Tag: CSS

CSS Lesson 5: Webpage Margins and Padding

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Hello everybody,

Michael here, and today’s post will discuss how to incorporate CSS margins and padding into your webpage.

What do margins and padding do, exactly? Well, in the context of CSS development, margins are used to create space around webpage elements outside of predefined borders. In other words, if there are some elements that you’d like to surround with some whitespace, using a margin would be perfect.

Let’s explore how margins work by first taking a look at the HTML form code we’ve used for every CSS lesson in this series thus far (the CSS stylings not including the borders from the previous lesson will remain intact here):

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="es-US" dir="ltr">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="Form.css">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Press+Start+2P">
    <title></title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Flight finder:</h1>
    <form action="Submitted.html" method="POST">
      <label for="datepicker1">Pick the date you want to depart for your vacation</label><br>
      <input type="date" id="datepicker1" name="datepicker1" min="2021-03-25" max="2022-03-25"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="datepicker2">Pick the date you want to return from your vacation</label><br>
      <input type="date" id="datepicker2" name="datepicker2" min="2021-03-25" max="2022-03-25"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="time1">What time would you like to depart? (flights shown within 90 minutes of selected time)</label><br>
      <input type="time" id="time1" name="time1"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="time2">What time would you like to return? (flights shown within 90 minutes of selected time)</label><br>
      <input type="time" id="time2" name="time2"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="layover">How many layovers do you want?</label><br>
      <input type="number" id="layover" name="layover" min="0" max="3"><br>
      <br>
      <input type="submit" value="Submit">
    </form>
    <div class="container">
     <p>Thank you for booking your next trip with XYZ Airlines!!</p>
     <p>Can't wait to see you on your travels!!</p>
   </div>
  </body>
</html>

Great. Now let’s say we wanted to add a little margin to the Flight finder: header. Take a look at the highlighted line of CSS code to see how you can accomplish this:

h1{
  color: green;
  font-family: "Comic Sans MS";
  font-size: 40px;
  text-align: center;
  margin: 30px;
}

.container{
  color: red;
  font-family: "Press Start 2P";
  font-size: 30px;
  text-align: center;
}

input{
  background-color: #00FFFF
}

To add a margin to the Flight finder: header, I added a styling call to the h1 declaration that uses the margin property and sets the value to 30px-this adds a 30px margin around all sides of the Flight finder: header.

Look, I know margins aren’t as obvious to detect as borders but trust me, they’re there. If it helps, think of margins as a sort of invisible border around a certain HTML element(s).

  • Margins are always measured in px (pixels). Always append the px suffix to whatever you want to use for the margin measurement.
  • Also, even though I mentioned that you could think of margins as “invisible borders”, you can’t set colors or line styles for margins (after all, margins are invisible, so therefore you won’t even see any colors/line styles). However, margins, like borders, have four sides-you can have four different margin sizes if you so choose (just like you can have four different border line stylings). More on this point later.

So, know how I mentioned that similar to how you can have up to four different border line stylings, you can also have up to four different margin sizes. Let’s see an example of this in the highlighted line of CSS code below:

h1{
  color: green;
  font-family: "Comic Sans MS";
  font-size: 40px;
  text-align: center;
  margin: 30px 10px 20px 40px;
}

.container{
  color: red;
  font-family: "Press Start 2P";
  font-size: 30px;
  text-align: center;
}

input{
  background-color: #00FFFF
}

In this example, I used four different margin lengths-30px 10px 20px 40px-to denote the four different margin sizes I’d like to use. Notice anything familiar about the highlighted styling call? The way I listed the margin lengths is the same way I used to list different border stylings in the previous lesson (CSS Lesson 4: Webpage Borders)

Just to reiterate the logic I used in the previous post (but in the context of margins):

  • If margin has four values:
    • Example: margin: 10px 50px 20px 40px
    • How it would work: top margin of 10px, right margin of 50px, bottom margin of 20px, left margin of 40px
  • If margin has three values:
    • Example: margin: 10px 50px 20px
    • How it would work: top margin 10px, right and left margins 50px, bottom margin 75px
  • If margin has two values:
    • Example: margin: 10px 50px
    • How it would work: top and bottom margins 10px, right and left margins 50px
  • If margin has one value:
    • Example: margin: 10px
    • How it would work: all margins 10px
  • Ideally, try to maintain even margins for your elements. Having all margins the same length is fantastic, but the 2-2 rule (which I made up) works just as well-top and bottom margins set to the same length, and left and right margins set to the same length but different than the length of the top and bottom margins.
  • If you want to set margin lengths for each side of a margin around an element, using the margin-top, margin-bottom, margin-left and margin-right properties would work too; however, this is less efficient than utilzing the multiple margin lengths logic I discussed above.

