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Invention

Cascading Style Sheets

Software Engineering

Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, is a style-sheet language used to describe how a web page written in HTML should be presented, controlling elements such as layout, color, fonts and spacing separately from the page's content. Norwegian computer scientist Hakon Wium Lie proposed CSS in 1994 while working at CERN, and the World Wide Web Consortium published the first CSS specification in 1996. Separating a page's presentation from its underlying structure let web designers apply a consistent look across many pages from one shared style sheet, and CSS became a foundational technology of modern web design.

Facts
Year
1996 1
Significance
A cornerstone technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and JavaScript. 1
FAQs

What problem was CSS created to solve?

Early HTML could not control fonts and colors; CSS separated presentation from content.

Early Web pages gave authors little control over appearance. One of the first questions from a new author was how to change the fonts and colors of elements, and HTML at that time did not provide that. CSS was created as a style-sheet language so that presentation could be described separately from a page's content.
Connections

In Field

Source CSS - Wikipedia
Sources
1. CSS - Wikipedia
  • Infobox, released
    1996 12 17
  • Introduction
    CSS is a cornerstone technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and JavaScript.
  • In Field: Software Engineering, Categories
    Typesetting programming languages
  • In Group: Web and Online Communication Software, Lead section
    CSS is a cornerstone technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and JavaScript.
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