Are there any CSS standards that I should follow while writing my first stylesheet?

Question

I am currently working on my first website. I have no idea where to start on the CSS page, or if there are any standards that I should be following.

I would appreci

Answer 1

You can save yourself a lot of headache by understanding specificity. When you set a rule for something, if there is a conflicting rule, specificity decides which rule wins.

A quick (incomplete) rundown:

An element-wide rule (like p {color:green;}) will be trumped by:
A class-specific rule (like p.sidenote {color: blue;}), which will be trumped by:
An id-specific rule (like p#final {color: red;}), which will be trumped by:
An inline declaration (like

), which will be trumped by:
An important rule (like p#final {color: inherit !important;})

...all of which can be trumped by the user's rules.

The interactions can be complex, but there are mathematic rules underlying them. For a more complete treatment, see Chapter 3 of Eric Meyer's "CSS: The Definitive Guide."

To recap: if you set a rule and it doesn't seem to affect anything, you've probably got a conflicting rule. To understand why one rule beats the other, learn about specificity.