CSS

Written

As with most products, HTML coding evolves and improves into new versions. The "normal" or regular HTML coding that people are used to is version 3.2. The current version available to use is version 4. Version 4 is mainly suited to work in a browser that is version 4 or above.

CSS or Cascading Style Sheets are command tags used to format web page text, objects, and layout. As HTML4 was introduced, CSS became an important part of it.

HTML4 and CSS have the same browser problems as the previous version. Compatibility. Different browsers will understand only certain tags. What works in one, may not work at all in another. If two browsers do understand the same tag, they may or may not produce different results. Test, test, test.

Benefits to CSS:

Save time. Set up a particular FONT or STYLE for each type of HEADER, or other command type in one spot. Take out all those FONT tags on all those lines!
Quick edits. How about changing all the colors or sizes for the whole page on one or two line changes? Don't worry about having to search through all that code to see if you've missed a tag.
Quick loading. Taking out all that code can do some considerable shortening of your page code. Did you know it takes less time for your page to load when the code itself is smaller?

Deprecated Tags

An organization known as W3C creates all of the current and potential HTML/CSS tags, properties, and values. The browser companies have meetings to decide which tags will work in their browsers and what the end results will be. This is why certain tags work in some, one, or none of the browsers. Maybe someday they will all agree and have all the tags work in all the browsers and produce relatively the same result.

Some current listings have been marked as deprecated. As new versions of browsers and HTML appear, these tags and properties are slowly (very slowly) going to be taken out of service. Items with a star* have some allowable instances to be active.