Web-designers use CSS or Cascading Style Sheets for separating page content like paragraphs or images from the stylistic elements of the page. These stylistic elements may comprise of colour, fonts, layout etc.

The term generally used for this is ‘Separation of Content from presentation.’

CSS represents a breakthrough in web designing as it equips web developers with the ability to control styling and layout of multiple pages all at once. Web designers can choose a style for every HTML element and apply it to multiple web pages at per their requirement. To effect changes globally, the style needs to automatically update all elements in the web.

However, many people refrain from using CSS just because they lack a proper understanding of it. It nevertheless is worth investing time to learn CSS, as the advantages gained through its use are tremendous.

Some of the major advantages of CSS are

• Creation of smaller file sizes
• Greater control over page structure

Smaller size files and CSS: you can reduce the overall code-amount present in your web pages. This is possible by taking out styles from an HTML page and putting it a standalone style sheet or .css file. Pages containing less code make for smaller file sizes that are preferred by all search engines. The SEO community generally considers page sizes up to 100KB as good.

Better control over page structuring: When using CSS, you can structure your pages as per HTML standards with no compromise on the appearance and feel of the a page. CSS caters to well-structured pages allowing designers to create pages that are attractive and have great flair.

It is best to use CSS in Website design and write one or more than one .css file to house all the style codes and then apply it to the relevant pages with the HTML link tag. Adopting this approach will allow everything related to the look of your web site to be found at a single location and not have it jumbled up with the site’s contents. This will allow you to change your site’s content without affecting its.

Another major advantages of CSS are that it allows being picked up by search engines better, because of clearer code

CSS allows getting picked up by search engines:
When you use CSS to structure your pages, it is possible for you to hide content from specific browsers in certain situations. For example, you may want certain content to appear only in print or you would like some content such as page navigation only to get displayed on the screen and not in print.

Using CSS gives you the advantage of getting content indexed along with the benefit that content brings. Assuming you are new to CSS, you must understand that many browsers still interpret CSS standards in their own ways. Some of the archaic browsers do not read CSS at all.

While structuring your pages using CSS, you must ensure that that they have the maximum cross browser compatibility and that HTML pages appear acceptable even without CSS.