How do I link all pages to the same css external file? - html

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.

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.

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.

I think a single css file to be created and linked to all pages. You can create multiple css files too but one css file would be easy to maintain and once your index.html loads the css file would get cached in the browser.

Each file within your solution just needs to link to that one unified external stylesheet via a link tag in the head of the document:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/path-to-mystyle.css">
Google "create external stylesheet" for many resources on this!

You can create a separate CSS file and put all of your "common" CSS into that, call it main.css for example. This is CSS for tags such as p, h1, h2, ul, li etc to set fonts and margins etc across the whole site since these should not really change between different pages.
You can include that file on all of your pages.
Then beneath that file you can include a page specific CSS file with CSS for that page only. That will have CSS which is for the layout of that specific page like background-images etc.

This is creating external css file:
In Index.html:
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="mystyle.css">
</head>
Other pages,
Page-1.html:
Put the same css file,
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="mystyle.css">
Same as put css file for page-2.html and likewise..
Note: Latest of html, no need to put type="text/css" for create external css file.

It isn't fantastic practice to have 1 CSS file for all pages in a site, especially if you are styling selectors like h1, a, p etc... very differently per page.
But allejo has a great, simple approach to it.
Since the project calls for 1, just make sure you don't override the styles of elements on pages you want styled differently. If it means adding some additional divs to encompass tags on multiple pages to not lose points then go for that.
IE:
.about_page h1{
...}
.home_page p{
...}
etc...

Related

Can we have a common file having the script for background image so that all the webpages can be linked to that?

Is it possible to have a common code file in HTML? For instance we are creating some web pages using HTML and need to set a common background. But after it is specified it is too tiresome to change it in every page. It would be quick if they all shared a script to a common file having the code for background color. The following code's location will be shared by all other web pages. So is this possible?
<html>
<style>
body
{
background-image:url("Brown_wall.jpg");
}
</style>
</html>
Create a CSS file with your background image and link it to your html. This will work for every file in the current directory. Anything above or below will need to be modified just a tad.
The link tag is what you're looking for. This article on MDN goes over the specifics of adding stylesheets to your HTML where you would only have to change that one file to see the change reflected in every page that includes it. It also makes your HTML files shorter and less redundant! Here's an example. You'd save these files in the same directory.
index.html
<html>
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" />
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello <span>world</span>!</p>
</body>
</html>
style.css
p span {
color: green;
}

Where should css go in .html page?

I have a index.html page and a style.css file.
I have a style class called .slider and a style class called .logo. Should I put both .slider and .logo inside the style.css page or should i put .slider in index.html and .logo inside .css?
im asking this because i dont know if I should put styles only related to one page inside a global style.css or should i just put it inline in the page it applies to?
Typically you embed css that is page specific. Here is how I do my css:
Global css (seperate file(s)):
<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="css/style.css" media="all" />
NOTE: In today's web world we use a ton of plugins/themes and these plugins/themes tend to roll out newer versions so when you override these plugins/themes make sure you create a css file specific to that theme.
For instance,
Bootstrap 3.1
<link href="/css/bootstrap.3.1.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
Create this for all your bootstrap overrides so you can use the latest version when it comes out.
<link href="/css/bootstrap.overrides.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
Page specific css(embedded):
<head>
<!-- last element in head //-->
<style type="text/css">
.pageSpecific
{
color: red;
}
</style>
</head>
When I am in development stages or the html element does not require css classification.
Simple style format (inline):
<th style="min-width: 65px;">Column Header</th>
You may have print specific css as well:
<link href="/css/print.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
and inside this file wrap your css as such:
#media print{
<!-- print specific css here//-->
}
Keep in mind that you may want to use a css classifcation at a later date when at the time it may seem page specific. Always code for reusability!
Finally:
I like to use css minifier when I put my file(s) into production. I do the same with my javascript files using UglyJs. There is also LESS css that you can use but for now I would stick to these simple conventions or something similar.
Styles can go in one of three places.
Inline on the element itself
In the html page
In a separate file
I would suggest either putting it in a <style> tag in the <head> of your html or putting it in a separate file, either will work just as well. Obviously having the styles in a separate file means you could reuse those styles on another page if needed.
Either way, it won't make a difference. Personally, I like to have all of my CSS in one place, but you can do whatever you want. If you do put all of your CSS in one document, use comments to separate it into groups, so everything will be easy to find.
You should NEVER have inline or on-page CSS. It should all go in the stylesheet (of which you should only have one per media-type) - why? Because stylesheets are cached, and the cache is way better to hold it than the HTML-files (which may also be cached, by all means, but with dynamic content, they often load quite more often than CSS).
Second, it's a nightmare to update and change, if not everything is in one file.

css - style in head tag vs css file import - which is recommended?

