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I am doing a project which is building a website for my CS 205 class. I have made it using notepad++ for the html files and notepad for the css files. My site has a home/index.html page as well as 5 other content pages. What I did was created each each page in notepad++, with each page having its own css file.
What I'm having trouble with is it must have 1 css file that maintains a consistent look across your site / or link all pages to the same css external file. I'm not totally sure if those two mean the same thing that's why I list both of them.
I already have a style sheet in each html page that links to its css file. But I must have one css file for the entire site. Could I just copy and past each css file into one without it changing how each page looks? I would really appreciate it if someone could explain how I do this without it messing up the setup I have for each page.
583
Having all of your styles be consistent across the website is ideal. To achieve this, you have a single stylesheet and link all your pages to it using the <link> tag in the <head>.
It's a good practice to reuse as much CSS as you can, it'll save you time in the future and that's kinda the goal of a stylesheet versus inline styles.
To answer your question, yes you can combine all of our stylesheets together into a single stylesheet provided you do not have any duplicate class names. Notice in my example how I have a .class-for-index that is used in index.html but not in page.html and similarly for .class-for-page.
styles.css (your single stylesheet with all your classes)
body {
background-color: cyan;
}
.class-for-index {
color: red;
}
.class-for-page {
color: blue;
}
index.html (link to the single stylesheet)
<html>
<head>
<link href="styles.css" rel="stylesheet">
</head>
<body class="class-for-index">
Page 1
</body>
</html>
page.html (link to the single stylesheet)
<html>
<head>
<link href="styles.css" rel="stylesheet">
</head>
<body class="class-for-page">
Page 2
</body>
</html>
You've learnt an important lesson of the DRY principle - Don't Repeat Yourself. Maintaining many CSS files creates overhead - how many places do you want to define/change the styling for H1 for example? This is why you've been asked to have a single file.
I'd recommend taking the largest of your css files and making it the master. For each of the other files, add those elements that are missing from the master. It's tedious, but that's the problem you created ;)
You could just copy and paste each file into a single master file and it would work (this is css and the last definition will win), but it's poor practice and you'll just have problems editing it when you have to find the actual definition you are using.
Others have already explained how to link to a single css file from many pages.
25
I am assuming you aren't using PHP at all. Maintaining consistent look across all your webpages is quite easy if done correctly.
basically you have two options:
1. Put all CSS blocks into a single file and link it to all pages
For example: add this to all HTML pages, this single style.css file has rules for all the HTML pages as well as the overall layout.
<head>
<link href="style.css" rel="stylesheet">
</head>
This style.css file can get messy and large if you have a lot of HTML pages.
2. Put CSS blocks that are related to overall design in one file; add individual page-specific CSS rules into new files and link these to their respective pages
For example: add this to a login page, the main.css file will give the overall layout like body background-color, font-family, font-size etc. etc. while the login.css is specifically tailored to the login.html page.
<head>
<link href="css/main.css" rel="stylesheet">
<link href="css/login.css" rel="stylesheet">
</head>
I personally prefer the 2nd approach because it's more easy to maintain and I have more control over my CSS without breaking other styles.
However if you decide to follow the 1st technique, it is advisable to separate strictly page specific CSS (styles that are being only used by as single page) by comment lines. This makes the file more readable.
26
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