ALL CSS Interview question and answer

1. What is CSS?
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets and is a simple styling language which allows attaching style to HTML elements. Every element type as well as every occurance of a specific element within that type can be declared an unique style, e.g. margins, positioning, color or size.

2. What are Cascading Style Sheets?
A Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) is a list of statements (also known as rules) that can assign various rendering properties to HTML elements. Style rules can be specified for a single element occurrence, multiple elements, an entire document, or even multiple documents at once. It is possible to specify many different rules for an element in different locations using different methods. All these rules are collected and merged (known as a “cascading” of styles) when the document is rendered to form a single style rule for each element.

3. How do I center block-elements with CSS1?
There are ways of centering block level elements:

By setting the properties margin-left and margin-right to auto and width to some explicit value:

BODY {width: 30em; background: cyan;}
P {width: 22em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto}

In this case, the left and right margins will each be four ems wide, since they equally split up the eight ems left over from (30em – 22em). Note that it was not necessary to set an explicit width for the BODY element; it was done here to keep the math clean.

4.If background and color should always be set together, why do they exist as separate properties?
There are serveral reasons for this. First, style sheets become more legible — both for humans and machines. The background property is already the most complex property in CSS1 and combining it with color would make it even more complex. Second, color inherits, but background doesn’t and this would be a source of confusion.

5. What is class?
Class is a group of 1) instances of the same element to which an unique style can be attached or 2) instances of different elements to which the same style can be attached.

6. What is grouping?
Grouping is gathering into a comma separated list two or more selectors that share the same style or into a semicolon separated list two or more declarations that are attached to the same selector .

1. The selectors LI, P with class name .first and class .footnote share the same style, e.g.:
LI {font-style: italic}
P.first {font-style: italic}
.footnote {font-style: italic}

To reduce the size of style sheets and also save some typing time they can all be grouped in one list.
LI, P.first, .footnote {font-style: italic}

7. What is external Style Sheet? How to link?
External Style Sheet is a template/document/file containing style information which can be linked with any number of HTML documents. This is a very convenient way of formatting the entire site as well as restyling it by editing just one file. The file is linked with HTML documents via the LINK element inside the HEAD element. Files containing style information must have extension .css, e.g. style.c ss.

<LINK rel=stylesheet type=”text/css” href=”style.css“>

8. Is CSS case sensitive?
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is not case sensitve. However, font families, URLs to images, and other direct references with the style sheet may be.

9. What is CSS rule ‘ruleset’?
There are two types of CSS rules: ruleset and at-rule. Ruleset identifies selector or selectors and declares style which is to be attached to that selector or selectors. For example P {text-indent: 10pt} is a CSS rule. CSS rulesets consist of two parts: selector [ e.g. P ] and declaration [ e.g. {text-indent: 10pt}] .

P {text-indent: 10pt} – CSS rule (ruleset)
{text-indent: 10pt} – CSS declaration
text-indent – CSS property
10pt – CSS value

10. ‘Fixed’ Background?
There is the possibility to use the HTML tag bgproperties=”fixed”, but that is IE proprietary, and dependent upon the ‘background’ attribute (deprecated in HTML4).

With CSS, you can declare the background like:

BODY {
font-family : “Trebuchet MS”, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
background-image: url(images/yourimage.gif);
background-repeat: no-repeat; /*no-tiling background*/
background-position: center;
background-attachment: fixed;
background-color: #hexcolor;
color : #hexcolor;
margin: 10px;
}

that shows a background-image in the center of the element, non-scrolling and non-repeating – in IE or NN6. NN 4.xx gets the non-repeat-part right, but stuffs the picture in the upper left corner and scrolls ..

11. What is embedded style? How to link?
Embedded style is the style attached to one specific document. The style information is specified as a content of the STYLE element inside the HEAD element and will apply to the entire document.

Note: The styling rules are written as a HTML comment, that is, between to hide the content in browsers without CSS support which would otherwise be displayed.

12. What is ID selector?
ID selector is an individually identified (named) selector to which a specific style is declared. Using the ID attribute the declared style can then be associated with one and only one HTML element per document as to differentiate it from all other elements. ID selectors are created by a character # followed by the selector’s name. The name can contain characters a-z, A-Z, digits 0-9, period, hyphen, escaped characters, Unicode characters 161-255, as well as any Unicode character as a numeric code, however, they cannot start with a dash or a digit.

#abc123 {color: red; background: black}

This and only this element can be identified as abc123

13. What is contextual selector?
Contextual selector is a selector that addresses specific occurrence of an element. It is a string of individual selectors separated by white space, a search pattern, where only the last element in the pattern is addressed providing it matches the specified context.

TD P CODE {color: red}

The element CODE will be displayed in red but only if it occurs in the context of the element P which must occur in the context of the element TD.

14. How do I have a background image that isn’t tiled?
Specify the background-repeat property as no-repeat. You can also use the background property as a shortcut for specifying multiple background-* properties at once. Here’s an example:

BODY {background: #fff url(watermark.jpg) no-repeat;}

15. What does \ABCD (and \ABCDE) mean?
CSS allows Unicode characters to be entered by number. For example, if a CLASS value in some Russian document contains Cyrillic letters EL PE (Unicode numbers 041B and 041F) and you want to write a style rule for that class, you can put that letter into the style sheet by writing:

.41B41F {font-style: italic;}
This works on all keyboards, so you don’t need a Cyrillic keyboard to write CLASS names in Russian or another language that uses that script.

The digits and letters after the backslash (\) are a hexadecimal number. Hexadecimal numbers are made from ordinary digits and the letters A to F (or a to f). Unicode numbers consist of four such digits.

If the number starts with a 0, you may omit it. The above could also be written as:

.\41B\41F {font-style: italic;}
But be careful if the next letter after the three digits is also a digit or a letter a to f! This is OK: .\41B-\41F, since the dash (-) cannot be mistaken for a hexadecimal digit, but .\41B9\41F is only two letters, not three.

Four digits is the maximum, however, so if you write:
.41B941F {font-style: italic;}

16. What are the advantages/disadvantages of the various style methods?
External Style Sheets
Advantages

* Can control styles for multiple documents at once
* Classes can be created for use on multiple HTML element types in many documents
* Selector and grouping methods can be used to apply styles under complex contexts

Disadvantages

* An extra download is required to import style information for each document
* The rendering of the document may be delayed until the external style sheet is loaded
* Becomes slightly unwieldy for small quantities of style definitions

Embedded Style Sheets
Advantages

* Classes can be created for use on multiple tag types in the document
* Selector and grouping methods can be used to apply styles under complex contexts
* No additional downloads necessary to receive style information

Disadvantages

* This method can not control styles for multiple documents at once

Inline Styles
Advantages

* Useful for small quantities of style definitions
* Can override other style specification methods at the local level so only exceptions need to be listed in conjunction with other style methods

Disadvantages

* Does not distance style information from content (a main goal of SGML/HTML)
* Can not control styles for multiple documents at once
* Author can not create or control classes of elements to control multiple element types within the document
* Selector grouping methods can not be used to create complex element addressing scenarios

17. What is inline style? How to link?
Inline style is the style attached to one specific element. The style is specified directly in the start tag as a value of the STYLE attribute and will apply exclusively to this specific element occurance.

18. What is imported Style Sheet? How to link?
Imported Style Sheet is a sheet that can be imported to (combined with) another sheet. This allows creating one main sheet containing declarations that apply to the whole site and partial sheets containing declarations that apply to specific elements (or documents) that may require additional styling. By importing partial sheets to the main sheet a number of sources can be combined into one.
To import a style sheet or style sheets include the @import notation or notations in the STYLE element. The @import notations must come before any other declaration. If more than one sheet is imported they will cascade in order they are imported – the last imported sheet will override the next last; the next last will override the second last, and so on. If the imported style is in conflict with the rules declared in the main sheet then it will be overridden.

.
19. What is alternate Style Sheet? How to link?
Alternate Style Sheet is a sheet defining an alternate style to be used in place of style(s) declared as persistent and/or preferred .
Persistent style is a default style that applies when style sheets are enabled but can disabled in favor of an alternate style, e.g.: <LINK REL=Stylesheet HREF=”style.css” TYPE=”text/css”>

Preferred style is a default style that applies automatically and is declared by setting the TITLE attribute to the LINK element. There can only be one preferred style, e.g.:  <LINK REL=Stylesheet HREF=”style2.css” TYPE=”text/css” TITLE=”appropriate style description”>

Alternate style gives an user the choice of selecting an alternative style – a very convenient way of specifying a media dependent style. Note: Each group of alternate styles must have unique TITLE, e.g.:

<LINK REL=”Alternate Stylesheet” HREF=”style3.css” TYPE=”text/css” TITLE=”appropriate style description” MEDIA=screen>
<LINK REL=”Alternate Stylesheet” HREF=”style4.css” TYPE=”text/css” TITLE=”appropriate style description” MEDIA=print>

20. How can you set a minimum width for IE?
To set a minimum width, the CSS property is ‘min-width’. This can be very useful and works well in good browsers. IE doesn’t understand ‘min-width’. However, it has a proprietary property called ‘expression’ which allows us to feed it javascript via a stylesheet. Below is how to set a (780px) minimum width for IE…


body {
width:expression(documentElement.clientWidth < 780 ? (documentElement.clientWidth == 0 ? (body.clientWidth < 780 ? “780px” : “auto”) : “780px”) : “auto” );
}

As the property is non-standard, it won’t validate with the W3C validator, so if we put it in the head like this (above) – in an IE conditional comment – the validator will ignore it and the page will get a clean bill of health.

21. How do I place text over an image?
To place text or image over an image you use the position property. The below exemple is supported by IE 4.0. All you have to do is adapt the units to your need.

“<div style=”position: relative; width: 200px; height: 100px”>
<div style=”position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 200px”>
<image>
</div>
<div style=”position: absolute; top: 20%; left: 20%; width: 200px”>
Text that nicely wraps
</div>
</div> ”

22. What is attribute selector?

Attribute selector is a selector defined by 1) the attribute set to element(s), 2) the attribute and value(s), 3) the attribute and value parts:

1a) A[title] {text-decoration: underline}
All A elements containing the TITLE attribute will be underlined

1b) A[class=name] {text-decoration: underline}
The A elements classed as ‘name’ will be underlined

2) A[title=”attribute element”] {text-decoration: underline}
The A elements containing the TITLE attribute with a value that is an exact match of the specified value, which in this example is ‘attribute element’, will be underlined

3) A[title~=”attribute”] {text-decoration: underline}
The A elements containing the TITLE attribute with a value containing the specified word, which in this example is ‘attribute’, will be underlined

23. What is parent-child selector?
Parent-child selector is a selector representing the direct descendent of a parent element. Parent-child selectors are created by listing two or more tilde (~) separated selectors.

“BODY ~ P {background: red; color: white}

The P element will be declared the specified style only if it directly descends from the BODY element:
<BODY> <P>Red and white paragraph </P> </BODY>

BODY ~ P ~ EM {background: red; color: white}
The EM element will be declared the specified style only if it directly descends from the P element which in its turn directly descends from the BODY element:

<P> <EM>Red and white EM </EM> </P> </BODY>”

24. What are inline, block, parent, children, replaced and floating elements?

Inline elements

which do not have line breaks. Can occur in block elements or other inline elements, cannot contain block elements.
Inline elements in HTML 3.2; EM, STRONG, DFN, CODE, SAMP, KBD, VAR, CITE, TT, I, B, U, STRIKE, BIG, SMALL, SUB, SUP, A, IMG, APPLET, FONT, BASEFONT, BR, SCRIPT, MAP, INPUT, SELECT, TEXTAREA.

Inline elements in HTML 4.0; EM, STRONG, DFN, CODE, SAMP, KBD, VAR, CITE, ABBR, ACRONYM, TT, I, B, BIG, SMALL, SUB, SUP, A, IMG, OBJECT, BR, SCRIPT, MAP, Q, SPAN, BDO, INPUT, SELECT, TEXTAREA, LABEL, BUTTON, (INS, DEL).

Inline elements in HTML 4.0 Transitional; EM, STRONG, DFN, CODE, SAMP, KBD, VAR, CITE, ABBR, ACRONYM, TT, I, B, U, S, STRIKE, BIG, SMALL, SUB, SUP, A, IMG, APPLET, OBJECT, FONT, BASEFONT, BR, SCRIPT, MAP, Q, SPAN, BDO, IFRAME, INPUT, SELECT, TEXTAREA, LABEL, BUTTON, (INS, DEL).

Block elements

which do have line breaks. May occur in other block elements, cannot occur in inline elements, may contain both block and inline elements.

Block elements in HTML 3.2; H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6, ADDRESS, P, DL, DT, DD, UL, OL, DIR, MENU, LI, DIV, CENTER, BLOCKQUOTE, PRE, HR, ISINDEX, TABLE, FORM.

Block elements in HTML 4.0; P, H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6, UL, OL, PRE, DL, DIV, NOSCRIPT, BLOCKQUOTE, FORM, HR, TABLE, FIELDSET, ADDRESS, (INS, DEL).

Block elements in HTML 4.0 Transitional; P, H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6, UL, OL, DIR, MENU, PRE, DL, DIV, CENTER, NOSCRIPT, NOFRAMES, BLOCKQUOTE, FORM, ISINDEX, HR, TABLE, FIELDSET, ADDRESS, (INS, DEL).

Parents and children elements

which either contain (parents) or are in the content of (children) other elements, e.g.

” e.g. <P>text<STRONG>text</STRONG>text</P>.”  P is a parent of STRONG. STRONG is a child of P. If not specified otherwise, children will inherit parent’s properties.

Replaced
elements which content is replaced. For example content of the IMG element is replaced with an image, content of the INPUT element is replace with a field.
Floating
elements which follow the flow of a parent – inline elements.

25. What are pseudo-classes?
Pseudo-classes are fictional element types that do not exist in HTML. In CSS1 there is only one element type which can be classed this way, namely the A element (anchor). By creating three fictional types of the A element individual style can be attached to each class. These three fictional element types are: A as unvisited link, A as active link and A as visited link. Pseudo-classes are created by a colon followed by pseudo-class’s name. They can also be combined with normal classes, e.g.:

A:link {background: black; color: white}
A:active {background: black; color: red}
A:visited {background: transparent; color: black}

This anchor (or rather these anchors) will be displayed as declared above

A.foot:link {background: black; color: white}
A.foft:active {background; black: color: red}
A.foot:visited {background: transparent; color: black}

This anchor and all other anchors with CLASS foot will be displayed as declared above

26. What is CSS rule ‘at-rule’?
There are two types of CSS rules: ruleset and at-rule. At-rule is a rule that applies to the whole style sheet and not to a specific selector only (like in ruleset). They all begin with the @ symbol followed by a keyword made up of letters a-z, A-Z, digits 0-9, dashes and escaped characters, e.g. @import or @font-face.

