Using External CSS Stylesheets: Best Practices for Web Design

Learn how to effectively use external CSS stylesheets to improve the organization, maintainability, and efficiency of your web design. This guide explains how to link external CSS files to your HTML documents and provides best practices for writing clean and reusable CSS code.

Using External CSS Stylesheets

What is External CSS?

External CSS is the recommended way to add styles to multiple HTML pages. It involves creating a separate file (usually with a `.css` extension) containing all your CSS rules. This keeps your CSS separate from your HTML, making your code cleaner, easier to maintain, and easier to update. You only need to modify one file to update the styles across your entire website.

Linking an External Stylesheet

To use an external stylesheet, you link it to your HTML document using the <link> tag, which is placed within the <head> section of your HTML.

Example HTML


<head>
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="mystyle.css"> 
</head>

The `href` attribute specifies the path to your CSS file (e.g., `style.css`, `mystyles.css`). The `rel="stylesheet"` attribute tells the browser that this is a stylesheet.

Example External Stylesheet (mystyle.css)

Here's an example of a simple external stylesheet. You can use any text editor to create a CSS file. Make sure you use the correct `.css` extension for the file.

Example CSS (mystyle.css)


body {
  background-color: lightblue;
}

h1 {
  color: navy;
  margin-left: 20px;
}

/* ... other styles ... */

Note: There should be no space between the property value and the unit (e.g., `margin-left: 20px;`, not `margin-left: 20 px;`).