Sounds pretty easy, right? However, keep in mind that there’s another possible value for margins-auto. Using the auto value on an element will horizontally center it. Take a look at how it’s used (through the highlighted line of code):

h1{
  color: green;
  font-family: "Comic Sans MS";
  font-size: 40px;
  text-align: center;
  margin: auto;
}

.container{
  color: red;
  font-family: "Press Start 2P";
  font-size: 30px;
  text-align: center;
}

input{
  background-color: #00FFFF
}

In this example, I set the value of the h1 element’s margins property to auto, which automatically horizonatally centers the h1 element in the webpage.

  • Personally, if you want the webpage looking as neat as possible, auto would be the way to go when working with your margins. Also, unlike with prespecified margin lengths (e.g. 10px, 50px), you can’t repeat auto several times. So a styling call like margins: auto auto auto auto won’t work.

Now that we’ve explored margins, let’s take a look at padding. Padding and margins are conceptually similar since both features are meant to create space around an element (or elements) in your webpage. However, margins create space around an element outside of a defined border, while padding creates space around an element INSIDE of a defined border. Let’s take a look at a basic example of padding (using the highlighted line of code below):

h1{
  color: green;
  font-family: "Comic Sans MS";
  font-size: 40px;
  text-align: center;
  margin: auto;
}

.container{
  color: red;
  font-family: "Press Start 2P";
  font-size: 30px;
  text-align: center;
  border-style: solid;
  border-color: green;
  border-width: 6px;
  padding: 30px
}

input{
  background-color: #00FFFF
}

In this example, I applied a padding of 30px (like margins, padding values are also specified in px or pixels) to the elements in the .container class-the last two lines of text on the webpage. This creates whitespace of 30px between the elements and each side of the border.

Now, can you specify multiple padding lengths similar to how you can specify multiple border stylings or margin lengths? Yes. Does the logic for specifying mutliple padding lengths work the same as it would for specifying multiple border stylings or margin lengths? Also yes. Let me explain below:

  • If padding has four values:
    • Example: padding: 25px 30px 10px 50px
    • How it would work: top padding 25px, right padding 50px, bottom padding 10px, left padding 50px
  • If padding has three values:
    • Example: padding: 25px 30px 10px
    • How it would work: top padding 25px, right and left paddings 30px, bottom padding 10px
  • If padding has two values:
    • Example: padding: 25px 30px
    • How it would work: top and bottom paddings 25px, right and left paddings 30px
  • If padding has one value:
    • Example: padding: 25px
    • How it would work: all paddings 25px

While discussing CSS margins, I did mention another approach to setting multiple margin lengths-using the margin-top, margin-left, margin-bottom, and margin-right properties to set the top, left, bottom, and right margin lengths, respectively. You can do something similar with padding lengths using the padding-top, padding-left, padding-bottom, and padding-right properties, respectively, but it would be much more efficient to use the multiple-padding-lengths-in-a-single-line approach that I discussed above.

  • Just like with margin lengths, I don’t recommend setting four (or even three) different padding lengths, as this would make the element spacing look really uneven. One or two padding lengths would work just fine (preferably a single padding length).
    • You may be able to hide uneven margin lengths better than you can hide uneven padding lengths, as margins are utilized outside of defined borders while padding is utilized inside of defined borders. Therefore, uneven padding is more obvious to see to visitors of your website.
  • Lo and behold, you can utilize the auto property on padding too in order to horizontally center your element withing a border. Same rules from applying the auto property to margins are in place here (e.g. the styling call padding: auto auto auto auto) won’t work. Here’s how utilizing the auto property for padding would work here (pay attention to the highlighted line of code):
h1{
  color: green;
  font-family: "Comic Sans MS";
  font-size: 40px;
  text-align: center;
  margin: auto;
}

.container{
  color: red;
  font-family: "Press Start 2P";
  font-size: 30px;
  text-align: center;
  border-style: solid;
  border-color: green;
  border-width: 6px;
  padding: auto
}

input{
  background-color: #00FFFF
}

Thanks for reading,

Michael

CSS Lesson 4: Webpage Borders

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Hello everybody,

Michael here, and today’s lesson will cover how to use CSS borders on your webpage.

When you are designing your HTML website, borders are crucial design elements.

First off, let’s start by exploring CSS borders. To do that, let’s use the form we’ve been using for my CSS lessons (minus the background image from the previous lesson):

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="es-US" dir="ltr">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="Form.css">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Press+Start+2P">
    <title></title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Flight finder:</h1>
    <form action="Submitted.html" method="POST">
      <label for="datepicker1">Pick the date you want to depart for your vacation</label><br>
      <input type="date" id="datepicker1" name="datepicker1" min="2021-03-25" max="2022-03-25"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="datepicker2">Pick the date you want to return from your vacation</label><br>
      <input type="date" id="datepicker2" name="datepicker2" min="2021-03-25" max="2022-03-25"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="time1">What time would you like to depart? (flights shown within 90 minutes of selected time)</label><br>
      <input type="time" id="time1" name="time1"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="time2">What time would you like to return? (flights shown within 90 minutes of selected time)</label><br>
      <input type="time" id="time2" name="time2"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="layover">How many layovers do you want?</label><br>
      <input type="number" id="layover" name="layover" min="0" max="3"><br>
      <br>
      <input type="submit" value="Submit">
    </form>
    <div class="container">
     <p>Thank you for booking your next trip with XYZ Airlines!!</p>
     <p>Can't wait to see you on your travels!!</p>
   </div>
  </body>
</html>

