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complete css guide
Table of contents

Welcome to the Complete CSS Guide, a reference to every aspect of cascading style sheets. If you need help learning CSS or if you're looking for info about selectors, properties and all the other aspects of cascading style sheets, this is the place.

An extended version of this guide with extra sections and integrated browser support information is available for purchase and download. You can get the Complete CSS Guide

by itself for just $24.99
as a bonus when you purchase Style Master CSS editor (Windows and MacOS) for $59.99
as part of most of our self paced standards based web development course bundles

Where do I start?

That all depends what you're looking for.

New to CSS? Start by reading the introduction to this guide to really understand what cascading style sheets are and how they work. For a more hands on approach take a look as well at the Style Master CSS Tutorial. This tutorial also comes as part of the demo download of our CSS editor for Windows and Mac OS X, Style Master.
Looking for something in particular? If you're looking for detailed information about a CSS property, selector or other feature you're sure to find it in the table of contents below.

While you are here don't miss our articles, tutorials, and our other CSS resources..
Part 1: Introduction
About this guide
What's new in CSS Level 2, revision 1?
Who is this guide for?
What will we cover?
How to use this guide
Browser support information
CSS intro
Where do style sheets come from?
The W3C
A history of CSS specifications
The CSS Mobile Profile
Why doesn't everyone use CSS?
Why should I use CSS?
What exactly is a style sheet?
Proprietary CSS extensions
CSS v HTML
How do style sheets work?
The parts of a style sheet
Style sheet syntax
Linking and embedding a style sheet
Embedding style sheets
Linking to style sheets
Statements
@rules
@import
@media
@page
Comments
HTML comment tags
Rules
Part 2: Selectors
Selectors introduction
What do selectors do?
Types of selector
Type selectors
Types of element
Class selectors
ID selectors
Descendant selectors
Link pseudo class selectors
Pseudo element selectors
Dynamic pseudo class selectors
Language pseudo class selectors
Child selectors
First child selectors
Adjacent sibling selectors
Attribute selectors
Part 3: Properties
Properties introduction
What are properties?
How to read the property guide
Text style properties
color
font-weight
font-family
font-size
font-variant
font-style
text-decoration
text-transform
Text layout properties
letter-spacing
word-spacing
line-height
vertical-align
text-indent
text-align
direction
unicode-bidi
Background properties
background-color
background-image
background-attachment
background-repeat
background-position
background
Border properties
Unscrambling the border mess
border-width, border-top-width, border-left-width, border-bottom-width, border-right-width
border-color
border-style
border, border-top, border-left, border-bottom, border-right
Margin properties
margin
margin-top
margin-left
margin-bottom
margin-right
Padding properties
padding
padding-top
padding-left
padding-bottom
padding-right
Page layout properties
Introduction to positioning with CSS
The big picture
A note about "layers"
Ways of positioning
Static positioning
Absolute positioning
Fixed positioning
Relative positioning
position
top
left
bottom
right
width
min-width
max-width
height
min-height
max-height
z-index
visibility
overflow
float
clear
clip
Element type properties
display
white-space
list-style-type
list-style-image
list-style-position
list-style
border-collapse
border-spacing
caption-side
empty-cells
table-layout
User interface properties
cursor
outline
outline-color
outline-style
outline-width
Values
Length values
Percentage values
Color values
Keyword values
Shape values
Part 4: Advanced CSS
Advanced CSS introduction
Cascade and inheritance
Cascade
Managing style at large sites using @import
Specificity
Inheritance
Generated content
content
quotes
Counters and counter properties
counter
counters
counter-reset
counter-increment
Media
The @media rule
Types of media
Media specific importing using @import
Printing
The @page rule
Page specific properties
margin, margin-left, margin-right, margin-top, margin-bottom
Page breaking properties
page-break-before
page-break-after
page-break-inside
orphans
widows
CSS Mobile Profile
Selectors in the CSS Mobile Profile
Properties in the CSS Mobile Profile
Part 5: Real world CSS
Real world CSS introduction
Tables with CSS
Standards-based HTML 4.0
Borders
Color
Evening things up
browser support
"It doesn't work": a word of warning
The difficulties: partial support, buggy support, no support
No support
Partial and buggy support
Missing features
Broken features
Designing for the web
Introduction
Same old new medium?
Controlling web pages
Why does it matter?
The way
Fonts
Layouts
Colors
The journey
Validating
Validating HTML
Why validate?
What is validating?
So how do I do this?
Online validators
Stand-alone validators
Validate your style sheets