27. What is ‘important’ declaration?
Important declaration is a declaration with increased weight. Declaration with increased weight will override declarations with normal weight. If both reader’s and author’s style sheet contain statements with important declarations the author’s declaration will override the reader’s.

BODY {background: white ! important; color: black}

In the example above the background property has increased weight while the color property has normal.

27 To what are partial URLs relative?
Partial URLs are relative to the source of the style sheet. The style sheet source can either be linked or embedded. To which source partial URLs are relative to depends on their occurrence.
If a partial URL occurs in a linked style sheet then it is relative to the linked style sheet. The URL of the linked style sheet is the URL of the directory where the sheet is kept.
If a partial URL occurs in an embedded style sheet then it is relative to the embedded style sheet. The URL of the embedded style sheet is the URL of the HTML document in which the sheet is embedded.
Note that Navigator 4.x treats partial URLs as being relative to the HTML document, regardless of the place where the partial URL occurs. This is a serious bug which forces most authors to use absolute URLs in their CSS.

28 What is the difference between ID and CLASS?
ID identifies and sets style to one and only one occurrence of an element while class can be attached to any number of elements. By singling out one occurrence of an element the unique value can be declared to said element.

CSS
#eva1 {background: red; color: white}
.eva2 {background: red; color: white}

“HTML – ID

<P ID=eva1>Paragraph 1 – ONLY THIS occurrence of the element P (or single occurrence of some other element) can be identified as eva1</P>
<P ID=eva1>Paragraph 2 – This occurrence of the element P CANNOT be identified as eva1</P>

HTML – CLASS
<P class=eva2>Paragraph 1 – This occurrence of the element P can be classified as eva2</P>
<P class=eva2>Paragraph 2 – And so can this, as well as occurrences of any other element, </P> ”

29. What is shorthand property?
Shorthand property is a property made up of individual properties that have a common “addressee”. For example properties: font-weight, font-style, font-variant, font-size, font-family, refer to the font. To reduce the size of style sheets and also save some keystrokes as well as bandwidth they can all be specified as one shorthand property font, e.g.:

H1 {font-weight: bold;
font-style: italic;
font-variant: small-caps;
font-size: 160%;
font-family: serif}

can be all shorthanded to a space separated list:

H1 {font: bold italic small-caps 160% serif}

Note: To make things even simpler the line-height property can be specified together with the font-size property:

H1 {font: bold italic small-caps 160%/170% serif}

30. How does inheritance work?
HTML documents are structured hierarchically. There is an ancestor, the top level element, the HTML element, from which all other elements (children) are descended. As in any other family also children of the HTML family can inherit their parents, e.g. color or size.

By letting the children inherit their parents a default style can be created for top level elements and their children. (Note: not all properties can be inherited). The inheritance starts at the oldest ancestor and is passed on to its children and then their children and the children’s children and so on.

Inherited style can be overridden by declaring specific style to child element. For example if the EM element is not to inherit its parent P then own style must be declared to it. For example:

BODY {font-size: 10pt}
All text will be displayed in a 10 point font

BODY {font-size: 10pt}
H1 {font-size: 14pt} or H1 {font-size: 180%}

All text except for the level 1 headings will be displayed in a 10 point font. H1 will be displayed in a 14 point font (or in a font that is 80% larger than the one set to BODY). If the element H1 contains other elements, e.g. EM then the EM element will also be displayed in a 14 point font (or 180%) it will inherit the property of the parent H1. If the EM element is to be displayed in some other font then own font properties must be declared to it, e.g:

BODY {font-size: 10pt}
H1 {font-size: 14pt} or H1 {font-size: 180%}
EM {font-size: 15pt} or EM {font-size: 110%}

The EM element will be displayed in a 15 point font or will be 10% larger than H1. NOTE: EM is, in this example, inside H1 therefore will inherit H1’s properties and not BODY’s.

The above declaration will display all EM elements in 15 point font or font that is 10% larger than font declared to the parent element. If this specific font is to apply to EM elements but only if they are inside H1 and not every occurrence of EM then EM must take a form of a contextual selector.

H1 EM {font-size: 15pt} or H1 EM {font-size: 110%}

In the example above EM is a contextual selector. It will be displayed in specified font only if it will be found in the context of H1.

Not all properties are inherited. One such property is background. However, since it’s initial value is transparent the background of the parent element will shine through by default unless it is explicitly set.

31. What is Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL)?
XSL is a proposed styling language for formatting XML (eXtensible Markup Language) documents. The proposal was submitted to the W3C by Microsoft, Inso, and ArborText.

32. How do you make a tooltip that appears on hover?
The most simple way is to use the ‘title’ attribute like this…

“HTML

<span title=”Example of the title attribute in use”>like this</span>

CSS
a.tooltip {
position:relative;
cursor:help;
}
a.tooltip span {
display:none;
position:absolute;
top:1.5em;
left:0;
width:15em;
padding:0 2px;
}
a.tooltip:hover {
display:inline;
}
a.tooltip:hover span {
display:block;
border:1px solid gray;
background-color:white;
}

HTML

<a class=”tooltip” href=”#n”>Karl Marx<span>-info goes here-</span></a>

Without this part… a.tooltip:hover {
display:inline;
}

..it won’t work in IE.

The “#n” in the link is to prevent the page from jumping to the top if the link is clicked. The “href” part is necessary as it won’t work in IE without it.”

var gaJsHost = ((“https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.&#8221; : “http://www.&#8221;);
document.write(unescape(“%3Cscript src='” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));

try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(“UA-1855756-5”);
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}

CSS Interview Questions And Answers – important good answers

Which set of definitions, HTML attributes or CSS properties, take precedence?
CSS properties take precedence over HTML attributes. If both are specified, HTML attributes will be displayed in browsers without CSS support but won’t have any effect in browsers with CSS support.

How do I eliminate the blue border around linked images?
in your CSS, you can specify the border property for linked images:

a img { border: none ; }
However, note that removing the border that indicates an image is a link makes it harder for users to distinguish quickly and easily which images on a web page are clickable.

Why call the subtended angle a “pixel”, instead of something else (e.g. “subangle”)?
In most cases, a CSS pixel will be equal to a device pixel. But, as you point out, the definition of a CSS pixel will sometimes be different. For example, on a laser printer, one CSS pixel can be equal to 3×3 device pixels to avoid printing illegibly small text and images. I don’t recall anyone ever proposing another name for it. Subangle? Personally, I think most people would prefer the pragmatic “px” to the non-intuitive “sa”.

Why was the decision made to make padding apply outside of the width of a ‘box’, rather than inside, which would seem to make more sense?
It makes sense in some situations, but not in others. For example, when a child element is set to width: 100%, I don’t think it should cover the padding of its parent. The box-sizing property in CSS3 addresses this issue. Ideally, the issue should have been addressed earlier, though.

How to use CSS to separate content and design ?
The idea here is that all sites contain two major parts, the content: all your articles, text and photos and the design: rounded corners, colors and effects. Usually those two are made in different parts of a webpage?s lifetime. The design is determined at the beginning and then you start filling it with content and keep the design fixed.

In CSS you just add the nifty -tag I’ve told you about to the head of your HTML document and you have created a link to your design. In the HTML document you put content only, and that link of yours makes sure it looks right. You can also use the exact same link on many of your pages, giving them all of them the same design. You want to add content? Just write a plain HTML document and think about marking things up like ?header? instead of ?big blue header? and use CSS to make all headers look the way you want!

Some examples of good and bad coding. What’s wrong with this?
Welcome to my page

Comment: The font-tag is design and design shouldn?t be in the HTML document. All design should be in the CSS-file! Instead do this:

In the HTML:

Welcome to my page

In the CSS:
h1 { font-size: 2em; }

One more example:

An error occurred

This looks right doesn?t it? But if you look up what stands for you quickly find bold. But bold is certainly design, so it still doesn?t belong in the HTML document. A better choice is that stands for emphasis or simply ?this piece of text is important?. So instead of saying ?this text looks like this? you are saying ?this text is important? and you let the looks be decided by the CSS. Seems like a minor change, but it illustrates how to select your tags. Use this instead:

In the HTML:
An error occured

In the CSS:
em {
font-weight: bold;
color: Red;
}

One last example:

first link
second link

Can CSS be used with other than HTML documents?
Yes. CSS can be used with any ny structured document format. e.g. XML, however, the method of linking CSS with other document types has not been decided yet.

Can Style Sheets and HTML stylistic elements be used in the same document?
Yes. Style Sheets will be ignored in browsers without CSS-support and HTML stylistic elements used.

What are pseudo-classes?
Pseudo-classes are fictional element types that do not exist in HTML. In CSS1 there is only one element type which can be classed this way, namely the A element (anchor). By creating three fictional types of the A element individual style can be attached to each class. These three fictional element types are: A as unvisited link, A as active link and A as visited link. Pseudo-classes are created by a colon followed by pseudo-class’s name. They can also be combined with normal classes, e.g.:

A:link {background: black; color: white}
A:active {background: black; color: red}
A:visited {background: transparent; color: black}

This anchor (or rather these anchors) will be displayed as declared above

A.foot:link {background: black; color: white}
A.foft:active {background; black: color: red}
A.foot:visited {background: transparent; color: black}

This anchor and all other anchors with CLASS foot will be displayed as declared above

How do I design for backward compatibility using Style Sheets?
Existing HTML style methods (such as and ) may be easily combined with style sheet specification methods. Browsers that do not understand style sheets will use the older HTML formatting methods, and style sheets specifications can control the appearance of these elements in browsers that support CSS1.

As a reader, how can I make my browser recognize my own style sheet?
Netscape
It is not possible to do this in Netscape yet (as of version 4.0.)
Internet Explorer 3.0 (Win95/NT)
[It is possible to do this at least in Windows95/NT, but no user interface is provided. Unknown how this might be accomplished on other operating systems.]

1. Open the Registry editor (Start..Run..regedit..ENTER)
2. Under the ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\InternetExplorer\Styles’ key, Edit..New..String Value
3. The new value should be called ‘StyleSheet Pathname’
4. For the value, type in the full directory path of your .css style sheet.

Internet Explorer 4.0 (Win95/NT)

1. Under the View menu, select ‘Internet Options’.
2. Under the ‘General’ tab, choose the ‘Accessibility’ button.
3. Choose the ‘Format documents using my style sheet’ check box and ‘Browse…’ to the location of your .css style sheet.

How do I get rid of the gap under my image?
Images are inline elements, which means they are treated in the same way as text. Most people kind of know this – they know that if you use ‘text-align:center’ on an image it will be centred. What many people don’t realise is that this means you will have a gap underneath an image. This gap is for the descenders of letters like j,q,p,y and g. To get rid of this gap you need to make the image block-level – like this :

CSS
img {display:block;}

One problem that this can cause is when you want to have a few images next to each other – if they are block-level, they won’t be next to each other. To get around that, you can use float:left. Of course, this might present another problem – maybe you don’t want the image to float left. In this case, you can use an unordered list like this :

CSS
ul, li {
list-style-type:none;
padding:0;
margin:0 auto;
}
ul {
width:150px;
}
li {
float:left;
}
HTML


Why use Style Sheets?
Style sheets allow a much greater degree of layout and display control than has ever been possible thus far in HTML. The amount of format coding necessary to control display characteristics can be greatly reduced through the use of external style sheets which can be used by a group of documents. Also, multiple style sheets can be integrated from different sources to form a cohesive tapestry of styles for a document. Style sheets are also backward compatible – They can be mixed with HTML styling elements and attributes so that older browsers can view content as intended.

What does the “Cascading” in “Cascading Style Sheets” mean?
Style Sheets allow style information to be specified from many locations. Multiple (partial) external style sheets can be referenced to reduce redundancy, and both authors as well as readers can specify style preferences. In addition, three main methods can be employed by an author to add style information to HTML documents, and multiple approaches for style control are available in each of these methods. In the end, style can be specified for a single element using any, or all, of these methods. What style is to be used when there is a direct conflict between style specifications for an element?
Cascading comes to the rescue. A document can have styles specified using all of these methods, but all the information will be reduced to a single, cohesive “virtual” Style Sheet. Conflict resolution is based on each style rule having an assigned weight according to its importance in the scheme of things. A rule with a higher overall importance will carry a higher weight. This will be used in place of a competing style rule with a lower weight/importance. A hierarchy of competing styles is thus formed creating a “cascade” of styles according to their assigned weights. The algorithm used to determine this cascading weight scale is fairly complex.

What is CSS rule ‘at-rule’?
There are two types of CSS rules: ruleset and at-rule. At-rule is a rule that applies to the whole style sheet and not to a specific selector only (like in ruleset). They all begin with the @ symbol followed by a keyword made up of letters a-z, A-Z, digits 0-9, dashes and escaped characters, e.g. @import or @font-face.

What is selector?
CSS selector is equivalent of HTML element(s). It is a string identifying to which element(s) the corresponding declaration(s) will apply and as such the link between the HTML document and the style sheet.
For example in P {text-indent: 10pt} the selector is P and is called type selector as it matches all instances of this element type in the document.
in P, UL {text-indent: 10pt} the selector is P and UL (see grouping); in .class {text-indent: 10pt} the selector is .class (see class selector).

What is CLASS selector?
Class selector is a “stand alone” class to which a specific style is declared. Using the CLASS attribute the declared style can then be associated with any HTML element. The class selectors are created by a period followed by the class’s name. The name can contain characters a-z, A-Z, digits 0-9, period, hyphen, escaped characters, Unicode characters 161-255, as well as any Unicode character as a numeric code, however, they cannot start with a dash or a digit. (Note: in HTML the value of the CLASS attribute can contain more characters).It is a good practice to name classes according to their function than their appearance.

.footnote {font: 70%} /* class as selector */

This element is associated with the CLASS footnote


And so is this

What is CSS declaration?
CSS declaration is style attached to a specific selector. It consists of two parts; property which is equivalent of HTML attribute, e.g. text-indent: and value which is equivalent of HTML value, e.g. 10pt. NOTE: properties are always ended with a colon.

What is ‘important’ declaration?
Important declaration is a declaration with increased weight. Declaration with increased weight will override declarations with normal weight. If both reader’s and author’s style sheet contain statements with important declarations the author’s declaration will override the reader’s.

BODY {background: white ! important; color: black}

In the example above the background property has increased weight while the color property has normal.

