Beginning CSS: Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design, 2nd ...

Part I: The Basicsrules to be applied to as many documents as the author wishes. This is one of the key benefits of CSSbaseddesign. An external style sheet offers flexibility to the author that saves both time and resources.Importing Style SheetsYou can also link to an external style sheet by using the @import rule. Here’s a demonstration:@import url(path/to/cssdoc.css);This example uses the method but includes the @import notation. It’s very straightforward:Plug in the @import rule followed by the url(), which may contain an absolute or relative path.The @import method is not supported by older browsers, and it is sometimes used as a hack to hidestyles from browsers that would crash horribly if these styles were present. One such browser isNetscape Navigator 4, which has horrible CSS support and has been known to lock up when certainstyles are present.The next section describes how styles can be included inline, directly on elements, by using the styleattribute.Inline StylesThe last method for including CSS in a document is from within the XHTML elements themselves.Sometimes it doesn’t make sense to clutter your external or embedded style sheets with a rule that willbe used on only one element in one document. This is where the style=”” attribute comes into play; it’sdemonstrated by the following markup:Some text aligned left.This method allows for the text to be formatted from within the document and may be applied to anyrendered element.The following Try It Out demonstrates how the style attribute is used to add styles directly to the elementsof a web document.Try It OutIncluding CSS Using the style AttributeExample 2-10. To use the style attribute to apply styles directly to the elements of a document, followthese steps.56