Cascading Style Sheets

Cascading style sheets (CSS) are a popular method to control positioning and layout of a page template. CSS files can be used in Site Studio Web sites. They are separate site assets that are stored and managed on the content server. CSS files can be edited directly in Site Studio Designer. When a CSS file is selected for editing, it opens in source view.

To use CSS files on your Web site, you must reference them directly on a page template, or you can wrap them in a fragment and include that on a page template.

An alternative method of controlling page layout is to use tables to place objects in specific locations on a web page. The advantage of using tables rather than CSS is that tables allow for more specific placement of objects in a more straightforward manner. Table-based page templates look more "natural" in design view than CSS-based page templates. However, tables can become very complex to create certain layouts, and also do not allow for other types of control that a CSS file would. For example, CSS enables you to control placement, fonts, paragraph styles, alignment, backgrounds, cell actions, and much more.

When CSS is used to control layout, the applicable CSS styles for the item that the contributor is editing are made available in the toolbar (if the designer has made that portion of the toolbar available in the element definition).

Specific information on the capabilities of CSS is available online at www.w3c.org.