What is cascade?
Cascade is a method of defining the weight (importance) of individual styling rules thus allowing conflicting rules to be sorted out should such rules apply to the same selector.

Declarations with increased weight take precedence over declaration with normal weight:

P {color: white ! important} /* increased weight */
P (color: black} /* normal weight */

Are Style Sheets case sensitive?
No. Style sheets are case insensitive. Whatever is case insensitive in HTML is also case insensitive in CSS. However, parts that are not under control of CSS like font family names and URLs can be case sensitive – IMAGE.gif and image.gif is not the same file.

How do I make my div 100% height?
You need to know what the 100% is of, so the parent div must have a height set. One problem that people often come up against is making the main page fill the screen if there’s little content. You can do that like this :
CSS
body, html {
height:100%;
}
body {
margin:0;
padding:0;
}
#wrap {
position:relative;
min-height:100%;
}
* html #wrap {
height:100%;
}

Here, the #wrap div goes around your whole page – it’s like a sub-body.

You need to use ‘min-height’ rather than ‘height’ for Firefox because otherwise it will set it to 100% of the viewport and no more. Internet Explorer, being well… crap, treats ‘height’ as it should be treating ‘min-height’ which it doesn’t recognise. (You can target IE by preceding your code with ‘ * html ‘).

To make floated divs within this #wrap div 100% of the #wrap div… well that’s more difficult. I think the best way is to use the ‘faux columns’ technique which basically means that you put the background in your body rather than your columns. If the body has columns and your floats don’t then it looks like your floated content is in a column that stretches to the bottom of the page. I’ve used this technique in my layout demos.

The problem is often not that the columns aren’t 100% height, but that they’re not equal lengths. Columns usually don’t start from the top of the page and end at the bottom – there’s often a header and a footer or sometimes, more interesting designs don’t have a recognisable columnar layout, but do require div boxes to be equal heights. This can be done with the aid of a couple of images and some css or with some javascript.

What is property?
Property is a stylistic parameter (attribute) that can be influenced through CSS, e.g. FONT or WIDTH. There must always be a corresponing value or values set to each property, e.g. font: bold or font: bold san-serif.

How do I write my style sheet so that it gracefully cascades with user’s personal sheet ?
You can help with this by setting properties in recommended places. Style rules that apply to the whole document should be set in the BODY element — and only there. In this way, the user can easily modify document-wide style settings.

What are pseudo-elements?
Pseudo-elements are fictional elements that do not exist in HTML. They address the element’s sub-part (non-existent in HTML) and not the element itself. In CSS1 there are two pseudo-elements: ‘first-line pseudo-element’ and ‘first-letter pseudo-element’. They can be attached to block-level elements (e.g. paragraphs or headings) to allow typographical styling of their sub-parts. Pseudo-element is created by a colon followed by pseudo-element’s name, e.g:

P:first-line
H1:first-letter

and can be combined with normal classes; e.g:

P.initial:first-line

First-line pseudo-element allows sub-parting the element’s first line and attaching specific style exclusively to this sub-part; e.g.:

P.initial:first-line {text-transform: uppercase}

The first line of this paragraph will be displayed in uppercase letters

First-letter pseudo-element allows sub-parting the element’s first letter and attaching specific style exclusively to this sub-part; e.g.:

P.initial:first-letter { font-size: 200%; color: red}

The first letter of this paragraph will be displayed in red and twice as large as the remaining letters

As a developer who works with CSS every day, I find one complication that continues to bother me in my daily work. Support for CSS has always been good on the horizontal scope, but vertical positioning has always been quite complicated. Alone the procedure to affix a footer to the bottom of a screen in dependance of the amount of content is unnecessarily difficult. The old table method provided much easier methods for this. What are your thoughts on this and do you see improvement following in future CSS revisions?
Indeed, the CSS formatting model allows more control horizontally than vertically. This is due to (typically) having a known width, but an unknown height. As such, the height is harder to deal with. However, CSS2 fixed positioning allows you to place content relative to the viewport (which is CSS-speak for window) instead of the document. For example, by setting position: fixed; bottom: 0 on an element, it will stick to the bottom. This works in Opera, Safari and Mozilla-based browsers. IE6 doesn’t support it, however. It remains to be seen if IE7 will support it.

How can I make a page look the same in e.g. NS and MSIE ?
The simple answer is, you can’t, and you shouldn’t waste your time trying to make it exactly the same. Web browsers are allowed, per definition, to interpret a page as they like, subject to the general rules set down in the HTML and CSS specifications. As a web author you can not have a prior knowledge of the exact situation and/or medium that will be used to render your page, and it’s almost always rather counterproductive to try to control that process. There is no necessity for a well-written page to look the same in different browsers. You may want to strive to ensure that it looks good in more than one browser, even if the actual display (in the case of graphical browsers) comes out a bit different. “Looking good” can be achieved by adopting sensible design and guidelines, such as not fixing the size or face of your fonts, not fixing the width of tables, etc? Don’t fight the medium; most web users only use one browser and will never know, or bother to find out, that your page looks different, or even “better”, in any other browser.

Is there anything that CAN’T be replaced by Style Sheets?
Quite a bit actually. Style sheets only specify information that controls display and rendering information. Virtual style elements that convey the NATURE of the content can not be replaced by style sheets, and hyperlinking and multimedia object insertion is not a part of style sheet functionality at all (although controlling how those objects appear IS part of style sheets functionality.) The CSS1 specification has gone out of its way to absorb ALL of the HTML functionality used in controlling display and layout characteristics. For more information on the possible properties in CSS, see the Index DOT Css Property Index.
Rule of Thumb: if an HTML element or attribute gives cues as to how its contents should be displayed, then some or all of its functionality has been absorbed by style sheets.

Can I include comments in my Style Sheet?
Yes. Comments can be written anywhere where whitespace is allowed and are treated as white space themselves. Anything written between /* and */ is treated as a comment (white space). NOTE: Comments cannot be nested.

What is the difference between ID and CLASS?
ID identifies and sets style to one and only one occurrence of an element while class can be attached to any number of elements. By singling out one occurrence of an element the unique value can be declared to said element.

CSS
#eva1 {background: red; color: white}
.eva2 {background: red; color: white}

HTML – ID

Paragraph 1 – ONLY THIS occurrence of the element P (or single occurrence of some other element) can be identified as eva1


Paragraph 2 – This occurrence of the element P CANNOT be identified as eva1

HTML – CLASS

Paragraph 1 – This occurrence of the element P can be classified as eva2


Paragraph 2 – And so can this, as well as occurrences of any other element,

How to make text-links without underline?
a:link, a:visited {text-decoration: none}

or

…will show the links without underlining. However, suppressing the underlining of links isn’t a very smart idea as most people are used to having them underlined. Also, such links are not spotted unless someone coincidentally runs a mouse over them. If, for whatever reason, links without underline are required background and foreground colors can be instead declared to them so that they can be distinguished from other text, e.g.;

a:link, a:visited {text-decoration: none; background: red; color: blue}

or

Both background and foreground colors should be specified as the property that is not specified can be overridden by user’s own settings.

How do you make a tool tip that appears on hover?
The most simple way is to use the ‘title’ attribute like this…

HTML
like this

CSS
a.tooltip {
position:relative;
cursor:help;
}
a.tooltip span {
display: none;
position:absolute;
top:1.5em;
left:0;
width:15em;
padding:0 2px;
}
a.tooltip:hover {
display:inline;
}
a.tooltip:hover span {
display:block;
border:1px solid gray;
background-color:white;
}

HTML

Karl Marx-info goes here-

Without this part… a.tooltip:hover {
display:inline;
}

..it won’t work in IE.

The “#n” in the link is to prevent the page from jumping to the top if the link is clicked. The “href” part is necessary as it won’t work in IE without it.

Which characters can CSS-names contain?
The CSS-names; names of selectors, classes and IDs can contain characters a-z, A-Z, digits 0-9, period, hyphen, escaped characters, Unicode characters 161-255, as well as any Unicode character as a numeric code. The names cannot start with a dash or a digit. (Note: in HTML the value of the CLASS attribute can contain more characters).

What browsers support style sheets? To what extent?
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer version 3.0 Beta 2 and above supports CSS, as does Netscape Communicator 4.0 Beta 2 and above and Opera 3.5 and above. Take note that the early implementations in these browsers did not support ALL of the properties and syntax described in the full CSS1 specification and beyond. Later versions have been getting much closer to full CSS1 compliance, but then comes the next hurdle – CSS2…it was such a big leap over CSS1 that it has taken the browsers years to come close to supporting a majority of CSS2’s features. Mozilla and Opera’s current versions both offer excellent CSS standards compliance. The Macintosh version of Internet Explorer is said to be very impressive in its CSS capabilities as well, but PC IE lags behind these implementations. Quite a few other implementations of CSS now exist in browsers that are not as widely-used (such as Amaya, Arena and Emacs-W3), but coverage of features in these documents currently only covers Internet Explorer, NCSA Mosaic, Netscape and Opera browsers.

What is cascading order?
Cascading order is a sorting system consisting of rules by which declarations are sorted out so that there are not conflicts as to which declaration is to influence the presentation. The sorting begins with rule no 1. If a match is found the search is over. If there is no match under rule no 1 the search continues under rule no 2 and so on.

1. Find all declarations that apply to a specific selector/property and Declare the specified style if the selector matches the element if there isn’t any Let the element inherit its parent property if there isn’t any Use initial value

2. Sort by weight (! important) Increased weight take precedence over normal weight

3. Sort by origin Rules with normal weight declared in author’s style sheet will override rules with normal weight declared in user’s personal style sheets Rules with increased weight declared in user’s personal style sheet will override rules with normal weight declared in author’s style sheet Rules with increased weight declared in author’s style sheet will override rules with increased weight declared in user’s personal style sheets Author’s and user’s rules will override UA’s default style sheet.

4. Sort by selector’s specificity More specific selector will override less specific one: ID-selector (most specific), followed by Classified contextual selectors (TABLE P EM.fot) Class selectors (EM.fot) Contextual selectors – the “lower down” the more weight, (TABLE P EM), (TABLE P EM STRONG) – STRONG has more weight than EM.

5. Sort by order specified If two rules have the same weight, the latter specified overrides ones specified earlier. Style sheets are sorted out as follows: The STYLE attribute (inline style) overrides all other styles The Style element (embedded style) overrides linked and imported sheets The LINK element (external style) overrides imported style The @import statement – imported style sheets also cascade with each other in the same order as they are imported

Why shouldn’t I use fixed sized fonts ?
Only in very rare situations we will find users that have a “calibrated” rendering device that shows fixed font sizes correct. This tells us that we can never know the real size of a font when it’s rendered on the user end. Other people may find your choice of font size uncomfortable. A surprisingly large number of people have vision problems and require larger text than the average. Other people have good eyesight and prefer the advantage of more text on the screen that a smaller font size allows. What is comfortable to you on your system may be uncomfortable to someone else. Browsers have a default size for fonts. If a user finds this inappropriate, they can change it to something they prefer. You can never assume that your choice is better for them. So, leave the font size alone for the majority of your text. If you wish to change it in specific places (say smaller text for a copyright notice at the bottom of page), use relative units so that the size will stay in relationship to what the user may have selected already. Remember, if people find your text uncomfortable, they will not bother struggling with your web site. Very few (if any) web sites are important enough to the average user to justify fighting with the author’s idea of what is best.

How do you make a whole div into a link?
You can’t put ‘a’ tags around a div, but you can do this with javascript :

HTML

… stuff goes here …

If you want to use an empty div with a background image as a link instead of putting your image into the html, you can do something like this:

CSS
#empty {
background-image:url(wine.jpg);
width:50px;
height:50px;
margin:auto;
}
#empty a {
display:block;
height:50px;
}
* html #empty a {
display:inline-block;
}

HTML

How do I have links of different colors on the same page?
Recommending people to use classes in their ‘a’ tags like this :

CSS
a.red {
color:red;
}
a.blue {
color:blue;
}

HTML
A red link
A blue link

This is a valid way to do it, but usually, this isn’t what a page looks like – two links next to each other with different colours – it’s usually something like a menu with one kind of link and main body text or another menu with different links. In this (normal) situation, To go higher up the cascade to style the links. Something like this :

CSS
a {
color:red;
}
#menu a {
color:blue;
}

HTML

There’s a blue link here.

What is shorthand property?
Shorthand property is a property made up of individual properties that have a common “addressee”. For example properties: font-weight, font-style, font-variant, font-size, font-family, refer to the font. To reduce the size of style sheets and also save some keystrokes as well as bandwidth they can all be specified as one shorthand property font, e.g.:

H1 {font-weight: bold;
font-style: italic;
font-variant: small-caps;
font-size: 160%;
font-family: serif}

can be all shorthanded to a space separated list:

H1 {font: bold italic small-caps 160% serif}

Note: To make things even simpler the line-height property can be specified together with the font-size property:

H1 {font: bold italic small-caps 160%/170% serif}

How to use CSS building a standards based HTML template?
It should:
1. Contain: header, navigation, content, footer
2. Use well-structured HTML
3. Be error-free and encourage good coding

Let?s start with number one there:

HTML document split up in four parts all with different meaning, use the
-tag. Div is short for ?division? and isn?t header, navigation and so on …

!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN”>

Your own page title

Content

Some sample content, add your own here

body {
background-color: Green;
}
div {
border: 3px solid Black;
padding: 7px;
width: 600px;
}
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
margin: 0;
}

#navigation {
float: left;
width: 150px;
}
#content {
float: left;
width: 430px;
}
#footer {
clear: both;
}

What is value?
Value is a ‘physical’ characteristic of the property. Property declares what should be formatted, e.g. FONT while value suggests how the property should be formatted, e.g. 12pt. By setting the value 12pt to the property FONT it is suggested that the formatted text be displayed in a 12 point font. There must always be a corresponding property to each value or set of values.

H1 {font: bold 180%}
In the example above the H1 selector is declared the FONT property which in its turn is declared the values BOLD and 180%.
The values suggesting alternatives are specified in a comma separated list, e.g.
H1 {font-family: font1, font2}

What is initial value?
Initial value is a default value of the property, that is the value given to the root element of the document tree. All properties have an initial value. If no specific value is set and/or if a property is not inherited the initial value is used. For example the background property is not inherited, however, the background of the parent element shines through because the initial value of background property is transparent.

