The “Cascading Style Sheets
Level 1” recommendation is edited and maintained by
Håkon Lie and
Bert Bos of the W3C. The
CSS2 recommendation is is
edited and maintained by Håkon Lie, Bert Bos,
Chris Lilley and Ian Jacobs.

Rule of Thumb: if an HTML element or attribute gives
cues as to how its contents should be displayed, then some or all of its
functionality has been absorbed by style sheets.

It is not a great idea to reference an external style sheet on someone
else’s server. Doing this is like referencing an in-line image from someone
else’s server in your HTML document. This can end up overloading a server if
too many pages all over the net reference the same item. It can’t hurt to
contact the author of a style sheet, if known, to discuss using the style
sheet, but this may not be possible. In any case, a local copy should be
created and used instead of referencing a remote copy.

Cascading comes to the rescue. A document can have styles specified using
all of these methods, but all the information will be reduced to a single,
cohesive “virtual” Style Sheet. Conflict resolution is based on each style
rule having an assigned weight according to its importance in the scheme of
things. A rule with a higher overall importance will carry a higher weight.
This will be used in place of a competing style rule with a lower
weight/importance. A hierarchy of competing styles is thus formed creating a
“cascade” of styles according to their assigned weights. The algorithm used
to determine this cascading weight scale is fairly complex.

For more information, see the section on cascading in the
CSS1 Specification

If you are planning on using more than one style specification method in
your document, you must also worry about Cascading Order of Style methods
(see question 11.) If you are going to use only one
method, then some guidelines about the nature of each method need to be kept
in mind. The answer to this question is also very much related to the
advantages and disadvantages to using each of them (next
question.)

• Can control styles for multiple documents at once
• Classes can be created for use on multiple HTML element types in
  many documents
• Selector and grouping methods can be used to apply styles under
  complex contexts

• An extra download is required to import style information for each
  document
• The rendering of the document may be delayed until the external
  style sheet is loaded
• Becomes slightly unwieldy for small quantities of style definitions

• Classes can be created for use on multiple tag types in the document
• Selector and grouping methods can be used to apply styles under
  complex contexts
• No additional downloads necessary to receive style information

• This method can not control styles for multiple documents at once

• Useful for small quantities of style definitions
• Can override other style specification methods at the local level so
  only exceptions need to be listed in conjunction with other style
  methods

• Does not distance style information from content (a main goal of
  SGML/HTML)
• Can not control styles for multiple documents at once
• Author can not create or control classes of elements to control
  multiple element types within the document
• Selector grouping methods can not be used to create complex element
  addressing scenarios

1. Open the Registry editor (Start..Run..regedit..ENTER)
2. Under the
   ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\InternetExplorer\Styles’ key,
   Edit..New..String Value
3. The new value should be called ‘StyleSheet Pathname’
4. For the value, type in the full directory path of your .css style
   sheet.

1. Under the View menu, select ‘Internet Options’.
2. Under the ‘General’ tab, choose the ‘Accessibility’ button.
3. Choose the ‘Format documents using my style sheet’ check box and
   ‘Browse…’ to the location of your .css style sheet.

A { text-decoration:
none }

and within an anchor element as:

<a HREF=”example.htm”
STYLE=”text-decoration:
none”>link text</a>

Note: The underlining of hyperlinks is a long-standing
visual convention that assists in the visual identification of active
hyperlink areas. Many users expect to see hyperlinks underlined and
may be confused and/or irritated if they are not used. User-defined style
sheets address this user need by allowing the user to have final control
over this feature. Unfortunately, wide support for this ability does not yet
exist.