Great, so we have the form webpage (along with the corresponding code) here. Now, let’s say we wanted to add a simple CSS border to the last two lines of text (the ones in red). How would we do so? Take a look at the highlighted line of CSS code below:

h1{
  color: green;
  font-family: "Comic Sans MS";
  font-size: 40px;
  text-align: center
}

.container{
  color: red;
  font-family: "Press Start 2P";
  font-size: 30px;
  text-align: center;
  border-style: solid
}

input{
  background-color: #00FFFF
}

To add a CSS border to an element on the form, simply add a border-style styling call and set any of the following values for border-style:

  • dotted-creates a dotted line border
  • dashed-creates a dashed line border
  • solid-creates a solid line border
  • double-creates a double border
  • groove-creates a 3D grooved border
  • ridge-creates a 3D ridged border
  • inset-creates a 3D inset border
  • outset-creates a 3D outset border
  • none-creates no border
  • hidden-creates a hidden line border

In this example, I set the value of the border-style property to solid, which creates a solid red border on the last two lines of text on this webpage.

Now, what if you wanted a thicker or thinner border? Let’s see how we can change border thickness (look at the highlighted section of code below):

h1{
  color: green;
  font-family: "Comic Sans MS";
  font-size: 40px;
  text-align: center
}

.container{
  color: red;
  font-family: "Press Start 2P";
  font-size: 30px;
  text-align: center;
  border-style: solid;
  border-width: 6px
}

input{
  background-color: #00FFFF
}

As you can see, I managed to make the border slightly thicker than it was before. How did I manage to do this? I added another styling call to the .container declaration that contains the property border-width and has a value of 6px (border thickness in CSS is always measured in px or pixels).

  • Remember that the value of the border-width property must always contain px at the end and a number at the beginning (e.g. 6px in this example). And don’t wrap this value in quotes-it’s not a string!

Now, as you may have noticed from the previous two examples, the border around the last two lines of text is red-this is because the border color will default to the color of the elements it contains, and since the text inside the border is red, the border itself will also be red.

Let’s say we wanted to change the aforementioned border’s color from red to green. How would we accomplish this? Take a look at the highlighted line of code below:

h1{
  color: green;
  font-family: "Comic Sans MS";
  font-size: 40px;
  text-align: center
}

.container{
  color: red;
  font-family: "Press Start 2P";
  font-size: 30px;
  text-align: center;
  border-style: solid;
  border-width: 6px;
  border-color: green
}

input{
  background-color: #00FFFF
}

To change the border’s color, I simply added another styling call to the .container declaration; in this call, I used the border-color property and set this property’s value to green to change the border from red to green.

  • Using a HEX code, RGB code, HSL code, or the keyword transparent would have worked here too. However, using simple color names (e.g. red, blue, orange) always works with the border-color property, especially if you want a basic color.

So, having fun exploring the several different ways we can play with CSS borders? If so, great, but we’ve got one more thing to explore.

In case you weren’t aware, you can apply more than one styling to a border. Curious? Well check out the highlighted line of code below to see how you can apply multiple different stylings to a CSS border:

h1{
  color: green;
  font-family: "Comic Sans MS";
  font-size: 40px;
  text-align: center
}

.container{
  color: red;
  font-family: "Press Start 2P";
  font-size: 30px;
  text-align: center;
  border-style: solid dashed;
  border-width: 6px
}

input{
  background-color: #00FFFF
}

As you can see here, I created a border with two different stylings (solid on the top and bottom and dashed on the left and right). How did I accomplish this? I set the value of the border-style property to solid dashed, which will tell CSS to create a border that is dashed on two sides and solid on the other two sides. To set multiple different stylings for the border, simply list the styles you want for the border and separate the names of each style with a space. That’s it-and you can have between one and four styles for your border. Here’s how the multiple border stylings trick works in CSS:

  • Four border stylings:
    • example: border-style: dotted dashed solid ridge
    • how it works: top border dotted, right border dashed, bottom border solid, left border ridge
  • Three border stylings:
    • example: border-style: dotted solid groove
    • how it works: top border dotted, right and left borders solid, bottom border groove
  • Two border stylings:
    • example: border-style: solid dashed
    • how it works: top and bottom borders solid, left and right borders dashed
  • One border styling:
    • example: border-style: solid
    • how it works: all borders solid

