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HTML Styles - CSS

CSS is used to style HTML elements.

Look! Styles and colors

This text is in Verdana and red

This text is in Times and blue

This text is 30 pixels high

Try it yourself

Styling HTML with CSS

CSS was introduced together with HTML 4, to provide a better way to style HTML elements.

CSS can be added to HTML in the following ways:

  • in Cascading Style Sheet files (CSS files)
  • in the <style> element in the HTML head section
  • in the style attribute in single HTML elements

Using the HTML Style Attribute

It is time consuming and not very practical to style HTML elements using the style attribute.

The preferred way to add CSS to HTML, is to put CSS syntax in separate CSS files.

However, in this HTML tutorial we will introduce you to CSS using the style attribute. This is done to simplify the examples. It also makes it easier for you to edit the code and try it yourself.

You can learn everything about CSS in our CSS Tutorial.

HTML Style Example - Background Color

The background-color property defines the background color for an element:

Example

<html>

<body style="background-color:yellow;">
<h2 style="background-color:red;">This is a heading</h2>
<p style="background-color:green;">This is a paragraph.</p>
</body>

</html>

Try it yourself »

The background-color property makes the "old" bgcolor attribute obsolete.

Try it yourself: Background color the old way

HTML Style Example - Font, Color and Size

The font-family, color, and font-size properties defines the font, color, and size of the text in an element:

Example

<html>

<body>
<h1 style="font-family:verdana;">A heading</h1>
<p style="font-family:arial;color:red;font-size:20px;">A paragraph.</p>
</body>

</html>

Try it yourself »

The font-family, color, and font-size properties make the old <font> tag obsolete.

HTML Style Example - Text Alignment

The text-align property specifies the horizontal alignment of text in an element:

Example

<html>

<body>
<h1 style="text-align:center;">Center-aligned heading</h1>
<p>This is a paragraph.</p>
</body>

</html>

Try it yourself »

The text-align property makes the old <center> tag obsolete.

Try it yourself: Centered heading the old way

Deprecated Tags and Attributes

In HTML 4, several tags and attributes were deprecated. Deprecated means that they will not be supported in future versions of HTML.

Remark The message is clear: Avoid using deprecated tags and attributes!

These tags and attributes should be avoided:

Tags Description
<center> Deprecated. Defines centered content
<font> and <basefont> Deprecated. Defines HTML fonts
<s> and <strike> Deprecated. Defines strikethrough text
<u> Deprecated. Defines underlined text
Attributes Description
align Deprecated. Defines the alignment of text
bgcolor Deprecated. Defines the background color
color Deprecated. Defines the text color

For all of the above: Use styles instead!


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