November 1, 2019
4 min Read
Tautvydas V.
In this tutorial, you will learn the difference between the three types of CSS styles: inline, external and internal. We’ll also uncover the advantages and disadvantages of using each method.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a markup language responsible for how your web pages will look like. It controls the colors, fonts, and layouts of your website elements.
This style sheet language also allows you to add effects or animations to your website. You can use it to display some CSS animations like click button effects, spinners or loaders, and animated backgrounds.
Without CSS, your website will appear as a plain HTML page. Here’s how Twitter will look like if we disable its CSS:
There are three ways you can use to implement CSS: internal, external, and inline styles. Let’s break them down.
Internal or embedded CSS requires you to add <style> tag in the <head> section of your HTML document.
This CSS style is an effective method of styling a single page. However, using this style for multiple pages is time-consuming as you need to put CSS rules to every page of your website.
Here’s how you can use internal CSS:
<style type="text/css">
body { background-color: blue; } h1 { color: red; padding: 60px; }
</style>
Your HTML file will look like this:
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <style> body { background-color: blue; } h1 { color: red; padding: 60px; } </style> </head> <body> <h1>Hostinger Tutorials</h1> <p>This is our paragraph.</p> </body> </html>
.class { property1 : value1; property2 : value2; property3 : value3; } #id { property1 : value1; property2 : value2; property3 : value3; }
With external CSS, you’ll link your web pages to an external .css file, which can be created by any text editor in your device (e.g., Notepad++).
This CSS type is a more efficient method, especially for styling a large website. By editing one .css file, you can change your entire site at once.
Follow these steps to use external CSS:
.xleftcol { float: left; width: 33%; background:#809900; } .xmiddlecol { float: left; width: 34%; background:#eff2df; }
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css" />
Don’t forget to change style.css with the name of your .css file.
Inline CSS is used to style a specific HTML element. For this CSS style, you’ll only need to add the style attribute to each HTML tag, without using selectors.
This CSS type is not really recommended, as each HTML tag needs to be styled individually. Managing your website may become too hard if you only use inline CSS.
However, inline CSS can be useful in some situations. For example, in cases where you don’t have access to CSS files or need to apply styles for a single element only.
Let’s take a look at an example. Here, we add an inline CSS to the <p> and <h1> tag:
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <body style="background-color:black;"> <h1 style="color:white;padding:30px;">Hostinger Tutorials</h1> <p style="color:white;">Something usefull here.</p> </body> </html>
In this tutorial, you’ve learned the difference between the three types of CSS: internal, external, and inline. Here’s the recap:
So, which CSS style will you use? Share with us in the comments section below.
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