Pretty neat stuff right? Just wait until you see that similar logic for the multiple border stylings trick also works to apply multiple border colors. Check out the highlighted line of code below:

h1{
  color: green;
  font-family: "Comic Sans MS";
  font-size: 40px;
  text-align: center
}

.container{
  color: red;
  font-family: "Press Start 2P";
  font-size: 30px;
  text-align: center;
  border-style: solid dashed;
  border-color: red green;
  border-width: 6px
}

input{
  background-color: #00FFFF
}

And here’s what the webpage looks like with the multiple border colors applied:

How did I generate a red and green border? I simply added another styling call to the .container declaration that used the border-color property along with two color values separated by a space-red green (similar to what I did with the multiple values for the border-style property). The highlighted line of code above tells CSS to make the top and bottom borders red and the left and right borders green.

  • You’ll notice that I used both the border-color and color properties in the .container declaration. Note that you can’t use these properties interchangeably-color sets the color of the elements in the .container declaration (the last two lines of text on this webpage) while border-color sets the color of the border around the aforementioned elements.

Also, just as with multiple CSS borders, you can apply between one and four different border colors to your border. Here’s how the multiple border colors trick would work in CSS:

  • Four border colors:
    • example: border-color: red orange green blue
    • how it works: top border red, right border orange, bottom border green, left border blue
  • Three border colors:
    • example: border-color: red orange green
    • how it works: top border red, right and left borders orange, bottom border green
  • Two border colors:
    • example: border-color: red orange
    • how it works: top and bottom borders red, left and right borders orange
  • One border color:
    • example: border-color: red
    • how it works: all borders red

Thanks for reading,

Michael

CSS Lesson 3: The Basics of Backgrounds

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Hello everybody,

Michael here, and today’s lesson will cover basic principles of using backgrounds in CSS.

Just as I did for my previous CSS lessons, I’ll use the sample form I created in HTML for this lesson. Here’s the code for the form:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="es-US" dir="ltr">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="Form.css">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Press+Start+2P">
    <title></title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Flight finder:</h1>
    <form action="Submitted.html" method="POST">
      <label for="datepicker1">Pick the date you want to depart for your vacation</label><br>
      <input type="date" id="datepicker1" name="datepicker1" min="2021-03-25" max="2022-03-25"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="datepicker2">Pick the date you want to return from your vacation</label><br>
      <input type="date" id="datepicker2" name="datepicker2" min="2021-03-25" max="2022-03-25"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="time1">What time would you like to depart? (flights shown within 90 minutes of selected time)</label><br>
      <input type="time" id="time1" name="time1"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="time2">What time would you like to return? (flights shown within 90 minutes of selected time)</label><br>
      <input type="time" id="time2" name="time2"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="layover">How many layovers do you want?</label><br>
      <input type="number" id="layover" name="layover" min="0" max="3"><br>
      <br>
      <input type="submit" value="Submit">
    </form>
    <div class="container">
     <p>Thank you for booking your next trip with XYZ Airlines!!</p>
     <p>Can't wait to see you on your travels!!</p>
   </div>
  </body>
</html>

And here’s the CSS styling code we’ll use (I’ll keep the styling I applied at the end of CSS Lesson 2: Fun with Fonts):

h1{
  color: green;
  font-family: "Comic Sans MS";
  font-size: 40px;
  text-align: center
}

.container{
  color: red;
  font-family: "Press Start 2P";
  font-size: 30px;
  text-align: center
}

Here’s what the webpage looks like with the current styling:

Now, how would we add some background styling to the webpage. Take a look at the highlighted segment of code below:

h1{
  color: green;
  font-family: "Comic Sans MS";
  font-size: 40px;
  text-align: center
}

.container{
  color: red;
  font-family: "Press Start 2P";
  font-size: 30px;
  text-align: center
}

body{
  background-color: #87CEEB
}

To set a background color for the webpage, use the body selector and inside the selector, call the background-color property and set the value of this property to a certain color, which can take one of these three forms:

  • a conventional color name (e.g. red, yellow, green)
  • a color HEX code (e.g. #87CEEB)
  • a color RGB code (e.g. rgb(123, 10, 88))

In this example, I specified the backround color with a hex code-#87CEEB. In case you’re wondering, this hex code produces a sky-blue background (heck, I thought it was appropriate given that this a form for an imaginary airline). Here’s what the webpage looks like with the background styling applied:

  • If you want to apply a background color to the entire webpage, always use the body selector!
  • When specifying a HEX code color, don’t wrap it in quotation marks.

