Separation of Structure and Style The primary idea behind CSS is separating the document structure from its presentation. HTML is used for structuring and wasn’t meant to be used for anything else. Inline styling can make HTML clumsy and will not fulfill its purpose to structure the document. HTML is there for letting the browser know that the text block is a paragraph and the text block is the paragraph’s heading. Without the additional HTML to style the document’s structure, it is readable. So, you can easily update it without breaking it. You can remove the CSS to a separate file. Hence, it is also easy to update the style. Before you add a background color to each of the pages, you need to add ‘bgcolor=”red”’ to every tag on the site. But what if you realize that red isn’t going to look good as a background? For a small site, it isn’t a big deal. You can open a few files and make the changes. But what if there are 100’s of pages or 1000’s of pages? This is where CSS can prove to be useful. You can change the codes on all pages in just a few minutes by only changing the CSS file.
Faster Page Download Time Using CSS leads to less code behind the web pages. Therefore the download time decreases. If the browser sees a table in the code, it has to read through it twice. The first time it understands its structure, and the second time it displays the content inside the table. This additional time can slow down the page. So, if you use tables in your web page layout, it will use images. Images are considered to be the heaviest element of a page. Hence, it can be the primary culprit when it comes to slowing down the page. Sure, you have the option to optimize it and make it small, but it is larger than a code line. Every image needs one request from the browser to the server. As you place the CSS in one separate file, the code is cached in the browser following the initial request. So, your system doesn’t have to download it again for the pages that follow. The table code has to exist on the site’s page. Every time you request a new page, it has to be read, even when the table structure for every page is the same.
Search Engine Optimization Many will agree that CSS can help you rank better on the search engine page. This is primarily because a CSS site has less code. Hence, it has a simple structure. This makes it easier to get read by the search engine crawlers. As the search engine crawlers can get through the code quickly, you can expect the web pages to be indexed faster. Moreover, there is a chance that the crawlers will take less code as text. This can improve the page’s keyword density. Since there is less code, the search engine crawler finds it easier to determine what the page is all about.
Better Control Over Presentation The cascading style sheet gives more control over the web page presentation. Usually, web designers have little control over the web pages. So, it is good that it is possible to get some of it back. Apart from the fact that CSS comes with more formatting options than HTML, such as control over spacing or leading text, CSS helps to decide how the page displays itself. In case there are some heavy graphics, you can place them at the end of the code. This makes sure that the viewers have something to read while the graphics load. However, with tables, it is just all or nothing. So, you cannot get one part of the table to load before the other. With CSS, you can have better control over media. It lets you organize the code and makes it easier for the screen readers to follow it. So, you have a web page that is more accessible. Another use of CSS is to use the same page differently on different social media channels and make it printable. Web pages are not always printable. But by using CSS, you can tweak some style. So, what you see onscreen and what you print is different. Also, the site visitors don’t have to do anything special. They can print the web page directly from the browser. There is no need to worry about the images or the background colors, as it just wastes your ink or toner.