With CSS, it is possible to completely change the way elements are
presented by a user agent. This can be done at a basic level with the
display property, and in a different way by
associating style sheets with a document. The user will never know
whether this is done via an external or embedded style sheet, or even
with an inline style. The real importance of external style sheets is
the way in which they allow authors to put all of a
site’s presentation information in one place, and
point all of the documents to that place. This not only makes site
updates and maintenance a breeze, but it helps to save bandwidth
since all of the presentation is removed from documents.
To make the most of the power of CSS, authors need to know how to associate a set of styles with the elements in a document. In order to fully understand how CSS can do all of this, authors need a firm grasp of the way CSS selects pieces of a document for styling, which is the subject of the next chapter.
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