Whether you’re a developer or not, you might’ve heard of programming and its components. One such essential component is CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) which was invented in 1996. Just like the name suggests, CSS is the styling component in website development and helps us navigate websites effortlessly and easily.
Read on to find out more about its recent updates, applications and more.
What is CSS?
Cascading Style Sheets or CSS is a styling language used to make an HTML document visually appealing and it also helps in structuring the elements that would be displayed.
Ever since its invention, CSS has been an integral and evolving language of web development stack. With new features being released every now and then, it is essential to understand its impact as an integral web component. Alongside JavaScript and HTML, CSS is a basic keystone of web technologies.
As technologies and businesses are becoming user-friendly and user-defined, having an aesthetically pleasing website would help the users navigate and engage more, which in turn would result into increased business growth.
A prime example of CSS and its impact on users is the engagement on all social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and more that have used CSS to increase their users through dynamic designs and layouts.
Why is CSS essential?
It is the era of digitalization and knowing a few fundamentals about the web would be useful for anyone, even if you don’t have a programming background. CSS is an evolving and interesting component that can help you channel your website development skills, and it can be useful in any project that you wish to take up.
As a web developer, brushing-up on the recent CSS upgrades will help you create efficient web pages that will run smoother and faster, be visually appealing and it will also help personalize the web pages as much as possible.
Some practical applications of CSS would be:
- Developing effectual web templates
- Creating animations and effects
- Helps improve user experience.
Some web design tasks that can be done by using CSS:
- Style Image Files: Visual representations of any information gets the most engagement as they are easy to read and comprehend. Having the option to edit, style, design, create images of all types such as JPEG, PNG, GIF, and more has become easy due to CSS.
- Accessibility: Due to CSS, it has become easier to access different web pages on different devices and still get a user-friendly interface. Web pages are becoming more accessible and thus, the reach is increasing.
- Maintain web templates easily: Web templates and their management can usually be a tricky task but due to CSS makes it simpler by keeping code organization neat.
- Development is accelerated: For a web developer, CSS makes the task of replicating styles across multiple pages easy, which adds efficiency to the whole development cycle.
- Navigable compatibility across devices: CSS allows the web designs to be fully visible on all types of devices – laptops, tablets, smartphones, smart TVs, and more. This makes the experience user-friendly.
Who is it for?
As mentioned earlier, the prospects that follow knowing few fundamentals about web design are vast. It doesn’t matter if you’re from a technical background or not as everyone has to be affiliated with web developments in the modern-day scenario.
Few contrary examples of web development and its uses in different disciplines would be:
- Professionals from natural sciences discipline using websites to share reports, latest research findings, debunking existing myths and stating facts via web pages and using technical advancements to share better insights with people.
Examples: Healthline Media, WebMD.
- Educationists who wish to teach beyond the normal classrooms and make simple educational tools easily available and accessible.
Example: edX
- Artists and curators who share valuable information about the existing art, history and other related information via websites.
Example: Van Gogh Museum
- Entrepreneurs can benefit a great deal from learning the basics of HTML and CSS as this will help them market their products in a better manner through their website, where they can use CSS to fine-tune their theme and blogposts.
- Emails/newsletters are considered as one of the best marketing tools and you can use CSS to style these emails according to your customers and their preferences.
Some job profiles that need an expertise in CSS are:
- Web developer
- Full Stack Developer
- Software Engineer
- Front-end developer
- PHP developer
All things considered, a basic idea about website design would benefit anyone and everyone. CSS being an integral part of it, is meant for anyone who wishes to advance their product/service and make their web pages efficient.
Employability & Earning Potential With CSS
The advent of CSS has exponentially grown and has added to the increasing demand for programmers, web developers, web designers and more. According to research by the U.S. Bureau Of Labour Statistics, the overall employment growth for digital designers and web developers is projected to grow 23% between the years 2021-2031. This percentage is higher for web designers and developers than any other existing occupations.
As a professional you can simply start using CSS as a base for creating sales pages or landing pages, creating email templates and more. Other employment opportunities and roles would be with median salaries in the US (Glassdoor, 2022):
- Website Project Manager (Average salary 100,319 USD/annum).
- Content Editor/Producer (Average salary 63,350 USD/annum).
- Technical Virtual Assistant (Average salary 37,050 USD/annum).
- Entry Level Web Developer (Average salary 59,692 USD/annum).
- Webmaster Jobs (Average salary 75,200 – 96,700 USD/annum).
- WordPress Developer (Average salary 66,540 USD/annum).
- Front-end Developer (Average salary 109,137 USD/annum).
- Digital Production Coordinator (Average salary 58,718 USD/annum).
- UI Developer (Average salary – 113,221 USD/annum).
- SEO Specialist (Average salary – 54,673 USD/annum).
Keeping this in mind, it is evident that learning CSS and other web development fundamentals would help in increased job expectancy and earning prospects.
How to learn CSS✔️
Here’s a simple roadmap about the steps you need to take as a learner to get the best out of your CSS course.
- Get started with the basics: This course offers a strong introduction to the fundamentals of CSS.
- Understand the CSS Box Model: Go through the properties such as margin, border, padding, and more to get a clear understanding.
- Get an understanding of selectors and learn to apply CSS styling elements in your webpages.
- Layouts: During the course, try learning the layout, position and display part attentively as these will make your CSS learning a lot smoother like CSS does it for web pages!
- Learn how to create transitions using animations, Images, backgrounds & more: These are the components that make the web pages dynamic. Try practicing your skills overtime.
- Texts and Typography: Dive into the interesting part of CSS and learn all about rgb, hsl, transparent colour formats, etc.
- You can learn embedding internal & external stylesheets.
- Learning by Doing: Finally, test your learning by practicing all the skills by creating simple websites.
Enrol on our course now and begin your journey towards becoming a successful Web Developer now!
