CSS Experiences

1. Reasons for using CSS

• Wanted to use recommended web standards
• Wanted to use a variety of web design tools
• Needed to impose a uniform style across many web pages
• Wanted more than one person to cooperate in creating pages

2. Practical Experiences

2.1 Quick cosmetic changes

• LTRR introductory pages
• Another home page example
• Lack of existing stylistic markup an advantage

2.2 Stylistic uniformity

• Re-designing a departmental web site
• Uniform style for the new LTRR web pages

2.3 Style for CGI scripts

• Interactive drought index display example
• Style sheets simplify writing CGI scripts
• Non-programmers can modify CGI-generated pages

3. Problems

• Browser bugs
• Ugly pages on old browsers
• Single style sheet changes break many pages
• Pages with pre-existing stylistic markup