Hello World


Content of the element P will also have red background
How frustrating is it to write a specification knowing that you’re at the browser vendors’ mercy?
That’s part of the game. I don’t think any specification has a birthright to be fully supported by all browsers. There should be healthy competition between different specifications. I believe simple, author-friendly specifications will prevail in this environment.
Microformats are another way of developing new formats. Instead of having to convince browser vendors to support your favorite specification, microformats add semantics to HTML through the CLASS attribute. And style it with CSS.

How far can CSS be taken beyond the web page–that is, have generalized or non-web specific features for such things as page formatting or type setting?
Yes, it’s possible to take CSS further in several directions. W3C just published a new Working Draft which describes features for printing, e.g., footnotes, cross-references, and even generated indexes.
Another great opportunity for CSS is Web Applications. Just like documents, applications need to be styled and CSS is an intrinsic component of AJAX. The “AJAX” name sounds great.

How To Style Table Cells?
Margin, Border and Padding are difficult to apply to inline elements. Officially, the

 

 

tag is a block level element because it can contain other block level elements (see Basics – Elements).
If you need to set special margins, borders, or padding inside a table cell, then use this markup: yourtext

to apply the CSS rules to the div inside the cell.

How To Style Forms?
Forms and form elements like SELECT, INPUT etc. can be styled with CSS – partially.
Checkboxes and Radiobuttons do not yet accept styles, and Netscape 4.xx has certain issues, but here is a tutorial that explains the application of CSS Styles on Form Elements.

How do I get my footer to sit at the bottom…?
Need a div which makes space at the bottom of the main page (inside the #wrap div). Then, the footer (being inside #wrap) can be placed in that space by using absolute positioning. Like this :

CSS body, html {
height:100%;
}
body {
margin:0;
padding:0;
}
#wrap {
position:relative;
width:780px;
margin:auto; min-height:100%;
}
* html #wrap {
height:100%;
}
#clearfooter {
height:50px;
overflow:hidden;
}
#footer {
position:absolute;
bottom:0;
width:100%;
height:50px;
}

HTML

…content goes here… 

Can I attach more than one declaration to a selector?
Yes. If more than one declaration is attached to a selector they must appear in a semi colon separated list, e.g.;

Selector {declaration1; declaration2}
P {background: white; color: black}

Border around a table?
Try the following:

.tblboda {
border-width: 1px;
border-style: solid;
border-color: #CCCCCC;
}
/*color, thickness and style can be altered*/

You put this style declaration either in
an external stylesheet, or you can stuff it in
the section, like:

(here you can place your styles)

and apply it to the table as follows:

Content text and more content

That should give you a grey thin border around this table.

If you want the border to ‘shrink wrap’ around the table, then you have to use the tag instead the
tag. But that is not quite proper CSS or HTML, because a is for inline elements. A table is not an inline element, therefore the correct tag is a

. If you play around with it a bit then you have a good chance to achieve what you want and still have correct HTML/CSS.The other way would be that you apply the class .tblboda directly to the table (for IE and other contemporary browsers), like 

and you define another class for each stylesheet: .tblboda2In the NN4.xx stylesheet, you use the same properties as above, and in the IE and other contemporary browsers you carefully set all those properties to default, like {border-style: none;}

Then you wrap the table in the

with the class .tblboda2 (NN4.xx does that) (IE a.o.c.b. don’t do anything, because the border-style is set to “none” = no border at all).This way you have a table that is wrapped in a nice little border: .tblboda2 for NN4.xx, .tblboda for IE and other modern browsers. 

How do you target a certain browser?
IE can be targetted by preceding your properties with ‘* html’. For example…

#nav {
position:fixed;
}
* html #nav { /* this will target IE */
position:absolute;
}

Another way to target IE is with conditional comments. Put this (below) in the head – just before the closing tag – and put anything you want to be directed only at IE in another stylesheet.

If you need to target IE5x…

#wrap {
width:760px; /* for IE5x */
w\idth:780px; /* for all other major browsers */
}

How does inheritance work?
HTML documents are structured hierarchically. There is an ancestor, the top level element, the HTML element, from which all other elements (children) are descended. As in any other family also children of the HTML family can inherit their parents, e.g. color or size.

By letting the children inherit their parents a default style can be created for top level elements and their children. (Note: not all properties can be inherited). The inheritance starts at the oldest ancestor and is passed on to its children and then their children and the children’s children and so on.

Inherited style can be overridden by declaring specific style to child element. For example if the EM element is not to inherit its parent P then own style must be declared to it. For example:

BODY {font-size: 10pt}
All text will be displayed in a 10 point font

BODY {font-size: 10pt}
H1 {font-size: 14pt} or H1 {font-size: 180%}

All text except for the level 1 headings will be displayed in a 10 point font. H1 will be displayed in a 14 point font (or in a font that is 80% larger than the one set to BODY). If the element H1 contains other elements, e.g. EM then the EM element will also be displayed in a 14 point font (or 180%) it will inherit the property of the parent H1. If the EM element is to be displayed in some other font then own font properties must be declared to it, e.g.:

BODY {font-size: 10pt}
H1 {font-size: 14pt} or H1 {font-size: 180%}
EM {font-size: 15pt} or EM {font-size: 110%}

The EM element will be displayed in a 15 point font or will be 10% larger than H1. NOTE: EM is, in this example, inside H1 therefore will inherit H1’s properties and not Body’s.

The above declaration will display all EM elements in 15 point font or font that is 10% larger than font declared to the parent element. If this specific font is to apply to EM elements but only if they are inside H1 and not every occurrence of EM then EM must take a form of a contextual selector.

H1 EM {font-size: 15pt} or H1 EM {font-size: 110%}

In the example above EM is a contextual selector. It will be displayed in specified font only if it will be found in the context of H1.

Not all properties are inherited. One such property is background. However, since it’s initial value is transpar

What is the percentage value in ‘font-size’ relative to?
It is relative to the parent element’s font-size. For example, if the style sheet says:

H1 {font-size: 20pt;}
SUP {font-size: 80%;}

…then a inside an

will have a font-size of 80% times 20pt, or 16pt.What is wrong with font-family: “Verdana, Arial, Helvetica”?
The quotes. This is actually a list with a single item containing the well-known ‘Verdana, Arial, Helvetica’ font family. It is probably intended to be a list of three items. 

Unlike in most other CSS1 properties, values for the font-family are separated by a comma to indicate that they are alternatives. Font names containing whitespace should be quoted. If quoting is omitted, any whitespace characters before and after the font name are ignored and any sequence of whitespace characters inside the font name is converted to a single space.

So to ask for two fonts foo and bar the syntax is:

font-family: foo, bar

To ask for the two fonts Revival 555 and Iodine you can do this:

font-family: “Revival 555”, Iodine

You could also do this:

font-family: Revival 555, Iodine

which is equivalent. Notice that this is not three fonts; you can tell because after the “l” you didn’t hit a comma, (more list items to come) a semicolon (end of that property, another property coming up) or a curly brace (end of that rule). This is also equivalent:

font-family: Revival 555, Iodine

^^^^^^ whole bunch of spaces converts to one space

But this next one is asking for a different font with two spaces in the name

font-family: “Revival 555”, Iodine
^^two spaces, which are not converted

In general it is more tolerant of user typing to leave out the quotes. Sometimes you need them, for example there is a real font sold by Fontworks and designed in 1995 by Stephan M?ller called Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Yes, two commas in the actual font name. CSS1 can handle this:

font-family: “Friday, Saturday, Sunday”, cursive

Because it can handle this, the example in the title is syntactically correct. But what the author or tool wrote was almost certainly not what the document author intended.

How do I centre my page?
This is very easy. If we take the code in the last question and change it to this :
CSS
body, html {
height:100%;
}
body {
margin:0;
padding:0;
}
#wrap {
position:relative;
width:780px;
margin:auto; min-height:100%;
}
* html #wrap {
height:100%;
}

you get a page that fits an 800×600 resolution screen without a horizontal scrollbar, which will be centered at higher resolutions.

Must I quote property values?
Generally no. However, values containing white spaces, e.g. font-family names should be quoted as whitespaces surrounding the font name are ignored and whitespaces inside the font name are converted to a single space, thus font names made up of more than one word (e.g.) ‘Times New Roman’ are interpreted as three different names: Times, New and Roman.

Do any WYSIWYG editors support the creation of Style Sheets? Any text-based HTML editors?
As support for CSS in browsers has matured in the last year, both WYSIWYG and Text-based HTML editors have appeared that allow the creation or the assistance of creating Cascading Style Sheet syntax. There are now at least two dozen editors supporting CSS syntax in some form. The W3C maintains an up-to-date list of these WYSIWYG and text-based editors.

Which style specification method should be used? Why?
The answer to this one is tricky. The short answer is: “it depends.” The long answer is, however, another story.

If you are planning on using more than one style specification method in your document, you must also worry about Cascading Order of Style methods (see question 11.) If you are going to use only one method, then some guidelines about the nature of each method need to be kept in mind. The answer to this question is also very much related to the advantages and disadvantages to using each of them (next question.)

Method 1: External Style Sheets (The LINK [–>Index DOT Html] element)
This method should be used if you want to apply the same style to multiple documents. Each document can reference the stand-alone style sheet and use the styles contained within. Using this method, the appearance of many documents can be controlled using a single or small number of style sheets. This can save a LOT of time for an author.

Method 2: Embedded Style Sheets (The Style [–>Index DOT Html] element)
The syntax used with Method 2 is the same as that for Method 1. This method is a happy medium between External Style Sheets and Inline Styles (see below.). It should be used in place of Method 1 if you only want to specify styles for a single document. This method should also be used when you want to specify a style for multiple tag types at once or the list of style definitions is of larger size. Method 3: Inline Styles (STYLE attribute to HTML elements)

If you only have to apply style to one or a few elements in a single document, your best bet will often be an Inline Style. This method attaches a style definition within the HTML element it is modifying.

Justified Text?
You redefine the

tag like:

p {text-align: justify;}

and that renders all

s with justified text.

Another possibility is to define a class, like:

.just {text-align: justify;}

and then you style the paragraphs in question like:

 

Note that NN 4.xx has problems with the inheritance of styles; that some NN4.xx browsers have a funny way to interpret “justify”; and that you have to have at least one blank space between the last character and the

tag, because otherwise NN 4.xx likes to justify even a three word half-sentence… also, some browsers do a pretty ugly job of rendering justified text, adding spaces between words, instead of spaces between letters, as with word-processing programs.

Why can @import be at the top only?
A style sheet that is imported into another one has a lower ranking in the cascading order: the importing style sheet overrides the imported one. Programmers may recognize this as the same model as in Java, Modula, Object-Pascal, Oberon and other modular programming languages.
However, there is a competing model, well-known to C programmers, where the imported material is not lower in rank, but is expanded in-place and becomes an integral part of the importing document.
By allowing @import only at the top of the style sheet, people that think in terms of the second model (although in principle incorrect) will still get the expected results: as long as the @import is before any other overriding rules, the two models are equivalent.
Btw. In all the modular languages import statements are only allowed at the top. In C, the #include can be put elsewhere, but in practice everybody always puts it at the top. So there may not be that much need to allow @import elsewhere in the style sheet either.

Colored Horizontal Rule?
You can apply styles to Horizontal Rules


in IE without problems, but NN4.xx can only render the silvery HR. But there is a way around it:.rule {border-top-width: 1px;
border-top-style: solid;
border-color: #FF0000;
margin: 0px 2%;} 

that, applied to a div, should give you a red HR in NN4.xx and IE, with a 2% gap on the left and right side.

CSSharky Logo
On this page is an Example of a coloured ‘Horizontal Rule’.
Update:
Thanks to Matt Del Vecchio here is an improved format for the Horizontal Rule:

hr { height:0px;
border:0px;
border-top:1px solid #ff1493; }

….this works in both IE and Netscape. It tells the browser to not render the hr rule itself, and then sets a 1px border, which looks just how most folks want to render the hr rule. It uses the


element and that is better than writing your own class as all devices will know what to do with an 


tag.Do URL’s have quotes or not?
Double or single quotes in URLs are optional. The tree following examples are equally valid: 

BODY {background: url(pics/wave.png) blue}
BODY {background: url(“pics/wave.png”) blue}
BODY {background: url(‘pics/wave.png’) blue}

To what are partial URLs relative?
Partial URLs are relative to the source of the style sheet. The style sheet source can either be linked or embedded. To which source partial URLs are relative to depends on their occurrence.
If a partial URL occurs in a linked style sheet then it is relative to the linked style sheet. The URL of the linked style sheet is the URL of the directory where the sheet is kept.
If a partial URL occurs in an embedded style sheet then it is relative to the embedded style sheet. The URL of the embedded style sheet is the URL of the HTML document in which the sheet is embedded.
Note that Navigator 4.x treats partial URLs as being relative to the HTML document, regardless of the place where the partial URL occurs. This is a serious bug which forces most authors to use absolute URLs in their CSS.

What’s the difference between ‘class’ and ‘id’?
As a person, you may have an ID card – a passport, a driving license or whatever – which identifies you as a unique individual. It’s the same with CSS. If you want to apply style to one element use ‘id’ (e.g.

). In the stylesheet, you identify an ‘id’ with a ‘#’ ie. ‘#myid’…
As a person, if you are in a class, you are one of many. It’s the same with CSS. If you want to apply the same style to more than one element, use ‘class’ (e.g. 

). In the stylesheet, you identify a ‘class’ with a ‘.’ ie. ‘.myclass’…
If id’s are more restrictive than classes, then why not just litter your page with classes? Well, I think the main thing is that it’s simply wrong. You don’t put headings in ‘p’ tags – you use ‘h1’, ‘h2’, etc. You don’t (or shouldn’t) make a list by writing asterisks or the little divider bar ( | ) – you use list tags (‘ol’/’ul’ + ‘li’) . You don’t say that your footer is part of a class of elements called ‘footer’ – that’s just stupid – you can’t have more than one footer – it can’t be a class. Of course, practically, the effect is about the same – the rules are applied – but that’s not the point – it’s semantically wrong to do it that way… However, if you try to give more than one element the same id, you will have problems – so don’t do it.
An element may have an id and a class, but that’s usually not necessary. You can also give an element two classes if you need to – like this : class=”class1 class2″. It can be very useful. Needless to say, you can’t give an element two id’s.
Another difference is to do with power. You can give an element an id and a class, but if any of the properties of the two conflict, the id style will win. Ids are more powerful than classes.
One more useful thing about id’s is that they can be used as a link reference. Many people still think that you need named anchors to make links within a page, but that’s simply not true – in fact, the name attribute is deprecated in XHTML except for in forms. One example of using id’s as link references is this page. There are no named anchors on this page – the questions at the top of the page link to the id’s of the divs that the answers are in.I made a 10px-high div, but IE makes it 20px high…
Yeah
This problem sometimes comes up when you make a div just to contain the bottom border of a box, or something like that. In this situation, there’s no text in the div, but IE won’t let the height of the div be smaller than the line-height (which usually depends on the font-size). The answer is to set the font-size to zero.
CSS
#thediv {
font-size:0;

How do I place two paragraphs next to each other?
There are several ways to accomplish this effect, although each has its own benefits and drawbacks. We start with the simplest method of positioning two paragraphs next to each other.

