HTML Styles

With HTML 4.0 all formatting can be moved out of the HTML document and into a separate style sheet.

Examples

Styles in HTML
This example demonstrates how to format an HTML document with style information added to the <head> section.

Link that is not underlined
This example demonstrates how to make a link that is not underlined, using a style attribute.

Link to an external style sheet
This example demonstrates how to use the <link> tag to link to an external style sheet.

How to Use Styles

When a browser reads a style sheet, it will format the document according to it. There are three ways of inserting a style sheet:

External Style Sheet

An external style sheet is ideal when the style is applied to many pages. With an external style sheet, you can change the look of an entire Web site by changing one file. Each page must link to the style sheet using the <link> tag. The <link> tag goes inside the head section.

<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
href="mystyle.css">
</head>

Internal Style Sheet

An internal style sheet should be used when a single document has a unique style. You define internal styles in the head section with the <style> tag.

<head>
<style type="text/css">
body {background-color: red}
p {margin-left: 20px}
</style>
</head>

Inline Styles

An inline style should be used when a unique style is to be applied to a single occurrence of an element.

To use inline styles you use the style attribute in the relevant tag. The style attribute can contain any CSS property. The example shows how to change the color and the left margin of a paragraph:

<p style="color: red; margin-left: 20px">
This is a paragraph
</p>

To learn more about styles, visit our CSS tutorial.

Style Tags:

NN: Netscape, IE: Internet Explorer, W3C: Web Standard

Start Tag	NN	IE	W3C	Purpose
<style>	4.0	3.0	3.2	Defines a style in a document
<link>	4.0	3.0	3.2	Defines the relationship between two linked documents
<div>	3.0	3.0	3.2	Defines a division/section in a document
<span>	4.0	3.0	4.0	Defines a section in a document
<font>				Deprecated. Use styles instead
<basefont>				Deprecated. Use styles instead
<center>				Deprecated. Use styles instead

Joke

Customer: Hello, it's me!
Support: It's me too!
Customer: No, Esmie. E, s, m, i, e!
Support: Sorry!

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