I know that inline styles are strongly discouraged, and mostly we should use <style> tags in <head> or an external CSS file.
What I am not clear on is the usage of <style> tags in a .html file and actual .css files.
Should I move all style code from home.html to home.css and include it via the <link> tag?
Or using <style> tags in <head> perfectly acceptable? My boss says I should include all code in .css files.
Note:
I am not looking from a best-performance standpoint; rather clean code and best practices while writing HTML/CSS and facilitating better debugging/reading.
this below is example to separate ......
/* .css file */
a {
color: green;
text-decoration: none;
}
<!-- .html file -->
Google
You should definitly take a look at this site: Best practice of CSS (not every point is compulsory in any case)
Probably to add is that you should if your project gets bigger split
your whole css file into multiple.
Especially when splitting your files its getting usefull then its extremly convenient if you decided to separate your html and css. Otherwhise you're getting a huge html file und youre loosing the readability.
If you worked onces with css files of 8000lines youre thankful that you splitted up your css
I prefer you create a seperate css file then you call the url in your html file inside the head tags like this:
...html file
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css">
</head>
<body>
Google
</body>
</html>
...CSS file
a { color: green; text-decoration: none;}
Having an external CSS is very much helpfull because you can call the file whenever you want to style another page without having to rewrite the code form scratch.

Applying single Font to Entire web documents

I want to apply single font for each html pages through out my website.
So far I tried this:
* { font-family:Nyala; }
but this works for only one page.
You should include this CSS style to each html page you wish it to take affect in.
Each HTML page should include this:
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="mystyle.css">
</head>
And the mystyle.css is:
* { font-family:Nyala; }
Note: see #Raptor comments in order to improve your code.
Move * { font-family:Nyala; } in to a external css file like style.css and call it to the head section of the all html file you want like below.
<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" />
Don't forget to give exact file path where you keep your .css file.
Add Below css
body{font-family:Nyala;}
To make a css global you can place it in one common css file and make it's reference on every page.
Another point is if you are using master page in your website then you can place the reference of that css file once in the master page and it will automatically inherited on every content page which have master page applied.

multiple "HTML" tags in HTML file: how to separate CSS rules when classes and id's can be the same?

I see that multiple HTML tag file is correctly rendered by the browser. I mean like two html files merged and concatenated. But if I put a STYLE region into each of the HTML parts and the classes or id's are the same I get the last css rules applied also to the first part. I ask how to make css rules acting just on the part they are inserted, even the classes and ids are the same. I need this special thing, so I am looking for a solution or a trick.
Having more than one html tag in a document is not valid HTML code. The browser will try to render the content anyway, but the separate html sections will simply be mashed together into a single document.
You can't apply separate styles to seperate html sections, because the browser will not keep the html sections separate. Anything after the first html section will just be thrown in at the end of the previous body, and the browser tries to make some kind of sense out of the complete mess.
I think multiple html-Tags in one document are not allowed.
I do not see any advantages for doing so.
When you have multiple documents, consider to use the frame or better iframe-tag
HTML Tags and CSS rules are entirely different in behavior. So, if u merge html files also, it will all act as a single file. Try PHP include function and include a HTML page inside another. Once rendered, it will act as a child of parent.
So for a Single HTML file if you write multiple CSS rules with same name, it will surely crash.
You can do this by replacing the classes/ids with inline code.
Consider the following 1st html file:
<html>
<head>
<style>
.aclass{
color: #fff;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
xyz
</body>
</html>
And this 2nd html file:
<html>
<head>
<style>
.aclass{
color: #000;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
abc
</body>
</html>
Now you can make the styles inline in both the files and then merge them, and final results should look like:
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
xyz
abc
</body>
</html>
Having multiple elements with same id is very error prone. Breaks on more than one occasion like
On javascript: document.getElementById('idname');
You can't put two html tags in one css file. But you can put the style tag in every html file and from there you can refer the html tag.
For example : consider I have two files home.html and login.html
So In css in can make entry of one html tag for one file while in other html file I can simply put it in tag.
This is one css I have made for both the files.
html {
background: #ffffff;
}
So I am keeping entry of html tag of home.html in css while for other I can write in its own html file like this
<title>Login Page</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="FeedbackManagement.css"/>
<style>html{background: green;}</style>
Hope this helps. Please see the background color for both of these files.
Home.html file
login.html file