Beginning Web Programming with HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Second Edition

Chapter 8. More Cascading Style Sheets

In this chapter, you learn more about working with CSS. You will start by working through many of the remaining properties from the CSS specifications that allow you to control presentation of links, backgrounds, list styles, table styles, and outlines around boxes (the last of which are different from borders). You then learn about the :before and :after pseudo-classes that allow you to add content that was not in the source document that you are styling before or after a specified element. Finally, you will see how CSS can be used to position boxes on the page—and therefore how they can be used to create layouts instead of using tables.

By the end of the chapter, you will know more about how to use CSS to control the following:

• Presentation of links

• Backgrounds of document

• Styles of bullet points and numbered lists

• Appearance of tables

• Outlines around boxes

• Boxes that can gain focus or are active

• Addition of content to the XHTML document before or after an element

• The three positioning schemes that allow you to determine where on a page a box will appear—something that prepares you to use CSS to create layouts

Some of the features you learn about in this chapter are not yet widely supported in browsers. They are, however, worth learning about so that you are aware of the direction in which CSS is going.

Links

You have already seen that the color property can change the color of the text inside any element, and web designers commonly use this property ...