So, the background looks great, but all the input elements in the form could use some more styling as well. How should we approach this? Take a look at the CSS code below and pay attention to the highlighted section:

h1{
  color: green;
  font-family: "Comic Sans MS";
  font-size: 40px;
  text-align: center
}

.container{
  color: red;
  font-family: "Press Start 2P";
  font-size: 30px;
  text-align: center
}

body{
  background-color: #87CEEB
}

input{
  background-color: #00FFFF
}

Here’s what the webpage looks like with the additional styling:

Yes, you can give background stylings to elements other than the main webpage as I did here with the input elements. To style the input elements, I created a CSS styling call with input as the selector and background-color: #00FFFF as the styling call that will change the background color of the input elements.

  • #00FFFF refers to cyan by the way. I thought it would be an appropratie color given that this is a form for an (imaginary) airline.

Alright, the webpage looks great so far! However, what if you wanted to use a picture for the background rather than a color? How would you go about doing this? Take a look at the highlighted section of the code below:

h1{
  color: green;
  font-family: "Comic Sans MS";
  font-size: 40px;
  text-align: center
}

.container{
  color: red;
  font-family: "Press Start 2P";
  font-size: 30px;
  text-align: center
}

body{
  background-image: url('stock photo.jpg')
}

input{
  background-color: #00FFFF
}

So, how did I get the result for my webpage that you see above? Well, I first obtained a stock photo from a stock photo website (https://shop.stockphotosecrets.com/index.cfm?/home_EN&CFID=351309901&CFTOKEN=65225479 for those curious). I then saved the stock photo to the same directory where my form HTML and CSS code is located.

To add the stock photo to the website, use CSS’s background-image property and set the value of this property to url(image name.image extension); in this example, the value of the background-image property was url('stock photo.jpg'), since I had saved this stock photo of a plane onto my computer as stock photo.jpg (creative, I know).

  • If you want to succesfully connect your chosen background image to your HTML webpage, wrap the name of your image (as it’s saved on your computer) inside a url() function. Also, wrap the name of your image in quotes (whether single quotes or double quotes) as I did in the above example.

Once I set the form’s background-image property, the webpage’s background image changes to the stock photo of a plane I saved onto my computer.

Looks pretty good, right? Well, there’s one thing we can fix-if you’re thinking of the fact that the stock photo is repeated several times throughout the webpage (both vertically and horizontally), you’d be right. Yes, there’s a simple fix to the repeating background image issue, and all it takes is a single line of code. Check out the highlighed section of the code below:

h1{
  color: green;
  font-family: "Comic Sans MS";
  font-size: 40px;
  text-align: center
}

.container{
  color: red;
  font-family: "Press Start 2P";
  font-size: 30px;
  text-align: center
}

body{
  background-image: url('stock photo.jpg');
  background-repeat: no-repeat;
}

input{
  background-color: #00FFFF
}

To ensure the background image doesn’t repeat, I added the background-repeat property to the body styling call in the CSS file and set this property’s value to no-repeat to tell my CSS code to only display the background image once.

  • If I only wanted to repeat the background image horizontally, I could set the value of the background-repeat property to repeat-x. Likewise, if I only wanted to repeat the background image vertically, I could set the value of the background-repeat property to repeat-y.

Alright, the webpage is looking better, but we’ve still got another issue-the background image only covers the top-left corner of the webpage when it should ideally cover the whole webpage. How would we fix this issue? Take a look at the highlighted section of the CSS code below:

h1{
  color: green;
  font-family: "Comic Sans MS";
  font-size: 40px;
  text-align: center
}

.container{
  color: red;
  font-family: "Press Start 2P";
  font-size: 30px;
  text-align: center
}

body{
  background-image: url('stock photo.jpg');
  background-repeat: no-repeat;
  background-size: cover;
}

input{
  background-color: #00FFFF
}

Just as I did with the background-repeat property, I managed to fix the background image display issue with a single line of code-in this case, background-size: cover. What this single line of code does is utilize CSS’s background-size property to change the size of the background image to cover, which will stretch the background image to cover the whole webpage. Pretty neat what you can do with a single line of code is CSS, amirite?

  • If you set the size of a background image to cover keep in mind that the image will likely either stretch or be slightly cut off.

So, the webpage is looking a lot nicer! However, before I go, let me leave you with these web background design tips:

  • When picking a background (whether its a color or an image), pick something that doesn’t clash with the webpage’s text too much. If you like your choice of background but find that it clashes with the text too much, change the color scheme of the text.
    • Now that I think of it, the last two lines of text on this webpage somewhat clash with the background image. But then again, this is for a programming lesson, not a production-ready website.
  • Also, if you’re creating a webpage for a business (not for a programming lesson), PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don’t use stock photos. It just looks unprofessional and fakey.

Thanks for reading,

Michael

CSS Lesson 2: Fun with Fonts

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Hello everybody,

Michael here, and today’s lesson will explore working with fonts in CSS.