Paragraph 1
Paragraph 2

Trickier is this example, which relies on positioning but does not suffer the vertical-overlap problems which plague many other positioning solutions. The problem is that it relies on an incorrect positioning implementation, and will break down dramatically in conformant browsers.


Paragraph 1

Paragraph 2

If floating is not sufficient to your purposes, or you cannot accept display variances in older browsers, then it may be best to fall back to table-based solutions.

Can you use someone else’s Style Sheet without permission?
This is a somewhat fuzzy issue. As with HTML tags, style sheet information is given using a special language syntax. Use of the language is not copyrighted, and the syntax itself does not convey any content – only rendering information.
It is not a great idea to reference an external style sheet on someone else’s server. Doing this is like referencing an in-line image from someone else’s server in your HTML document. This can end up overloading a server if too many pages all over the net reference the same item. It can’t hurt to contact the author of a style sheet, if known, to discuss using the style sheet, but this may not be possible. In any case, a local copy should be created and used instead of referencing a remote copy.

I want my page fonts to look the same everywhere as in?
a) Why are my font sizes different in different browsers ?
b) Why are my font sizes different on different platforms ?

These questions represent the tip of the iceberg of a large topic about which whole essays have been written and a wide range of different views are held.
The WWW was originally devised to present the same content in different presentation situations and for a wide range of readers: on that basis, “looking the same” is not a design criterion, indeed different presentations would be expected to look different.
Some would have it that this original aim is no longer relevant, and that the purpose of web design is now to factor out the differences between display situations and put the author in control of the details of the presentation. Others point out that CSS was designed to give the reader a substantial amount of joint control over this process, and that this is desirable, for example to accommodate users with different visual acuity.
Reading of textual matter on a computer screen is quite a delicate business, what with the relatively coarse pixel structure of a computer display; even with a close knowledge of the display details, it isn’t possible to achieve the detailed control that would be possible, say, on a printer. Whatever one’s aims, the practical truth is that many of the efforts made to guarantee the precise result on the screen have seriously counterproductive side effects in a www situation.
The CSS specifications themselves recommend that authors should not use absolute size units in a situation where the properties of the display are unknown. There’s a lot to be said for flexible design, that in an appropriate situation looks the way you had in mind, but still successfully conveys content and message in a wide range of other browsing situations.
And so, before looking at the technical detail of what can be specified, it’s strongly suggested that you read some of those essays on web design, and reach your own conclusions as to the strengths and weaknesses of the medium, and how you can best exploit the strengths in a web environment, without falling foul of the weaknesses.

When is auto different from 0 in margin properties?
In vertical margins, auto is always equal to 0. In horizontal margins, auto is only equal to 0 if the width property is also auto. Here are three examples, assume that there is a

that is a child of:

Example 1: auto value on the width.

BODY {width: 30em;}
P {width: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}

Since the width property is auto, the auto values of the two margins will be ignored. The result is a P that is 30em wide, with no margins.

Example 2: two auto margins

BODY {width: 30em;}
P {width: 20em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}

The P will be 20em wide and the remaining 10em will be divided between the two margins. Paragraphs will be indented 5em at both sides.

Example 3: one auto margin

BODY {width: 30em;}
P {width: 20em; margin-left: 2em; margin-right: auto;}

In this case, paragraphs are 20em wide and are indented 2em on the left side. Since the total width available is 30em, that means the right margin will be 8em.
Note that the default value of width is auto, so setting one or both margins to auto is only useful if you set the width to something other than auto at the same time.

How do I move the list bullet to the left/right?
CSS1 has no properties for setting margins or padding around the bullet of a list item and in most cases the position of the bullet is browser-dependent. This is especially true since most browsers disagreed on whether a bullet is found within the margin or padding of a list item.
In CSS2, properties were introduced to provide greater control over the placement of bullets (which CSS2 calls a “marker”) but these were not widely supported by mid-2001 browsers. Here is an example of changing a marker’s placement:
li:before {display: marker; marker-offset: 22px; content: url(triangle.jpg);}
In this example, a graphic of a triangle is inserted before the content of the li element, set to be a marker (through display: marker;), and given an offset of 22 pixels. Depending on the margin size of the list item, there may not be room for the marker to appear next to the list item’s content.

How does a simple CSS style rule look ?
P { font-family: serif; font-size: 1.2em; }
Here we see a rule with a ‘selector’ P that has been given two style declarations, i.e. two ‘property:value’ pairs.
‘font-family’ and ‘font-size’ are properties of the content of element P , and these properties are assigned the values of ‘serif’ and ‘1.2em’ respectively.
A colon ‘:’ is the value assignment symbol in CSS, so using an equal sign ‘=’ instead is an error and is required by the CSS specification to be ignored. Any browser that appears to honor this style is behaving improperly.
For length values a ‘unit’ is always needed and there shall never be any space between a number and its length unit.
A value given as e.g. ‘1.2 em’ is an error and is required by the CSS specification to be ignored. Any browser that appears to honor this style is behaving improperly.
A semicolon ‘;’ between declarations is required but it’s also good “rule of thumb” to put a ‘;’ even after the last declaration.
Finally, curly braces ‘{?}’ group one or more declarations into a final CSS rule.

Why are there gaps above and below my form in IE?
A lot of the time, when you find gaps that you can’t account for, they are due the default styles of different browsers – especially the margins and padding. IE gives forms some margins above and below forms while Firefox doesn’t. It’s like with lists – you’ll find bigger padding and margins for lists in IE than in Firefox. Paragraph margins are different, as are the margins on heading tags (h1,h2, etc).

A good way to not get caught out by these problems is to set all margins and padding to zero at the top of your style sheet and then add them as and when you feel the a need for them, in that way, any margins and padding will be the same in different browsers.

CSS
* {
margin:0;
padding:0;
}

If one were to set Text and Link colors using a style sheet, should one also define the background colors for these elements as well?
It is generally true that you should give background or background-color a value, but not necessarily a color value. E.g., if the document has a background image, you would “highlight” all links if you give them a background color.

body { background-image: url(light-texture.png) #FFF; color: #000 }
a:link, a:visited, a:active { color: #00F; background-color: transparent; }

By setting the background-image explicitly to transparent, you lower the risk of another rule in the cascade giving links a background that would highlight them.

How do you override the underlining of hyperlinks?
CSS has the ability to explicitly control the status of underlining for an element – even for hyperlinks. The correct way to do this in an external or document-level style sheet is:
A { text-decoration: none }
and within an anchor element as:
link text

Note: The underlining of hyperlinks is a long-standing visual convention that assists in the visual identification of active hyperlink areas. Many users expect to see hyperlinks underlined and may be confused and/or irritated if they are not used. User-defined style sheets address this user need by allowing the user to have final control over this feature. Unfortunately, wide support for this ability does not yet exist.

How do you show which page you’re on (in a menu)?
If PHP is not available to you, you could use the cascade. Put an id in your body tags and an id in each of your ‘a’ tags for the links.
Let’s say on page one you have this:
CSS

….
page one

In your CSS, you can have something like this:
CSS
#page1 a#page1link {
color:purple;

How can I specify two different sets of link colors?
By classifying each set of links and then attaching desired color to each set.
CSS:

You can name set1 and set2 any way you like as long as the names are made up of letters a-z, A-Z, digits 0-9, period, hyphen, escaped characters, Unicode characters 161-255, as well as any Unicode character as a numeric code.
Note: to avoid conflict with user’s settings a background property (background color) should also be specified together with the color property (foreground color).

How can I place multiple blocks next to each other?
In theory, the following will produce 4 “columns”:

Block 1
Block 2
Block 3
Block 4

Each “column” will occupy 25% of the screen. This relies on a correct implementation of float, which cannot be said of many legacy browsers. If you cannot accept display variances in older browsers, then it may be best to fall back to table-based solutions.

2. By making the block an inline element and then use text-align property

text

This technique depends on the incorrect implementation of text-align behavior in older browsers. It will likely cease to work in future CSS-conformant browsers, and eventually it will probably not be a viable solution.

Document Style Semantics and Specification Language (DSSSL)?
Document Style Semantics and Specification Language is an international standard, an expression language, a styling language for associating processing (formatting and transformation) with SGML documents, for example XML.

What is Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL)?
XSL is a proposed styling language for formatting XML (eXtensible Markup Language) documents. The proposal was submitted to the W3C by Microsoft, Inso, and ArborText.

Which font names are available on all platforms ?
The simple answer is “None” which is why CSS offers five generic font names as ‘serif’, ‘sans-serif’, ‘cursive’, ‘fantasy’ and ‘monospace’. Never put any of these generic font names in quotes.

A CSS aware browser should make a suitable choice from the available fonts in response to each of those generic names.
Specifying any other font name in a www environment comes out as a suggestion only, that may or may not be acknowledged by a browser.
The problem with using names of specific fonts is that there is little point in naming fonts that few users will have, so you’re down to listing a few mass-market font names. This will then override any superior selection that a minority of discerning readers may have made for themselves.
Note also that fonts may differ in their character repertoire, but this is often not evident from the font name itself: by selecting an inappropriate font name, you might prevent internationalized content from displaying correctly for a proportion of users.

Why does Netscape lose my styles ?
Netscape 4.x has poor support for CSS. Having said that, the following points should be noted.
Invalid HTML will almost certainly cause Netscape to ignore your CSS suggestions at some point. You will find that valid HTML is your best friend, but for Netscape to work properly you must ensure that all elements in your markup which permit closing tags are explicitly closed.
Check and correct your CSS suggestions for the very same reason, Netscape 4.x is in fact doing “the right thing”, as per CSS specs (as opposed to MSIE) when it ignores style rules with errors.
Netscape 4.x has what’s called an “inheritance problem” into its TABLE element. It can be argued that NS is all within its right to behave as it does in this case, but since the workaround is quite simple it’s easy enough to just use it and be done with it.
Let’s say you want your TABLE content to “look the same” as your BODY content? “Redundant” styling comes to your help as in e.g. BODY, TABLE, TH, TD { /* insert your styles here */ }
On a generic level, Netscape 4.x likes to have style rules applied directly to the elements where they are needed. You can never really trust the inheritance principle to work correctly at any level in Netscape 4.x.

Why is it my ‘:hover’ declaration for links does not work ?
Assuming you have already checked that your style sheet declarations do conform to correct CSS syntax, it could be that you have overlooked the importance of a correct order of style declarations for links.
The CSS2 specification makes this following note on the importance of placing the dynamic pseudo-classes ‘:hover’ and ‘:active’ in correct positions in a list of style declarations.
Note that the ‘a:hover’ must be placed after the ‘a:link’ and ‘a:visited’ rules, since otherwise the cascading rules will hide the ‘color’ property of the ‘a:hover’ rule.

Similarly, because ‘a:active’ is placed after ‘a:hover’, the active color will apply when the user both activates and hovers over the ‘a’ element.

CSS [Cascading Style Sheets] Interview questions and answers

Explain in brief about the term CSS.

Answer
A stylesheet language used to describe the presentation of a document written in a markup language. Cascading Style Sheets are a big breakthrough in Web design because they allow developers to control the style and layout of multiple Web pages all at once.
What are the various style sheets?

Answer
Inline, external, imported and embedded are the different types of style sheets.
What are style sheet properties?

Answer
CSS Background
CSS Text
CSS Font
CSS Border
CSS Outline
CSS Margin
CSS Padding
CSS List
CSS Table
List various font attributes used in style sheet.

Answer
font-style
font-variant
font-weight
font-size/line-height
font-family
caption
icon
menu
message-box
small-caption
status-bar
Explain inline, embedded and external style sheets.

Answer
Inline
If only a small piece of code has to be styled then inline style sheets can be used.

Embedded
Embedded style sheets are put between the <head> </head> tags.

External
If you want to apply a style to all the pages within your website by changing just one style sheet, then external style sheets can be used.

1. Explain in brief about the term CSS.
2. What are the various style sheets?
3. What are style sheet properties?
4. List various font attributes used in style sheet.
5. Explain inline, embedded and external style sheets.

What is CSS?
1. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets and is a simple styling language which allows attaching style to HTML elements. Every element type as well as every occurrence of a specific element within that type can be declared an unique style, e.g. margins, positioning, color or size.

2. CSS is a web standard that describes style for XML/HTML documents.

3. CSS is a language that adds style (colors, images, borders, margins?) to your site. It?s really that simple. CSS is not used to put any content on your site, it?s just there to take the content you have and make it pretty. First thing you do is link a CSS-file to your HTML document. Do this by adding this line:

<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”style.css”
type=”text/css”>

The line should be placed in between your <head> and </head> tags. If you have several pages you could add the exact same line to all of them and they will all use the same stylesheet, but more about that later. Let?s look inside the file ?style.css? we just linked to.

h1 {
font-size: 40px;
height: 200px;
}
.warning {
color: Red;
font-weight: bold;
}
#footer {
background-color: Gray;
}

4. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a simple mechanism for adding style (e.g. fonts, colors, spacing) to Web documents. This is also where information meets the artistic abilities of a web-designer. CSS helps you spice up your web-page and make it look neat in wide variety of aspects.

What are Cascading Style Sheets?
A Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) is a list of statements (also known as rules) that can assign various rendering properties to HTML elements. Style rules can be specified for a single element occurrence, multiple elements, an entire document, or even multiple documents at once. It is possible to specify many different rules for an element in different locations using different methods. All these rules are collected and merged (known as a “cascading” of styles) when the document is rendered to form a single style rule for each element.

How do I center block-elements with CSS1?
There are two ways of centering block level elements:

1. By setting the properties margin-left and margin-right to auto and width to some explicit value:

BODY {width: 30em; background: cyan;}
P {width: 22em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto}

In this case, the left and right margins will each be four ems wide, since they equally split up the eight ems left over from (30em – 22em). Note that it was not necessary to set an explicit width for the BODY element; it was done here to keep the math clean.

Another example:

TABLE {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 400px;}
In most legacy browsers, a table’s width is by default determined by its content. In CSS-conformant browsers, the complete width of any element (including tables) defaults to the full width of its parent element’s content area. As browser become more conformant, authors will need to be aware of the potential impact on their designs.

