What type of language is css

Williham Totland. I completely agree that Wikipedia's definition is a bit forced. According to W3C, CSS is definitely a language and there are define at least three that fall into this category of languages: css, xpath, xslt - w3. Why isn't CSS a language? But I would think that qualifying the word language with a "programming" just seems so unnecessary on SO. CSS is certainly a programming language. It is true that CSS is not "Turing complete", but it does not need to be in order to be a language.

CSS is a declarative programming language that among other things manipulates nodes of the DOM in appearance, position, etc. Both languages can be used to style XML documents. Yes, I saw that. The article only really gives one example of what "stylesheet" language is Yes, I also thought that was weird. But then it may be the only one of it's kind so far. Willie L. Sign up or log in Sign up using Google.

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We take a look at these two essential building blocks of web coding, how they are used, and the benefits of learning them. When it comes to building web pages, the coding language can, at first glance, appear incredibly complex. These two essential tools form some of the foundations of any webpage. The key differences lie in their implementation, ease of use, their various features, and how they are structured, but at the end of the day, both HTML and CSS are the keys to unlocking how the World Wide Web works.

HyperText is effectively a text within a text, and a markup language is a language understood by computers, designed to essentially describe webpages and make the text you use more interactive.

It was originally invented back in as the publishing language of the web, and to put it very simply, it is the first building block in creating a webpage. The three main ones are elements, tags , and attributes.

By and large, it has the same functionality as standard HTML but is much more dynamic and uses much less code to build something fantastic. In essence, HTML is used for creating the primary content of a webpage, giving it structure. You start by writing words, then apply tags or elements to these words.

The web browser then reads this and can then understand the heading of a page, any paragraphs, and where the page starts and finishes, thus filling your web page with content. It's the starting point for anyone learning how to create content for the web. And, luckily for us, it's surprisingly easy to learn. Let me show you what I mean. Take a look at the article below. If I were to ask you to label the types of content on the page, you'd probably do pretty well: There's the header at the top, then a subheader below it, the body text, and some images at the bottom followed by a few more bits of text.

Markup languages work in the same way as you just did when you labeled those content types, except they use code to do it -- specifically, they use HTML tags, also known as "elements. Every web page is made up of a bunch of these HTML tags denoting each type of content on the page. Each type of content on the page is "wrapped" in, i. For example, the words you're reading right now are part of a paragraph.

The "tag" part is denoted by open brackets, and the letter "p" tells the computer that we're opening a paragraph instead of some other type of content. Once a tag has been opened, all of the content that follows is assumed to be part of that tag until you "close" the tag.

Notice that closing tags look exactly the same as opening tags, except there is a forward slash after the left angle bracket. Here's an example:. Using HTML, you can add headings, format paragraphs, control line breaks, make lists, emphasize text, create special characters, insert images, create links, build tables, control some styling, and much more.

This programming language dictates how the HTML elements of a website should actually appear on the frontend of the page. HTML provides the raw tools needed to structure content on a website. CSS, on the other hand, helps to style this content so it appears to the user the way it was intended to be seen. These languages are kept separate to ensure websites are built correctly before they're reformatted. Those slick colors, interesting fonts, and background images?

All thanks to CSS. This language affects the entire mood and tone of a web page, making it an incredibly powerful tool -- and an important skill for web developers to learn. It's also what allows websites to adapt to different screen sizes and device types. To show you what CSS does to a website, look at the following two screenshots. Notice all the content is still there, but the visual styling isn't. This is what you might see if the style sheet doesn't load on the website, for whatever reason.

Now, here's what the same web page looks like with CSS added. Put simply, CSS is a list of rules that can assign different properties to HTML tags, either specified to single tags, multiple tags, an entire document, or multiple documents.

It exists because, as design elements like fonts and colors were developed, web designers had a lot of trouble adapting HTML to these new features.

You see, HTML, developed back in , was not really intended to show any physical formatting information. It was originally meant only to define a document's structural content, like headers versus paragraphs. So, what exactly does CSS stand for? It stands for Cascading Style Sheets -- and "style sheet" refers to the document itself. Ever web browser has a default style sheet, so every web page out there is affected by at least one style sheet -- the default style sheet of whatever browser the web page visitor is using -- regardless whether or not the web designer applies any styles.

For example, my browser's default font style is Times New Roman, size 12, so if I visited a web page where the designer didn't apply a style sheet of their own, I would see the web page in Times New Roman, size What do you think you mean by "programming language"? Do you mean a "Turing Complete" language? Or do you mean "something can be used to solve page layout problems?

I thought it meant something that can implement an algorithm? Dean, sorry I didn't see that, however what does it mean by declarative and imperative — Jonathan. Declarative is when you say "this is what I want to happen. No, they're just text markup and style hinting. While CSS may use some elements that are structured like bash scripting, it's just an identifier followed by a semicolon delimited list within curly braces. HTML is like the early days of WordStar when you could hand enter markup and then flip back to simulated page display.

Now Javascript is an actual language you can do stuff with Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Technically yes, but it wasn't really designed to be one.

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