Choosing the right font, just like choosing the right colors, is an important element in website styling. For our exploration of CSS fonts, let’s take a look at the form we styled in CSS Lesson 1: Introduction to CSS Styling. Here’s the form’s HTML code along with the screenshot of the form (keep in mind that this form code isn’t connected to a CSS file):

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="es-US" dir="ltr">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title></title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Flight finder:</h1>
    <form action="Submitted.html" method="POST">
      <label for="datepicker1">Pick the date you want to depart for your vacation</label><br>
      <input type="date" id="datepicker1" name="datepicker1" min="2021-03-25" max="2022-03-25"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="datepicker2">Pick the date you want to return from your vacation</label><br>
      <input type="date" id="datepicker2" name="datepicker2" min="2021-03-25" max="2022-03-25"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="time1">What time would you like to depart? (flights shown within 90 minutes of selected time)</label><br>
      <input type="time" id="time1" name="time1"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="time2">What time would you like to return? (flights shown within 90 minutes of selected time)</label><br>
      <input type="time" id="time2" name="time2"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="layover">How many layovers do you want?</label><br>
      <input type="number" id="layover" name="layover" min="0" max="3"><br>
      <br>
      <input type="submit" value="Submit">
    </form>
    <div class="container">
     <p>Thank you for booking your next trip with XYZ Airlines!!</p>
     <p>Can't wait to see you on your travels!!</p>
   </div>
  </body>
</html>

OK, so now that we know what the unstyled version of the form looks like, let’s start having some fun with (CSS) fonts. Just as we did for the previous CSS lesson, I’d suggest creating a new CSS file and giving it the same name as your HTML file-in this case, I’ll call the CSS file Form.css since my HTML file is called Form.html.

Before we start examining how to work with fonts in CSS, let’s familiarize ourselves with the concept of font families. CSS has five different font families, which are categories of fonts with their own distinct features; here are the five different font families:

  • Serif-these fonts have a small stroke at the edge of each letter (example: Times New Roman-the font I’m using for this blog)
  • Sans-serif-these fonts have no small strokes at the edge of each letter (example: Arial)
  • Monospace-these fonts have letters of equal width (example: Courier New)
  • Cursive-these fonts are meant to look like human handwriting, namely cursive handwriting-remember learning that in school? (e.g. Comic Sans)
  • Fantasy-these fonts are meant to be decorative (e.g. Papyrus)

For those of you who’d like a visual depiction of the five CSS font families, refer to the picture below:

https://renenyffenegger.ch/notes/development/web/CSS/properties/font-family

Now that we discussed the five CSS font families, let’s see how we can apply font stylings to our webpage. Let’s start the font styling by first changing the font of the top header (Flight finder:)

h1{
  color: green;
  font-family: "Comic Sans MS";
  text-align: center
}

To style the top header, I applied a series of CSS styling calls to the <h1> tag, as it contained the Flight finder: header. Aside from changing the font of the <h1> tag, I also changed the tag’s color and center-aligned the text. Take a look at the series of CSS styling calls I applied to the <h1> tag. Which styling call do you think changes the font? If you thought it was the styling call with the font-family property, you’d be right. In order to change the font of a certain element, you’d need to make this styling call: font-family: "[font you'd like to use]". Yes, you would need to wrap the name of the font you’d like to use inside double quotes as I did for the font name I used in this example.

  • When deciding on font stylings for your webpage, Comic Sans is the last font I’d use if I was designing a webpage for a business since Comic Sans is generally seen as unprofessional. However, if you’re just designing a webpage to follow along with my tutorial, let your imagination run wild with the font stylings!

Now, what if you wanted to change the font size of the <h1> tag? Take a look at this series of styling calls below:

h1{
  color: green;
  font-family: "Comic Sans MS";
  font-size: 40px;
  text-align: center
}

In this example, I used the font-size property to change the font size of the <h1> tag to 40px (40 pixels). Whenever specifying a font size, always follow this syntax-font size + px. Don’t forget to put the px after the number!

Now, let’s change the font of the last two lines of text on this page. Here’s how to do so (in this example, we’ll change the font to Century Gothic):

.container{
  color: red;
  font-family: "Century Gothic";
  font-size: 30px;
  text-align: center
}

In this example, note that I kept the same font styling for <h1> that I had applied in the previous example. Aside from that, pay attention to the code above that I used to change the styling for the last two lines. Recall that from my previous CSS lesson (CSS Lesson 1: Introduction to CSS Styling) that the dot (.) is used as one of the main selectors in CSS; selectors tell CSS to select a certain element to style. In this example, the dot selector tells CSS to style all elements within a container class-if you take a look at the form code that I shared at the beginning of this post, you’ll notice that the last two lines of the webpage are contained in a <div> tag with the class container. Thus, when I applied the series of CSS styling calls to the container class, the stylings were applied to the last two lines of text on this webpage.

As for the stylings I applied, I simply made the text red and center-aligned along with using a size 30 Century Gothic font.

