In the above example we can see that style tags are used to identify the CSS elements used in the page. They must start with a style tag and end with a closed style tag and be placed in the "head" of your page. The a:xxx tags represent the various anchor tags that are familiar to us all. The link tag would usually go into the body tag with a color value. This replaces that tag as well as the others.

No this is where the fun starts the css statement must start with a { and also end with a }. The guts in between tell the browser what do. The format is always the same, first is the item you want to change "font-weight", followed by a colon ":", then the value you want to give it "bold", and finally ending with a semi colon ";". In the above example the text-decoration tag is used three different ways. The all are self explanatory in what they do and all demonstrated with this DFN page

Next comes one of my favorite things to use with CSS, the ability to bold all of your links with a boat load of "B" tags running around the page. Font-weight:bold; is a great tool to instantly add bolding to all your links (with no extra work!).

Finally there are two other very useful items used in the above example. The "font-size" and "color" options, again both can be defined (in this case for links) and all the links on the page with react accordingly.

In the above example I borderline have some useless information there but thought it would help. This bit does three things, it changes the scrollbar to that nastyness you see now, sets the background color of the page and defines the text color. As you see there are several empty tags for the scroll bar, these tags in my opinion are not needed but you can experiment with then and get as ugly as you want. I put this piece in to show that you can use any tag and define how it looks on the page. If you view source you will also see the H2 tag used on the title defined.

Last but not least I'll talk about today is the ability to define your own "class" of CSS and used with many tags such as the "P" tag or the "DIV" tag. In order to do this you must define it as detailed below by starting it with a period "." and then a word (class name). You then use it by adding the class name to the tag <p class="content">. This is how the background colors of the article have been defined, as well as the ads and quotes.

.content {background:#00ffff; font-size:19;} .little {background:#f5deb3; font-size:15;}

Well I think that should be enough to make you dangerous enough to make to ugly sites that will help you sell better. Good luck and don't spend to much time on it.

Wingnut