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CSS Styling

Learning to style CSS elements

Call Styling Options

By styling CSS elements on your website, you can change the appearance and functionality of your site.

Let’s start by looking how you add styling options to your CSS elements.

As shown in the CSS introduction, styling is applied by delcaring an element and then placing styling options within a pair of curly brackets, just like this:

/* Element Example */button {color:red; padding:10px;} /* Class Example */.item {display:flex; margin:auto;}

This is how you can call this styling into your HTML document:

<div class="item">
<button>Click Here</div>
</div>

When calling a class into your HTML document, make sure to remove the . from the class. In the example above, this is class="item"

Call Specific Styling Options

If you are using universal styling for your CSS Elements (headings, paragraph, buttons), sometimes you may want to change the way that specific elements appear on different pages.

You can easily do this by appling a new line of CSS. There are a few different ways that you can do this:

/* Option 1: Define the specific element/container that you want to style */
.contentwrap .item h2 {color:orange; text-align:center;}

This is the part of the website this line of CSS would be applied to:

<div class="contentwrap">
<div class="item">
<h2>My Heading</h2>
</div>
</div>

If you compare the CSS example to the HTML above, you can see that each class/element is seperated by a ., which means that each class/element is on a new line.

This CSS styling targets this specific h2 within this specific block of HTML. It will overwrite any universal styling that you have set to h2.

There is another way to target specific element/containers. You can do this:

/* Option 1: Define the specific element/container that you want to style */
.contentwrap.contact h2 {color:orange; text-align:center;}

This is the part of the website this line of CSS would be applied to:

<div class="contentwrap contact">
<h2>My Heading</h2>
</div>

The difference here is that .contentwrap andĀ .contact have been connected to look likeĀ .contentwrap.contact. To call two connected CSS classes, you must add them both into the same class in your HTML document.

List of Main CSS Styling Options

Color

color: Specifies the text color

background-color: Sets the background color of an element

Text

font-family: Defines the font family for text

font-size: Sets the size of the font

font-weight: Specifies the boldness of the font

text-align: Aligns the text horizontally within its container

text-decoration: Adds decoration to text (e.g., underline, overline, line-through)

text-transform: Changes the capitalisation of text

line-height: Sets the height of a line of text

letter-spacing: Adjusts the spacing between characters

word-spacing: Adjusts the spacing between words

Layout

display: Defines how an element is displayed (e.g., block, inline, flex)

width: Sets the width of an element

height: Sets the height of an element

margin: Sets the margin space around an element

padding: Sets the padding space inside an element

border: Adds a border around an element

box-shadow: Adds shadow effects around an element’s frame

position: Specifies the positioning method of an element (e.g., static, relative, absolute, fixed)

top, bottom, left, right: Positions an element relative to its containing element

float: Positions an element to the left or right of its container

clear: Specifies which sides of an element can’t have floating elements

Flexbox

flex-direction: Specifies the direction of flex items

justify-content: Aligns flex items along the main axis

align-items: Aligns flex items along the cross axis

flex-wrap: Specifies whether flex items are forced into a single line or can be wrapped onto multiple lines

Grid

grid-template-columns, grid-template-rows: Defines the columns and rows of a grid container

grid-column, grid-row: Specifies the size and location of grid items within a grid container

Background

background-image: Sets one or more background images for an element

background-position: Specifies the starting position of a background image

background-repeat: Defines how background images are repeated

background-size: Specifies the size of the background image

Animation

animation-name: Specifies the name of the @keyframes animation

animation-duration: Sets the duration of the animation

animation-delay: Specifies when the animation will start

animation-iteration-count: Defines the number of times an animation should play

animation-timing-function: Sets the speed curve of the animation

animation-fill-mode: Specifies how a CSS animation should apply styles to its target before and after its execution

Transform

transform: Applies 2D or 3D transformations to an element (e.g., rotate, scale, skew)

transform-origin: Sets the origin point for transformations

Transition

transition-property: Specifies the CSS property to which a transition effect should be applied

transition-duration: Sets the duration of the transition effect

transition-timing-function: Sets the speed curve of the transition effect

transition-delay: Specifies when the transition effect will start

Other

opacity: Sets the transparency level for an element

cursor: Specifies the type of cursor to be displayed when hovering over an element

z-index: Specifies the stack order of an element

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