Now, let’s say instead of using common CSS fonts (e.g. Arial, Times New Roman), you wanted to get a little creative with your CSS styling. In this example, let’s say you wanted to pull a font from somewhere else-we’ll use a font from the Google Fonts API (here’s the link to the API, which contains a catalog of thousands of fonts-https://fonts.google.com/).

Here’s the homepage of the Google Fonts API:

If you scroll down further on the page, you can see thousands of freely-available fonts for your website’s use.

  • In case you’re wondering why you see the sentence This is the year 2022 several times on the homepage, it’s because in the box to the right of the font size slider (currently set to 40px), you can type in a word or phrase and see what that word/phrase looks like in hundreds of different fonts. This is the year 2022 happened to be my test phrase.

For this example, let’s change the font of the elements in the container class (the last two lines of text on this webpage) to Press Start 2P-which you can find on the Google Fonts API.

Here’s the Press Start 2P font on the Google Fonts API-I like the font’s retro gaming aesthetic:

Now, how do we get this font onto our CSS styling and in turn, onto the webpage? Take a look at the line in red in the form’s HTML code:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="es-US" dir="ltr">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="Form.css">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Press+Start+2P">
    <title></title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Flight finder:</h1>
    <form action="Submitted.html" method="POST">
      <label for="datepicker1">Pick the date you want to depart for your vacation</label><br>
      <input type="date" id="datepicker1" name="datepicker1" min="2021-03-25" max="2022-03-25"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="datepicker2">Pick the date you want to return from your vacation</label><br>
      <input type="date" id="datepicker2" name="datepicker2" min="2021-03-25" max="2022-03-25"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="time1">What time would you like to depart? (flights shown within 90 minutes of selected time)</label><br>
      <input type="time" id="time1" name="time1"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="time2">What time would you like to return? (flights shown within 90 minutes of selected time)</label><br>
      <input type="time" id="time2" name="time2"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="layover">How many layovers do you want?</label><br>
      <input type="number" id="layover" name="layover" min="0" max="3"><br>
      <br>
      <input type="submit" value="Submit">
    </form>
    <div class="container">
     <p>Thank you for booking your next trip with XYZ Airlines!!</p>
     <p>Can't wait to see you on your travels!!</p>
   </div>
  </body>
</html>

Also take a look at the line in red in the form’s CSS code:

h1{
  color: green;
  font-family: "Comic Sans MS";
  font-size: 40px;
  text-align: center
}

.container{
  color: red;
  font-family: "Press Start 2P";
  font-size: 30px;
  text-align: center
}

See, I can declare Press Start 2P in the font-family property of the .container styling calls just fine. However, since Press Start 2P is not a standard HTML font, setting this font as the value of the font-family property alone won’t change the font.

  • Standard HTML fonts refer to fonts that you can find pre-installed onto a standard edition of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or Excel.

That’s where the red-highlighted line in the form’s HTML code comes in. If you’re not using a standard HTML font on your webpage, you’d need to create another <link> tag that links to the font’s URL on the Google Fonts API (or any fonts API you might use for that matter). The link’s rel would still be stylesheet, but the href would be the font’s URL on the API.

Let’s take a look and see what the webpage looks like with the Press Start 2P font:

Pretty neat, right? Recall that I kept the green, center-aligned Comic Sans font for the top header on the webpage, so that’s why the style looks the same.

Thanks for reading,

Michael

CSS Lesson 1: Introduction to CSS Styling

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Hello everybody,

Michael here, and today I will be going over the basics of CSS to you guys.

What is CSS? First of all, CSS is a tool that stands for cascading style sheets-CSS and HTML always go hand-in-hand since CSS is the tool you’d use to give HTML webpages their style (as opposed to leaving them in bland black-and-white Times New Roman).

  • You can have HTML without CSS, but you can’t have CSS without HTML.

To start exploring CSS, let’s use the HTML form we used in the previous post (HTML Lesson 8: Block & Inline Content in HTML):

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="es-US" dir="ltr">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title></title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Flight finder:</h1>
    <form action="Submitted.html" method="POST">
      <label for="datepicker1">Pick the date you want to depart for your vacation</label><br>
      <input type="date" id="datepicker1" name="datepicker1" min="2021-03-25" max="2022-03-25"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="datepicker2">Pick the date you want to return from your vacation</label><br>
      <input type="date" id="datepicker2" name="datepicker2" min="2021-03-25" max="2022-03-25"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="time1">What time would you like to depart? (flights shown within 90 minutes of selected time)</label><br>
      <input type="time" id="time1" name="time1"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="time2">What time would you like to return? (flights shown within 90 minutes of selected time)</label><br>
      <input type="time" id="time2" name="time2"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="layover">How many layovers do you want?</label><br>
      <input type="number" id="layover" name="layover" min="0" max="3"><br>
      <br>
      <input type="submit" value="Submit">
    </form>
    <div class="container">
     <p>Thank you for booking your next trip with XYZ Airlines!!</p>
     <p>Can't wait to see you on your travels!!</p>
   </div>
  </body>
</html>

As you can see here, we have a perfectly functional, albeit bland looking website. Let’s explore how we can add some CSS styling to this website.