If background and color should always be set together, why do they exist as separate properties?
There are several reasons for this. First, style sheets become more legible — both for humans and machines. The background property is already the most complex property in CSS1 and combining it with color would make it even more complex. Second, color inherits, but background doesn’t and this would be a source of confusion.

What is class?
Class is a group of 1) instances of the same element to which an unique style can be attached or 2) instances of different elements to which the same style can be attached.

1) The rule P {color: red} will display red text in all paragraphs. By classifying the selector P different style can be attached to each class allowing the display of some paragraphs in one style and some other paragraphs in another style.
2) A class can also be specified without associating a specific element to it and then attached to any element which is to be styled in accordance with it’s declaration. All elements to which a specific class is attached will have the same style.

To classify an element add a period to the selector followed by an unique name. The name can contain characters a-z, A-Z, digits 0-9, period, hyphen, escaped characters, Unicode characters 161-255, as well as any Unicode character as a numeric code, however, they cannot start with a dash or a digit. (Note: in HTML the value of the CLASS attribute can contain more characters). (Note: text between /* and */ are my comments).

CSS
P.name1 {color: red} /* one class of P selector */
P.name2 {color: blue} /* another class of P selector */
.name3 {color: green} /* can be attached to any element */

HTML
<P class=name1>This paragraph will be red</P>
<P class=name2>This paragraph will be blue</P>
<P class=name3>This paragraph will be green</P>
<LI class=name3>This list item will be green</LI>

It is a good practice to name classes according to their function than their appearance; e.g. P.fotnote and not P.green. In CSS1 only one class can be attached to a selector. CSS2 allows attaching more classes, e.g.:
P.name1.name2.name3 {declaration} <P class=”name1 name2 name2″>This paragraph has three classes attached</P>

What is grouping ?
Grouping is gathering (1) into a comma separated list two or more selectors that share the same style or (2) into a semicolon separated list two or more declarations that are attached to the same selector (2).

1. The selectors LI, P with class name .first and class .footnote share the same style, e.g.:
LI {font-style: italic}
P.first {font-style: italic}
.footnote {font-style: italic}

To reduce the size of style sheets and also save some typing time they can all be grouped in one list.
LI, P.first, .footnote {font-style: italic}

2. The declarations {font-style: italic} and {color: red} can be attached to one selector, e.g.:
H2 {font-style: italic}
H2 {color: red}
and can also be grouped into one list:
H2 {font-style: italic; color: red}

What is external Style Sheet? How to link?
External Style Sheet is a template/document/file containing style information which can be linked with any number of HTML documents. This is a very convenient way of formatting the entire site as well as restyling it by editing just one file. The file is linked with HTML documents via the LINK element inside the HEAD element. Files containing style information must have extension .css, e.g. style.css. <HEAD> <LINK REL=STYLESHEET HREF=”style.css” TYPE=”text/css”> </HEAD>

Is CSS case sensitive?
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is not case sensitive. However, font families, URLs to images, and other direct references with the style sheet may be.
The trick is that if you write a document using an XML declaration and an XHTML doctype, then the CSS class names will be case sensitive for some browsers.

It is a good idea to avoid naming classes where the only difference is the case, for example:

div.myclass { …}
div.myClass { … }

If the DOCTYPE or XML declaration is ever removed from your pages, even by mistake, the last instance of the style will be used, regardless of case.

Three selectors: h1, .warning and #footer, what they do ?
An element points at a HTML-tag somewhere on your page. In the example above we want to style the <h1>-tag. Note that using an element like that affects all tags with that name, so using p { margin-left: 100px; } gives all <p>-tags a left-margin.
Using a class is just as simple. When writing .your_class you style all tags with a class with the name ?your_class?. In the example above we have .warning which will style e.g. <div class=”warning”> and <em class=”warning”>, that is, any element with the class warning. Classes are used when you want to style just a few of your tags in a way, perhaps you want some of your links red? Add a class to all those links.
You need one more building block: the id. This time you style an element with the attribute ?id? set to the id you have chosen. Ids work exactly like classes except for one thing; you can only have one id with a certain name in each of your HTML documents. In the example above we style <div id=”footer”>. If you look at the example it does make sense: a HTML document may contain several warnings but only one footer. Ids should be used when you want to style just one specific tag.
Using those three building blocks will take you far but when you get to more advanced layouts you might want to combine the building blocks into more advanced selectors. Just to give you two examples of what you can do: em.warning to style only those <em>-tags with the class .warning set. You can also use #footer a to style only the links that are nested inside the tag with id ?footer.
Each of the selectors has a set of declarations tied to them. Each declaration has a property, describing what we want to change and a value, what we should change it to. An example: a { color: Blue; font-size: 3em; }. You have the selector a there, so all links in your document will be styled. We have two declarations: color: Blue and font-size: 3em;. Lastly each declaration consists of two parts: the property color and the value Blue.
there is a LOT of things you can style and play with. Additionally (close to) all tags are equal in CSS, so you can set e.g. borders and colors of any element just like you could with a table if you used only HTML.

What are Style Sheets?
Style Sheets are templates, very similar to templates in desktop publishing applications, containing a collection of rules declared to various selectors (elements).

What is CSS rule ‘ruleset’?
There are two types of CSS rules: ruleset and at-rule. Ruleset identifies selector or selectors and declares style which is to be attached to that selector or selectors. For example P {text-indent: 10pt} is a CSS rule. CSS rulesets consist of two parts: selector, e.g. P and declaration, e.g. {text-indent: 10pt}.

P {text-indent: 10pt} – CSS rule (ruleset)
{text-indent: 10pt} – CSS declaration
text-indent – CSS property
10pt – CSS value

what is ‘Fixed’ Background?
There is the possibility to use the HTML tag bgproperties=”fixed”, but that is IE proprietary, and dependent upon the ‘background’ attribute (deprecated in HTML4).

With CSS, you can declare the background like:

BODY {
font-family : “Trebuchet MS”, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
background-image: url(images/yourimage.gif);
background-repeat: no-repeat; /*no-tiling background*/
background-position: center;
background-attachment: fixed;
background-color: #hexcolor;
color : #hexcolor;
margin: 10px;
}

that shows a background-image in the center of the <BODY> element, non-scrolling and non-repeating – in IE or NN6. NN 4.xx gets the non-repeat-part right, but stuffs the picture in the upper left corner and scrolls …

What is embedded style? How to link?
Embedded style is the style attached to one specific document. The style information is specified as a content of the STYLE element inside the HEAD element and will apply to the entire document.

<HEAD>
<STYLE TYPE=”text/css”>
<!–
P {text-indent: 10pt}
–>
</STYLE>
</HEAD>

Note: The styling rules are written as a HTML comment, that is, between <!– and –> to hide the content in browsers without CSS support which would otherwise be displayed.

What is ID selector?
ID selector is an individually identified (named) selector to which a specific style is declared. Using the ID attribute the declared style can then be associated with one and only one HTML element per document as to differentiate it from all other elements. ID selectors are created by a character # followed by the selector’s name. The name can contain characters a-z, A-Z, digits 0-9, period, hyphen, escaped characters, Unicode characters 161-255, as well as any Unicode character as a numeric code, however, they cannot start with a dash or a digit.

#abc123 {color: red; background: black}

<P ID=abc123>This and only this element can be identified as abc123 </P>

What is contextual selector?
Contextual selector is a selector that addresses specific occurrence of an element. It is a string of individual selectors separated by white space, a search pattern, where only the last element in the pattern is addressed providing it matches the specified context.

TD P CODE {color: red}

The element CODE will be displayed in red but only if it occurs in the context of the element P which must occur in the context of the element TD.

TD P CODE, H1 EM {color: red}

The element CODE will be displayed in red as described above AND the element EM will also be red but only if it occurs in the context of H1

P .footnote {color: red}

Any element with CLASS footnote will be red but only if it occurs in the context of P

P .footnote [lang]{color: red}

Any element with attribute LANG will be red but only if it is classed as “footnote” and occurs in the context of P

How do I have a background image that isn’t tiled?
Specify the background-repeat property as no-repeat. You can also use the background property as a shortcut for specifying multiple background-* properties at once. Here’s an example:

BODY {background: #FFF url(watermark.jpg) no-repeat;}

What does \ABCD (and \ABCDE) mean?
CSS allows Unicode characters to be entered by number. For example, if a CLASS value in some Russian document contains Cyrillic letters EL PE (Unicode numbers 041B and 041F) and you want to write a style rule for that class, you can put that letter into the style sheet by writing:

.41B41F {font-style: italic;}
This works on all keyboards, so you don’t need a Cyrillic keyboard to write CLASS names in Russian or another language that uses that script.

The digits and letters after the backslash (\) are a hexadecimal number. Hexadecimal numbers are made from ordinary digits and the letters A to F (or a to f). Unicode numbers consist of four such digits.

If the number starts with a 0, you may omit it. The above could also be written as:

.\41B\41F {font-style: italic;}
But be careful if the next letter after the three digits is also a digit or a letter a to f! This is OK: .\41B-\41F, since the dash (-) cannot be mistaken for a hexadecimal digit, but .\41B9\41F is only two letters, not three.

Four digits is the maximum, however, so if you write:
.41B941F {font-style: italic;}

Why do style sheets exist?
SGML (of which HTML is a derivative) was meant to be a device-independent method for conveying a document’s structural and semantic content (its meaning.) It was never meant to convey physical formatting information. HTML has crossed this line and now contains many elements and attributes which specify visual style and formatting information. One of the main reasons for style sheets is to stop the creation of new HTML physical formatting constructs and once again separate style information from document content.

What are the advantages/disadvantages of the various style methods?
External Style Sheets
Advantages

* Can control styles for multiple documents at once
* Classes can be created for use on multiple HTML element types in many documents
* Selector and grouping methods can be used to apply styles under complex contexts

Disadvantages

* An extra download is required to import style information for each document
* The rendering of the document may be delayed until the external style sheet is loaded
* Becomes slightly unwieldy for small quantities of style definitions

Embedded Style Sheets
Advantages

* Classes can be created for use on multiple tag types in the document
* Selector and grouping methods can be used to apply styles under complex contexts
* No additional downloads necessary to receive style information

Disadvantages

* This method can not control styles for multiple documents at once

Inline Styles
Advantages

* Useful for small quantities of style definitions
* Can override other style specification methods at the local level so only exceptions need to be listed in conjunction with other style methods

Disadvantages

* Does not distance style information from content (a main goal of SGML/HTML)
* Can not control styles for multiple documents at once
* Author can not create or control classes of elements to control multiple element types within the document
* Selector grouping methods can not be used to create complex element addressing scenarios

What is inline style? How to link?
Inline style is the style attached to one specific element. The style is specified directly in the start tag as a value of the STYLE attribute and will apply exclusively to this specific element occurrence.

<P STYLE=”text-indent: 10pt”>Indented paragraph</P>

What is imported Style Sheet? How to link?
Imported Style Sheet is a sheet that can be imported to (combined with) another sheet. This allows creating one main sheet containing declarations that apply to the whole site and partial sheets containing declarations that apply to specific elements (or documents) that may require additional styling. By importing partial sheets to the main sheet a number of sources can be combined into one.
To import a style sheet or style sheets include the @import notation or notations in the STYLE element. The @import notations must come before any other declaration. If more than one sheet is imported they will cascade in order they are imported – the last imported sheet will override the next last; the next last will override the second last, and so on. If the imported style is in conflict with the rules declared in the main sheet then it will be overridden.

<LINK REL=STYLESHEET HREF=”main.css” TYPE=”text/css”>
<STYLE TYPE=”text=css”>
<!–
@import url(http://www.and.so.on.partial1.css);
@import url(http://www.and.so.on.partial2.css);
…. other statements
–>
</STYLE>

What is a Style Sheet?
Style sheets are the way that standards-compliant Web designers define the layout, look-and-feel, and design of their pages. They are called Cascading Style Sheets or CSS. With style sheets, a designer can define many aspects of a Web page:

* fonts
* colors
* layout
* positioning
* imagery
* accessibility

Style sheets give you a lot of power to define how your pages will look. And another great thing about them is that style sheets make it really easy to update your pages when you want to make a new design. Simply load in a new style sheet onto your pages and you’re done.

What is alternate Style Sheet? How to link?
Alternate Style Sheet is a sheet defining an alternate style to be used in place of style(s) declared as persistent and/or preferred .
Persistent style is a default style that applies when style sheets are enabled but can disabled in favor of an alternate style, e.g.:

<LINK REL=Stylesheet HREF=”style.css” TYPE=”text/css”>

Preferred style is a default style that applies automatically and is declared by setting the TITLE attribute to the LINK element. There can only be one preferred style, e.g.:

<LINK REL=Stylesheet HREF=”style2.css” TYPE=”text/css” TITLE=”appropriate style description”>

Alternate style gives an user the choice of selecting an alternative style – a very convenient way of specifying a media dependent style. Note: Each group of alternate styles must have unique TITLE, e.g.:

<LINK REL=”Alternate Stylesheet” HREF=”style3.css” TYPE=”text/css” TITLE=”appropriate style description” MEDIA=screen>
<LINK REL=”Alternate Stylesheet” HREF=”style4.css” TYPE=”text/css” TITLE=”appropriate style description” MEDIA=print>

Alternate style sheet are not yet supported.

How can you set a minimum width for IE?

To set a minimum width, the CSS property is ‘min-width’. This can be very useful and works well in good browsers. IE doesn’t understand ‘min-width’. However, it has a proprietary property called ‘expression’ which allows us to feed it javascript via a stylesheet. Below is how to set a (780px) minimum width for IE…

<!–[if gte IE 5]> <style type=”text/css”>
body {
width:expression(documentElement.clientWidth < 780 ? (documentElement.clientWidth == 0 ? (body.clientWidth < 780 ? “780px” : “auto”) : “780px”) : “auto” );
}
</style>
<![endif]–>

As the property is non-standard, it won’t validate with the W3C validator, so if we put it in the head like this (above) – in an IE conditional comment – the validator will ignore it and the page will get a clean bill of health.

Which browsers support CSS?
It depends on your definition of “support.” If you are interested in those browsers which makes some attempt at supporting CSS, no matter how partial or bug-ridden, then the list is:

* Internet Explorer 3.0 and above
* Navigator 4.0 and above
* Opera 3.6 and above
* Konqueror
* Arena
* Emacs-w3
* Amaya
* Lexicon
* XPublish by Media Design in?Progress

If instead you’re interested in those browsers which are known to do a credible job of bug-free and mostly complete support for CSS1, then the list narrows somewhat dramatically:

* Internet Explorer 5.0 for Macintosh and above
* Internet Explorer 5.5 for Windows and above
* Netscape Navigator 6.0 and above
* Opera 4.0 and above

While none of these browser can be claimed to have a perfect implementation of CSS1, they are all quite good and can be relied upon to operate in a consistent fashion for most of CSS1.

