10 Most Important CSS Concepts for Beginners

What is CSS ?

CSS is a language used to style web pages. It is used to define the look and feel of a website by changing the colour, size, and layout of text, as well as the positioning of elements on the page. The ten most important CSS concepts that a beginner must understand in order to use CSS effectively are listed below.

The CSS Cascade

The CSS cascade is one of the most important concepts in CSS. When applying style definitions to a page element, the order of the style definitions matters. Any subsequent definitions override any previously defined styles, and the first definition always takes precedence. As a result, it is critical that you always define your CSS in the correct order and use the most specific selector possible. If you do not, you may receive unexpected results.

Inheritance

CSS properties are passed down through inheritance from parent to child elements. If a property on an element is not specified, the value will be inherited from its parent. Inheritance is a great way to save time and keep your code organised because you only need to specify the properties that are unique to each element. Inherited properties are applied to all child elements automatically.

Specificity

Specificity determines which style takes precedence when two styles have the same weight. The specificity of a style is determined by the number of selectors in the style declaration as well as the weight of each selector. The selector with the highest specificity will always take precedence, regardless of the order in which they are written. As a result, it is critical to use the most specific selector possible because it will be the most specific.

The CSS Box Model

The box model is a box-based representation of HTML elements. It determines how the content of an element is positioned and sized, as well as the space around it. There are six properties in the box model: width, height, padding, borders, margin, and content.

Margins, padding, and borders

Margin, padding, and borders are used to control the space around HTML elements. The margin is the space between an element and its surrounding elements. Pixels, EMs, and percentages can all be used to specify margin values. Margin-left, margin-right, margin-top, and margin-bottom values can all be the same or different.

Display

An element's display determines how it appears on the screen. Any HTML element can be given one of the six different display options. The six display options are block, inline, list-item, table, inline-block, and none. Each of these options has a distinct effect and will assist you in appropriately and differently styling your websites. If you want to be a pro at web development, then take a online web development course.

Float

You can use the float property to move an element to the left or right of its parent element. It is capable of producing multi-column layouts. Two properties control an element's float and set the direction of the float, which determines where the element is placed in a container. You can allow surrounding text to wrap around an element by adding a float property. The float property can have one of three values: left, right, or none; examples of how each float property would render in the browser are provided below.

Positioning

You can control where an element appears on the page by using positioning. Positioning can be done in four ways: static, relative, absolute, and fixed. Each position has a distinct set of properties that can be adjusted to achieve the desired result. Static positioning is the default method, which simply means that the element is positioned in accordance with the natural flow of the document. Using relative positioning, you can move an element relative to its current location. Absolute positioning can be used to move an element to a specific location on the page. You can use fixed positioning to move an element to a specific location on the page and keep it there even if the user scrolls.

Media queries in CSS

Media queries can be used to specify different styles for different screen sizes and devices. They can be used to create layouts that are compatible with all devices or to tailor styles to specific devices.

CSS Grid systems

Grid systems should be points 10 and 11 because CSS supports two different grid systems, CSS grid and Flexbox. Flexbox is a more versatile grid system that is excellent for creating responsive layouts. If you understand both of these grid systems, you can create layouts that look good on all devices. Flexbox was designed specifically for responsive layouts. It is more adaptable than the CSS grid, allowing for the creation of both flexible and responsive layouts. If you want to know how much you learned from this article after reading it, you can take a online CSS quiz.