First, we’d need to create a separate CSS file-ideally, keep this CSS file in the same directory as the HTML file that you wish to style (and, although not super necessary, use the same name for the CSS file that you have for the HTML file):

As you can see, I have created a CSS file for my HTML Form file-my CSS file is also named Form.

Now, let’s start adding some simple styling to the CSS file:

h1{
  color: green;
  text-align: center
}

OK, for those of you unfamiliar with CSS, you’re probably wondering what on earth you’re seeing here.

All CSS styling calls (like what you’re seeing in the example above) consist of two parts-a selector and a declaration block. The selector indicates the HTML element you want to apply a particular styling to-in this example, h1 is the selector, which indicates that I want to apply a certain styling call to any h1 element in my HTML file. The declaration block is where the CSS styling magic really happens as it contains one or more styling declarations (each styling declaration is separated by a semicolon as you can see from the example above). Each declaration is wrapped in a pair of curly brackets (much like a Python dictionary) and contains the name of a CSS property (color and text-align in this example) and a corresponding value (green and center, respectively) separated by a colon.

  • In case you weren’t sure what the above styling call meant, it’s telling HTML to style all elements with an H1 tag with a green color and center-align the text.

Now, what if you wanted to style another element on the webpage? Take a look at the code below to see how to add another styling call:

h1{
  color: green;
  text-align: center
}

.container{
  color: red;
  font-weight: bold
}

In this example-and in addition to the h1 styling call that I had previously used-I also added a .container styling call to apply certain stylings to all elements in the container class. To add another styling call to the CSS file, simply create a new styling call using the following syntax: selector { CSS property : CSS value ; }.

In the styling call, I’m telling HTML to make all text in the container class red and bold-faced.

  • You’ll only need the semi-colon if you’ve got more than one CSS property-value pair. Also, no need to add a semi-colon after the last CSS property-value pair in your styling call.

Why did I add a dot (.) in front of container for the styling? Well, the dot indicates that I want to style elements of a certain class, and since container is a class in the HTML form, .container indicates that I want to applying a certain set of stylings to all elements in the .container class.

In CSS, there are six CSS styling selectors that your should know. Here’s a table that explains each of these selectors and how they are applied in CSS styling:

SelectorExampleHow it’s used
elementh1Applies a certain set of stylings
to all H1 elements
.class.containerApplies a certain set of stylings
to all elements inside a container class
element.classdiv.containerApplies a certain set of stylings
only to elements inside a container class
AND a <div> tag
**Applies a certain set of stylings to everything on
an HTML page
#id#datepickerApplies a certain set of stylings to all elements with
the datepicker ID
element, elementh1, pApplies a certain set of stylings to all H1 AND <p>
elements

Now, the big question is how you would connect the CSS file to the HTML and in turn, apply the CSS styling to the HTML webpage. Take a look at this new HTML code-pay attention the line in red:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="es-US" dir="ltr">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="Form.css">
    <title></title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Flight finder:</h1>
    <form action="Submitted.html" method="POST">
      <label for="datepicker1">Pick the date you want to depart for your vacation</label><br>
      <input type="date" id="datepicker1" name="datepicker1" min="2021-03-25" max="2022-03-25"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="datepicker2">Pick the date you want to return from your vacation</label><br>
      <input type="date" id="datepicker2" name="datepicker2" min="2021-03-25" max="2022-03-25"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="time1">What time would you like to depart? (flights shown within 90 minutes of selected time)</label><br>
      <input type="time" id="time1" name="time1"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="time2">What time would you like to return? (flights shown within 90 minutes of selected time)</label><br>
      <input type="time" id="time2" name="time2"><br>
      <br>
      <label for="layover">How many layovers do you want?</label><br>
      <input type="number" id="layover" name="layover" min="0" max="3"><br>
      <br>
      <input type="submit" value="Submit">
    </form>
    <div class="container">
     <p>Thank you for booking your next trip with XYZ Airlines!!</p>
     <p>Can't wait to see you on your travels!!</p>
   </div>
  </body>
</html>

The highlighted line contains a <link> tag with two parameters-rel and href. In this example, you’d set the rel parameter equal to stylesheet, as you are connecting a CSS file to your HTML webpage. You’d set the value of the href parameter equal to the name of the CSS file that contains the stylings you want to apply to the HTML webpage.

  • As you can see, all it takes is a single line of code to connect a CSS file to an HTML file. Pretty impressive, right?

Once we’ve connected the CSS file to the HTML file, let’s see how our stylized HTML webpage looks:

Alright, the webpage is looking better. There is definitely much more CSS styling we can apply to webpage-I’ll certainly dive into more CSS styling concepts in the next few lessons.

Thanks for reading,

Michael