How do I place text over an image?
To place text or image over an image you use the position property. The below exemple is supported by IE 4.0. All you have to do is adapt the units to your need.

<div style=”position: relative; width: 200px; height: 100px”>
<div style=”position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 200px”>
<image>
</div>
<div style=”position: absolute; top: 20%; left: 20%; width: 200px”>
Text that nicely wraps
</div>
</div>

what CSS is, why not start coding?
CSS is sort of like scripting language made for the web. In contrary with HTML, DHTML, JavaScript, VBScript and many others. CSS is strictly for formatting your web-page and now many new browser support it. (NOTE: Older browser do not support CSS, so please check your browser version and make sure whether it supports it or not. You may have to update your current Browser.)

The way the code goes into your Web-page is through a variety of ways. The way CSS works is that is the code is set between the<head></head> tags. You can put the CSS code after </title> which is what most people do. Now, here are the following ways of making your webpage with CSS enabled features:

1.) Writing your CSS code within your HTML source code. This is how it would look like:

<html><head><title>My First CSS!</title>
<!– Now begin the CSS coding! –>
<STYLE TYPE = “text/css”>
<!–
body {
background-color: #eeeee;
}
p {
text-align: left;
color: black;
font: Verdana;
font-size: 80%;
}
a {
text-decoration: none;
color: black;
font-weight: bold;
}
a:hover {
text-decoration: underline;
color: red;
font-weight: bold;
}
–>
</STYLE>
<!– End CSS code –>
</head><body></body></html>

2.) Linking to your CSS file. This tells the webpage to find the .css file and use it as the CSS code. Here is the code that would allow you to do:

<html><head><title>CSS</title>
<link href=”style.css” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” />
</head><body /></html>

As you can see from the code above, the <link> tag is pretty helpful. What it does is that it links to the style.css file which has all the css code. Just like embedding an image throught he <img> tag.

Now to explain a bit from the first example. CSS code isn’t very hard to understand.Take for example the body { ..} part. What it does is that it formats how the <body> tag in HTML would work. That is a very simple way of formatting the body tag with the CSS. To help you understand better, here is a simple syntax for CSS:

selector { property1: value1; property2: value2;}

The “selector” sort of relates to the html tags used for outputting etc…

We all know that <a> is a tag used for links. You will see in the example about a:hover and a itself. <br>What a does it just sets the characteristics of the format. You can set how you want a link to appear using the font size, weight etc..

Then comes the “a:hover”. What does is also pretty self explanatory. It acts on when a person moves the mouse cursor over the links.

ADVANCED CSS FEATURES:

CSS can be even used to change the appearance of the scroll bar at your right side. Unfortunately, that only works with IE. You have to be using IE in order for this to work. Here is how to change some appearances of your scroll bar:

The CSS statements for doing this are:
1) scrollbar-3dlight-color
2)scrollbar-arrow-color
3) scrollbar-base-color
4) scrollbar-dark shadow-color
5) scrollbar-face-color
6) scrollbar-highlight-color
7) scrollbar-shadow-color
8) scrollbar-track-color

<style type=”text/css”>
<!–
BODY {
scrollbar-arrow-color: green;
scrollbar-face-color: #FFFFFF;
scrollbar-track-color: rgb(12,35,244);
}
// –>
</style>

How to customize your text boxes.
Here is the code on how to do it:

<style type=”text/css”>
<!–
BODY {
scrollbar-arrow-color: green;
scrollbar-face-color: #FFFFFF;
scrollbar-track-color: rgb(12,35,244);
}
TEXTAREA {
scrollbar-arrow-color: green;
scrollbar-face-color: #FFFFFF;
scrollbar-track-color: rgb(12,35,244);
}
// –>
</style>

That above code, has some similarities. The textbox area is treated with the same function statements as for the scrollbar. The scrollbar statements goes in the BODY selector.

Why does my content shift to the left on some pages (in FF)?
That’ll be the pages with more content? The ones that have a vertical scrollbar? If you look in IE there’s probably a white space on the right where there would be a scrollbar if there were enough content to require one. In Firefox, the scrollbar appears when it’s needed and the viewport becomes about 20px smaller, so the content seems to shift to the left when you move from a page with little content to one with lots of content. It’s not a bug or something that needs to be fixed, but it does confuse and irritate some developers.

If, for some reason, you’d like Firefox to always have scrollbars – whether they’re needed or not – you can do this :

CSS html {
height:100.1%;
}

How do I combine multiple sheets into one?
To combine multiple/partial style sheets into one set the TITLE attribute taking one and the same value to the LINK element. The combined style will apply as a preferred style, e.g.:

<LINK REL=Stylesheet HREF=”default.css” TITLE=”combined”>
<LINK REL=Stylesheet HREF=”fonts.css” TITLE=”combined”>
<LINK REL=Stylesheet HREF=”tables.css” TITLE=”combined”>

What is attribute selector?
Attribute selector is a selector defined by 1) the attribute set to element(s), 2) the attribute and value(s), 3) the attribute and value parts:

1a) A[title] {text-decoration: underline}
All A elements containing the TITLE attribute will be underlined

1b) A[class=name] {text-decoration: underline}
The A elements classed as ‘name’ will be underlined

2) A[title=”attribute element”] {text-decoration: underline}
The A elements containing the TITLE attribute with a value that is an exact match of the specified value, which in this example is ‘attribute element’, will be underlined

3) A[title~=”attribute”] {text-decoration: underline}
The A elements containing the TITLE attribute with a value containing the specified word, which in this example is ‘attribute’, will be underlined

What is parent-child selector?
Parent-child selector is a selector representing the direct descendent of a parent element. Parent-child selectors are created by listing two or more tilde (~) separated selectors.

BODY ~ P {background: red; color: white}
The P element will be declared the specified style only if it directly descends from the BODY element:
<BODY> <P>Red and white paragraph </P> </BODY>

BODY ~ P ~ EM {background: red; color: white}
The EM element will be declared the specified style only if it directly descends from the P element which in its turn directly descends from the BODY element:

< <P> <EM>Red and white EM </EM> </P> </BODY>

How can I specify background images?
With CSS, you can suggest a background image (and a background color, for those not using your image) with the background property. Here is an example:

body {
background: white url(example.gif) ;
color: black ;
}
If you specify a background image, you should also specify text, link, and background colors since the reader’s default colors may not provide adequate contrast against your background image. The background color may be used by those not using your background image. Authors should not rely on the specified background image since browsers allow their users to disable image loading or to override document-specified backgrounds.

How do I have a fixed (non-scrolling) background image?
With CSS, you can use the background-attachment property. The background attachment can be included in the shorthand background property, as in this example:

body {
background: white url(example.gif) fixed ;
color: black ;
}

Note that this CSS is supported by Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Firefox Opera, Safari, and other browsers. In contrast, Microsoft’s proprietary BGPROPERTIES attribute is supported only by Internet Explorer.

What are inline, block, parent, children, replaced and floating elements?
Inline
elements which do not have line breaks. Can occur in block elements or other inline elements, cannot contain block elements.
Inline elements in HTML 3.2; EM, STRONG, DFN, CODE, SAMP, KBD, VAR, CITE, TT, I, B, U, STRIKE, BIG, SMALL, SUB, SUP, A, IMG, APPLET, FONT, BASEFONT, BR, SCRIPT, MAP, INPUT, SELECT, TEXTAREA.

Inline elements in HTML 4.0; EM, STRONG, DFN, CODE, SAMP, KBD, VAR, CITE, ABBR, ACRONYM, TT, I, B, BIG, SMALL, SUB, SUP, A, IMG, OBJECT, BR, SCRIPT, MAP, Q, SPAN, BDO, INPUT, SELECT, TEXTAREA, LABEL, BUTTON, (INS, DEL).

Inline elements in HTML 4.0 Transitional; EM, STRONG, DFN, CODE, SAMP, KBD, VAR, CITE, ABBR, ACRONYM, TT, I, B, U, S, STRIKE, BIG, SMALL, SUB, SUP, A, IMG, APPLET, OBJECT, FONT, BASEFONT, BR, SCRIPT, MAP, Q, SPAN, BDO, IFRAME, INPUT, SELECT, TEXTAREA, LABEL, BUTTON, (INS, DEL).

Block
elements which do have line breaks. May occur in other block elements, cannot occur in inline elements, may contain both block and inline elements.

Block elements in HTML 3.2; H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6, ADDRESS, P, DL, DT, DD, UL, OL, DIR, MENU, LI, DIV, CENTER, BLOCKQUOTE, PRE, HR, ISINDEX, TABLE, FORM.

Block elements in HTML 4.0; P, H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6, UL, OL, PRE, DL, DIV, NOSCRIPT, BLOCKQUOTE, FORM, HR, TABLE, FIELDSET, ADDRESS, (INS, DEL).

Block elements in HTML 4.0 Transitional; P, H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6, UL, OL, DIR, MENU, PRE, DL, DIV, CENTER, NOSCRIPT, NOFRAMES, BLOCKQUOTE, FORM, ISINDEX, HR, TABLE, FIELDSET, ADDRESS, (INS, DEL).

Parents and children
elements which either contain (parents) or are in the content of (children) other elements, e.g. <P>text<STRONG>text</STRONG>text</P>. P is a parent of STRONG. STRONG is a child of P. If not specified otherwise, children will inherit parent’s properties.
Replaced
elements which content is replaced. For example content of the IMG element is replaced with an image, content of the INPUT element is replace with a field.
Floating
elements which follow the flow of a parent – inline elements.

PHP interview questions & ANSWERS

Q:1 What are the differences between Get and post methods in form submitting.
give the case where we can use get and we can use post methods?
A:1
When to use GET or  POST

The HTML 2.0 specification says, in section Form
Submission (and the HTML 4.0 specification repeats this with minor
stylistic changes):

–>If the processing of a form is idempotent
(i.e. it has no lasting observable effect on the state of the
world), then the form method should be GET. Many database searches
have no visible side-effects and make ideal applications of query
forms.

–>If the service associated with the processing of a form has side
effects (for example, modification of a database or subscription to
a service), the method should be POST.
How the form data is transmitted?

quotation from the HTML 4.0 specification

–> If the method is “get” – -, the user agent
takes the value of action, appends a ? to it, then appends the form
data set, encoded using the application/x-www-form-urlencoded
content type. The user agent then traverses the link to this URI. In
this scenario, form data are restricted to ASCII codes.
–> If the method is “post” –, the user agent conducts an HTTP post
transaction using the value of the action attribute and a message
created according to the content type specified by the enctype
attribute.
Quote from CGI FAQ

Firstly, the the HTTP protocol specifies
differing usages for the two methods. GET requests should always be
idempotent on the server. This means that whereas one GET request
might (rarely) change some state on the Server, two or more
identical requests will have no further effect.

This is a theoretical point which is also good
advice in practice. If a user hits “reload” on his/her browser, an
identical request will be sent to the server, potentially resulting
in two identical database or
guestbook entries, counter increments, etc. Browsers may reload a
GET URL automatically, particularly if cacheing is disabled (as is
usually the case with CGI output), but will typically prompt the
user before
re-submitting a POST request. This means you’re far less likely to
get inadvertently-repeated entries from POST.

GET is (in theory) the preferred method for
idempotent operations, such as querying a database, though it
matters little if you’re using a form. There is a further practical
constraint that many systems have built-in limits to the length of a
GET request they can handle: when the total size of a request (URL+params)
approaches or exceeds 1Kb, you are well-advised to use POST in any
case.

I would prefer POST when I don’t want the status to
be change when user resubmits. And GET
when it does not matter.

Q:2 Who is the father of PHP and explain the changes in PHP versions?
A:2 Rasmus Lerdorf is known as the father of PHP.PHP/FI 2.0 is an early and no longer supported version of PHP. PHP 3
is the successor to PHP/FI 2.0 and is a lot nicer. PHP 4 is the current
generation of PHP, which uses the
Zend engine
under the
hood. PHP 5 uses
Zend engine 2 which,
among other things, offers many additionalOOP features

Q:3 How can we submit a form without a submit button?
A:3 The main idea behind this is to use Java script submit() function in
order to submit the form without explicitly clicking any submit button.
You can attach the document.formname.submit() method to onclick,
onchange events of different inputs and perform the form submission. you
can even built a timer function where you can automatically submit the
form after xx seconds once the loading is done (can be seen in online
test sites).

Q:4 In how many ways we can retrieve the data in the result set of
MySQL using PHP?

A:4 You can do it by 4 Ways1. mysql_fetch_row.
2. mysql_fetch_array
3. mysql_fetch_object
4. mysql_fetch_assoc

Q:5 What is the difference between mysql_fetch_object and
mysql_fetch_array?

A:5 mysql_fetch_object() is similar tomysql_fetch_array(), with one difference –
an object is returned, instead of an array. Indirectly, that means that
you can only access the data by the field names, and not by their
offsets (numbers are illegal property names).

Q:6 What is the difference between $message and $$message?
A:6 It is a classic example of PHP’s variable variables. take the
following example.$message = “Mizan”;$$message = “is a moderator of PHPXperts.”;$message is a simple PHP variable that we are used to. But the
$$message is not a very familiar face. It creates a variable name $mizan
with the value “is a moderator of PHPXperts.” assigned. break it like
this${$message} => $mizanSometimes it is convenient to be able to have variable variable
names. That is, a variable name which can be set and used dynamically.

Q:7 How can we extract string ‘abc.com ‘ from a string ‘http://info@abc.com’
using regular expression of PHP?

A:7 preg_match(”/^http:\/\/.+@(.+)$/”,’http://info@abc.com’,$found);
echo $found[1];

Q:8 How can we create a database using PHP and MySQL?
A:8 We can create MySQL database with the use of
mysql_create_db(“Database Name”)

Q:9 What are the differences between require and include,
include_once and require_once?
A:9

The include() statement includes
and evaluates the specified file.The documentation below also applies to
require(). The two constructs
are identical in every way except how they handle
failure. include() produces a
Warning while require() results
in a Fatal Error. In other words, use
require() if you want a missing
file to halt processing of the page.
include() does not behave this way, the script will
continue regardless.

