to match standards like 'XHTML Transitional' or 'XHTML Strict' you can decrease the 'render time' of your pages. It is the time between downloading the page and actually showing it on screen to your Web site visitor.
In using tables for layout (it is the traditional alternative to use CSS) and 'font' tags to see how the text on the page looks, the browsers have a lot more work to do before they show the page. Using CSS and the proper DocType for the pages means the browser knows what to expect from the code and can display it much more quickly.
Practically, converting to a standard based CSS layout on one client's Web site reduces the time it takes to display by almost a quarter of a second. Although this is a very small amount of time, it is more than enough to make a Web site feel much more snappy and responsive, helping it give a good impression to your potential customers.
Keeps your Web site up to date
By making your pages display quicker, CSS makes it easier to make global updates to your Web site. If you want to make a change in corporate image and want all your page headings changed from blue to green you can make it with CSS controlling within two minutes rather than having to edit every page on the site.
This flexibility gives you the opportunity to do more with your Web site. If you want to show your support for Red Nose Day you can put a little red nose next to all of your headers, and turn the text red and even make them display in a silly typeface. Also you can turn them back to normal for the next day once again in a single file change.
Helpful for Search Engine Optimization
Use of CSS removes lots of HTML from your pages as layout and the look of text is controlled through the CSS file. It makes your textual content much more prominent within your HTML. This means the search engine spiders can easily find your textual content, and your content is generally displayed in one block rather than being split up into less readable chunks by HTML just to fit in to your design.
Use of 'semantically correct XHTML' - i.e. heading tags around the headings and sub-headings in your copy, and bold or strong tags around content you wish to highlight, tells the search engines that those words are the most important on the page. This helps the page a boost for searches which match the words which are marked as more important in this way.
Enables to pass the Disability Discrimination Act
By using good CSS and XHTML, it makes easier for people with disabilities to change your pages in the way they prefer for easy reading. This can be done through increasing or decreasing the font size, or having it read to them through a screen reader. The clean page coding that goes along with using CSS means screen readers can easily navigate through your page and find the content, giving a good experience even to visually impaired users.
Using CSS and XHTML also helps you comply with the UK Disability Discrimination Act rules for accessible Web sites. This is a valuable side-effect of using this kind of coding and takes no extra development time.
Assists to browse from different devices
The use of CSS not only helps screen readers but also useful for alternative devices like mobile phones and PDAs because it can show your content effectively and easily. Although the current market in the West for browsing the Web through mobiles is small, it is growing and by using CSS you can create a Web site which is easily viewable on these devices with little extra effort. So when more people use them it will be simple to convert your site to work with current or future devices.
Enables downsides
Web browsers treat CSS slight differently nowadays, so when your Web site is created you may need little more cross-browser testing, and you will need to find a Web designer who knows how to build a site in CSS correctly. Most professional designers and developers understands the benefits of creating standard based CSS site, but it is worth ensuring that anyone you hire to make your Web site does know CSS before starting a project.
But the downsides are small when compared to the immediate and ongoing benefits of a CSS-based Web site.
