If until now you had not heard about CSS, surely you have interacted with it on many occasions. And it is that this is one of the resources most used by the vast majority of web pages to give visual appeal to their content.

CSS is one of the members of the great triad that leads frontend development on the web, along with HTML and JavaScript. HTML gives the site structure and Javascript the interaction, while CSS provides the beauty.

If you own a website or are just starting out with development, learning CSS or Cascading Style Sheets will come in handy. Below you will find all about what CSS is and how you can learn it fast and for free online.

What is CSS?

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets in Spanish) is a language that allows you to change the attributes of a web page, optimizing its appearance. Colors, backgrounds, borders, formatting for text and images are just some of its most common strengths.

With CSS, design rules are created and assigned to the elements that make up a web page.

Rules are made up of a selector and a declaration block. The selector is the HTML component and the declaration block integrates the elements that modify that component.

For example:

Rules can also be set through class selectors. With this alternative you can modify selected HTML elements and not all of them.

Rules can be set directly on top of the HTML document (internal CSS) or in a separate file with a .CSS extension (external CSS). However, you can also modify the HTML element directly via the style attribute (inline CSS).

Line CSS example.

CSS is today a language recognized by all browsers on all devices. It is a great ally for creating adaptive or responsive pages and allows you to fully customize any website.

Advantages of Using CSS

Using CSS to style web pages provides some of the following advantages:

Makes it easy to modify on large sites

The use of style rules, especially when used centrally either internally or externally, offers editing facilities to all websites. However, this is a more noticeable advantage for large websites.

In this way it is possible to quickly locate the element to be modified, change the attributes, include or eliminate rules that give that expected final appearance in less time than doing it one by one.

Improve site accessibility

CSS includes rules that allow a website to adapt to various devices. Therefore, it increases the levels of user satisfaction and their permanence in the consumption of your content.

Helps improve order in web development

Although you can change the style of HTML elements directly in their syntax line (inline CSS), this is not recommended or efficient. It is best to group CSS rules to give an order and improve the understanding of the code.

It is possible to appreciate the usefulness of this order more when working in a team or when you have some time without modifying the site and it is necessary to make adjustments to the components of that website.

Why Should You Learn CSS?

As a website owner or web designer, knowing CSS will help you understand how a page is styled. With this knowledge you can adjust its appearance with respect to the corporate image, generate effects or modify a component simply because it is not to your liking.

Wordpress is the most widely used CMS today and its themes use CSS. If you are proficient with Cascading Style Sheets, you can change the appearance of the theme according to your or your client's needs.

How to Learn CSS Free and Fast?

There are some free alternatives online that will help you get to the optimum level of CSS knowledge very quickly.

1.- Tutorials and Courses

The web is full of very complete tutorials and courses with which you can reach an excellent level in this matter. For example, Udemy has a free one called How to Code for Entrepreneurs - HTML and CSS lasting less than two hours.

But, it is not the only alternative. Since within the same platform you will find another named Learn to create web pages with HTML and CSS which includes more than 8 hours of free content.

And if you are interested in specializing even more, it also includes Learn to create animations and interactive effects with CSS3.

Google itself also has free alternatives with which you can learn about this topic. Its about Introduction to Web Development Course: HTML and CSS (1/2) with which you can even obtain your certificate, which will be beneficial for your career.

The Miriadax platform has a free course called Frontend Development with HTML, CSS, and Javascript (3rd Edition) dictated by the Polytechnic University of Madrid and that you can take advantage of.

For its part, W3School offers an interesting and complete css walkthrough with which you can adjust code extracts to quickly understand its operation.

And finally, in freeCodeCamp you will find certifications in Responsive Web Design Y Legacy Responsive Web Design with the use of modern development techniques.

2.- YouTube channels

YouTube is an excellent platform to raise awareness and has countless channels with which you can learn CSS from scratch or specialize through expert-level techniques and solutions.

For example, this CSS course from ZERO (Complete) from the Soy Dalto channel that delivers more than 8 hours of content in 81 chapters.

Or this one from the HelloWorld channel called Learn CSS now! FREE full course from scratch offering more than 2 hours of content.

3.- Playing

Yes, there are platforms on the net that help you understand the handling of CSS through the game. One of them is GRID GARDEN that includes 28 levels of exercises with which you will observe the distribution of carrots in a field.

css diner focuses on the reinforcement of selectors through 32 levels of exercises.

And with Flexbox Froggy You will practice some properties that in each level will help the nice little frog to reach his desired Lily leaf.

Conclusion

CSS is the most widely used language in the web environment to style a site and is used in conjunction with HTML since the latter is the essential basis of any web page. JavaScript is also part of the trio of languages ​​most used in frontend for web development, although it is not the only one.

Learning CSS will make it easier for you to modify your own websites or those you manage for third parties, to adapt them to a specific brand image, improve the appearance of their elements or simply eliminate others.

If you want to learn this language fast, there are multiple free alternatives online in the form of:

●       Tutorials and courses.

●       Youtube channels.

●       Games.

Thanks for your time ;-)