We are often asked by our web design clients about “that word we always use, is it CFS, CIS, CBS?” Of course the client is referring to Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS. Before we can explain why we think the use of CSS in website design is so important, let us give you some background about CSS.

CSS is an extremely powerful style sheet language which is used to control the look and feel of the content written in HTML. So what does this mean? It means that if we have a website element, let’s say a “title”, and we want to make the text size “20px”, the color “black”, and the padding around it “10px”, we would use CSS to control the look of our element.

OK, so what’s so great about that you ask? Here are several reasons why everyone should use CSS in web design:

CSS Provides Efficiency in Design and Updates

With CSS, we are able to create rules, and apply those rules to many elements within the website. This approach offers many advantages when site-wide changes are required by a client. Since the content is completely separated from the design, we can make those changes in our Style Sheet and have it effect every applicable instance.

CSS Use Can Lead To Faster Page Downloads

Since rules are only downloaded once by the browser, then are cached and used for each page load, the use of CSS can lead to lighter page loads, and improved performance. This contributes to lighter server load and lower requirements, which overall saves money for our clients.

CSS is Easy to Work With

Because we are able to keep every visual aspect of the website completely separated from the content, using CSS when designing our websites allows us to quickly create layouts, and troubleshoot any problems. We know that regardless of the page, we control all elements from one (or several) stylesheet.

These are just a few reasons why we choose to use CSS. Although we have not gone into the details of using CSS (that is well beyond the scope of this article), we hope that you have a better understanding of why it’s important. One last reason is, “all the cool kids are doing it”. We’re kidding of course, but it is the way of the future…so why not get there now.