The include_once()
statement includes and evaluates the
specified file during the execution of
the script. This is a behavior similar
to the include()
statement, with the only difference
being that if the code from a file has
already been included, it will not be
included again. As the name suggests, it
will be included just once.include_once()
should be used in cases where the same
file might be included and evaluated
more than once during a particular
execution of a script, and you want to
be sure that it is included exactly once
to avoid problems with function
redefinitions, variable value
reassignments, etc.

require_once()
should be used in cases where the same
file might be included and evaluated
more than once during a particular
execution of a script, and you want to
be sure that it is included exactly once
to avoid problems with function
redefinitions, variable value
reassignments, etc.

Q:10 Can we use include (”abc.PHP”) two times in a PHP page “makeit.PHP”?
A:10 Yes we can use include() more than one time in any page though it is
not a very good practice.

Q:11 What are the different tables present in MySQL, which type of
table is generated when we are creating a table in the following syntax:
create table employee (eno int(2),ename varchar(10)) ?

A:11 Total 5 types of tables we can create
1. MyISAM
2. Heap
3. Merge
4. INNO DB
5. ISAM
MyISAM is the default storage engine as of MySQL 3.23 and as a result if
we do not specify the table name explicitly it will be assigned to the
default engine.

Q:12 Functions in IMAP, POP3 AND LDAP?
A:12 These functions enable you to operate with the IMAP protocol, as well as the NNTPPOP3 and local mailbox access methods  You can find these specific information in PHP Manual.

Q:13 How can I execute a PHP script using command line?
A:13 As of version 4.3.0, PHP supports a new SAPI type (Server
Application Programming Interface) named CLI which means Command Line
Interface. Just run the PHP CLI (Command Line Interface) program and
provide the PHP script file name as the command line argument. For
example, “php myScript.php”, assuming “php” is the command to invoke the
CLI program.
Be aware that if your PHP script was written for the Web CGI interface,
it may not execute properly in command line environment.

Q:14 Suppose your Zend engine supports the mode Then how can u
configure your PHP Zend engine to support mode ?

A:14 In php.ini file:
set
short_open_tag=on
to make PHP support

Q:15 Shopping cart online validation i.e. how can we configure Paypal,
etc.?

A:15 We can find the detail documentation about different paypal
integration process at the following site

PayPal PHP
SDK : http://www.paypaldev.org

Q:16 What is meant by nl2br()?
A:16 Inserts HTML line breaks (
) before all newlines in a string
string nl2br (string); Returns string with ” inserted before all
newlines. For example: echo nl2br(”god bless\n you”) will output “god
bless
you” to your browser.

Q:17 Draw the architecture of Zend engine?
A:17 The Zend Engine is the internal compiler and runtime engine used by
PHP4. Developed by Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans, the Zend Engine is an
abbreviation of their names. In the early days of PHP4, it worked as
follows:
The PHP script was loaded by the Zend Engine and compiled into Zend
opcode. Opcodes, short for operation codes, are low level binary
instructions. Then the opcode was executed and the HTML generated sent
to the client. The opcode was flushed from memory after execution.Today, there are a multitude of products and techniques to help you
speed up this process. In the following diagram, we show the how modern
PHP scripts work; all the shaded boxes are optional.
PHP Scripts are loaded into memory and compiled into Zend opcodes.

Q:18 What are the current versions of apache, PHP, and MySQL?
A:18 As of February, 2007 the current versions arePHP: php5.2.1
MySQL: MySQL 5.2
Apache: Apache 2.2.4Note: visit http://www.php.net,

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/,
http://www.apache.org to get current
versions.

Q:19 What are the reasons for selecting lamp (Linux, apache, MySQL,
PHP) instead of combination of other software programs, servers and
operating systems?

A:19 All of those are open source resource. Security of Linux is very
very more than windows. Apache is a better server that IIS both in
functionality and security. MySQL is world most popular open source
database. PHP is more faster that asp or any other scripting language.

Q:20 How can we encrypt and decrypt a data present in a MySQL table
using MySQL?

A:20 AES_ENCRYPT () and AES_DECRYPT ()

Q:21 How can we encrypt the username and password using PHP?
A:21 The functions in this section perform encryption and decryption, and
compression and uncompression:

encryption decryption
AES_ENCRYT() AES_DECRYPT()
ENCODE() DECODE()
DES_ENCRYPT() DES_DECRYPT()
ENCRYPT() Not available
MD5() Not available
OLD_PASSWORD() Not available
PASSWORD() Not available
SHA() or SHA1() Not available
Not available UNCOMPRESSED_LENGTH()

Q:22 What are the features and advantages of object-oriented
programming?

A:22 One of the main advantages of OO programming is its ease of
modification; objects can easily be modified and added to a system there
by reducing maintenance costs. OO programming is also considered to be
better at modeling the real world than is procedural programming. It
allows for more complicated and flexible interactions. OO systems are
also easier for non-technical personnel to understand and easier for
them to participate in the maintenance and enhancement of a system
because it appeals to natural human cognition patterns.
For some systems, an OO approach can speed development time since many
objects are standard across systems and can be reused. Components that
manage dates, shipping, shopping carts, etc. can be purchased and easily
modified for a specific system

Q:23 What are the differences between procedure-oriented languages and
object-oriented languages?

A:23 Traditional programming has the following characteristics:Functions are written sequentially, so that a change in programming can
affect any code that follows it.
If a function is used multiple times in a system (i.e., a piece of code
that manages the date), it is often simply cut and pasted into each
program (i.e., a change log, order function, fulfillment system, etc).
If a date change is needed (i.e., Y2K when the code needed to be changed
to handle four numerical digits instead of two), all these pieces of
code must be found, modified, and tested.
Code (sequences of computer instructions) and data (information on which
the instructions operates on) are kept separate. Multiple sets of code
can access and modify one set of data. One set of code may rely on data
in multiple places. Multiple sets of code and data are required to work
together. Changes made to any of the code sets and data sets can cause
problems through out the system.Object-Oriented programming takes a radically different approach:Code and data are merged into one indivisible item – an object (the
term “component” has also been used to describe an object.) An object is
an abstraction of a set of real-world things (for example, an object may
be created around “date”) The object would contain all information and
functionality for that thing (A date
object it may contain labels like January, February, Tuesday, Wednesday.
It may contain functionality that manages leap years, determines if it
is a business day or a holiday, etc., See Fig. 1). Ideally, information
about a particular thing should reside in only one place in a system.
The information within an object is encapsulated (or hidden) from the
rest of the system.
A system is composed of multiple objects (i.e., date function, reports,
order processing, etc., See Fig 2). When one object needs information
from another object, a request is sent asking for specific information.
(for example, a report object may need to know what today’s date is and
will send a request to the date object) These requests are called
messages and each object has an interface that manages messages.
OO programming languages include features such as “class”, “instance”,
“inheritance”, and “polymorphism” that increase the power and
flexibility of an object.

Q:24 What is the use of friend function?
A:24 Sometimes a function is best shared among a number of different
classes. Such functions can be declared either as member functions of
one class or as global functions. In either case they can be set to be
friends of other classes, by using a friend specifier in the class that
is admitting them. Such functions can use all attributes of the class
which names them as a friend, as if they were themselves members of that
class.
A friend declaration is essentially a prototype for a member function,
but instead of requiring an implementation with the name of that class
attached by the double colon syntax, a global function or member
function of another class provides the match.

Q:25 What are the differences between public, private, protected,
static, transient, final and volatile?

A:25 Public: Public declared items can be accessed everywhere.
Protected: Protected limits access to inherited and parent
classes (and to the class that defines the item).
Private: Private limits visibility only to the class that defines
the item.
Static: A static variable exists only in a local function scope,
but it does not lose its value when program execution leaves this scope.
Final: Final keyword prevents child classes from overriding a
method by prefixing the definition with final. If the class itself is
being defined final then it cannot be extended.
transient: A transient variable is a variable that may not
be serialized.
volatile: a variable that might be concurrently modified by multiple
threads should be declared volatile. Variables declared to be volatile
will not be optimized by the compiler because their value can change at
any time.

Q:26 What are the different types of errors in PHP?
A:26 Three are three types of errors:1. Notices: These are trivial,
non-critical errors that PHP encounters while executing a script – for
example, accessing a variable that has not yet been defined. By default,
such errors are not displayed to the user at all – although, as you will
see, you can change this default behavior.2. Warnings: These are more serious errors – for example, attempting
to include() a file which does not exist. By default, these errors are
displayed to the user, but they do not result in script termination.3. Fatal errors: These are critical errors – for example,
instantiating an object of a non-existent class, or calling a
non-existent function. These errors cause the immediate termination of
the script, and PHP’s default behavior is to display them to the user
when they take place.

Q:27 What is the functionality of the function strstr and stristr?
A:27 strstr:

Returns part of haystack
string from the first occurrence of
needle to the end of
haystack.If needle is not found,
returns FALSE.

If needle is not a
string, it is converted to an integer and applied as the
ordinal value of a character.

This function is case-sensitive. For
case-insensitive searches, use
stristr().

Q:28 What are the differences between PHP 3 and PHP 4 and PHP 5?
A:28 Please read the release notes at
http://www.php.net.

Q:29 How can we convert asp pages to PHP pages?
A:29 there are lots of tools available for asp to PHP conversion. you can
search Google for that. the best one is available athttp://asp2php.naken.cc./

Q:30 What is the functionality of the function htmlentities?
A:30 Convert all applicable characters to HTML entities
This function is identical to htmlspecialchars() in all ways, except
with htmlentities(), all characters which have HTML character entity
equivalents are translated into these entities.

Q:31 How can we get second of the current time using date function?
A:31 $second = date(”s”);

Q:32 How can we convert the time zones using PHP?
A:32 By using date_default_timezone_get and
date_default_timezone_set function on PHP 5.1.0

// Discover what 8am in Tokyo relates to on the East Coast of the US

// Set the default timezone to Tokyo time:
date_default_timezone_set(‘Asia/Tokyo’);

// Now generate the timestamp for that particular timezone, on Jan 1st, 2000
$stamp = mktime(8, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2000);

// Now set the timezone back to US/Eastern
date_default_timezone_set(‘US/Eastern’);

// Output the date in a standard format (RFC1123), this will print:
// Fri, 31 Dec 1999 18:00:00 EST
echo ‘

‘, date(DATE_RFC1123, $stamp) ,’

‘;?>

Q:33 What is meant by urlencode and urldecode?
A:33 URLencode returns a string in which all non-alphanumeric characters
except -_. have been replaced with a percent (%)
sign followed by two hex digits and spaces encoded as plus (+)
signs. It is encoded the same way that the posted data from a WWW form
is encoded, that is the same way as in
application/x-www-form-urlencoded media type.

urldecode decodes any %##
encoding in the given string.

Q:34 What is the difference between the functions unlink and unset?
A:34 unlink() deletes the given file from the file system.
unset() makes a variable undefined.

Q:35 How can we register the variables into a session?
A:35 $_SESSION[’name’] = “Mizan”;

Q:36 How can we get the properties (size, type, width, height) of an
image using PHP image functions?

A:36 To know the Image type use exif_imagetype () function
To know the Image size use getimagesize () function
To know the image width use imagesx () function
To know the image height use imagesy() function t

Q:37 How can we get the browser properties using PHP?
A:37 By using
$_SERVER[‘HTTP_USER_AGENT’]
variable.

Q:38 What is the maximum size of a file that can be uploaded using PHP
and how can we change this?

A:38 By default the maximum size is 2MB. and we can change the following
setup at php.iniupload_max_filesize = 2M

Q:39 How can we increase the execution time of a PHP script?
A:39 by changing the following setup at php.inimax_execution_time = 30
; Maximum execution time of each script, in seconds

Q:40 How can we take a backup of a MySQL table and how can we restore
it. ?

A:40 To backup: BACKUP TABLE tbl_name[,tbl_name…] TO
‘/path/to/backup/directory’
RESTORE TABLE tbl_name[,tbl_name…] FROM ‘/path/to/backup/directory’mysqldump: Dumping Table Structure and DataUtility to dump a database or a collection of database for backup or
for transferring the data to another SQL server (not necessarily a MySQL
server). The dump will contain SQL statements to create the table and/or
populate the table.
-t, –no-create-info
Don’t write table creation information (the CREATE TABLE statement).
-d, –no-data
Don’t write any row information for the table. This is very useful if
you just want to get a dump of the structure for a table!

Q:41 How can we optimize or increase the speed of a MySQL select
query?

A:41

* first of all instead of using select * from table1, use select
column1, column2, column3.. from table1
* Look for the opportunity to introduce index in the table you are
querying.
* use limit keyword if you are looking for any specific number of
rows from the result set.

Q:42 How many ways can we get the value of current session id?
A:42 session_id() returns the session id for the current session.

Q:43 How can we destroy the session, how can we unset the variable of
a session?

A:43 session_unregister — Unregister a global variable from the current
session
session_unset — Free all session variables

Q:44 How can we destroy the cookie?
A:44 Set the cookie in past.

Q:45 How many ways we can pass the variable through the navigation
between the pages?

A:45

* GET/QueryString
* POST

Q:46 What is the difference between ereg_replace() and eregi_replace()?
A:46 eregi_replace() function is identical to ereg_replace() except that
this ignores case distinction when matching alphabetic
characters.eregi_replace() function is identical to ereg_replace()
except that this ignores case distinction when matching alphabetic
characters.

Q:47 What are the different functions in sorting an array?
A:47 Sort(), arsort(),
asort(), ksort(),
natsort(), natcasesort(),
rsort(), usort(),
array_multisort(), and
uksort().

Q:48 How can we know the count/number of elements of an array?
A:48 2 ways
a) sizeof($urarray) This function is an alias of count()
b) count($urarray)

Q:49 What is the PHP predefined variable that tells the What types of
images that PHP supports?

A:49 Though i am not sure if this is wrong or not, With the exif
extension you are able to work with image meta data.

Q:50 How can I know that a variable is a number or not using a
JavaScript?

A:50 bool is_numeric ( mixed var)
Returns TRUE if var is a number or a numeric string, FALSE otherwise.or use isNaN(mixed var)The isNaN() function is used to check if a value is not a number.

Q:51 List out some tools through which we can draw E-R diagrams for
mysql.

A:51 Case Studio
Smart Draw

Q:52 How can I retrieve values from one database server and store them
in other database server using PHP?

A:52 we can always fetch from one database and rewrite to another. here
is a nice solution of it.$db1 = mysql_connect(”host”,”user”,”pwd”)
mysql_select_db(”db1″, $db1);
$res1 = mysql_query(”query”,$db1);$db2 = mysql_connect(”host”,”user”,”pwd”)
mysql_select_db(”db2″, $db2);
$res2 = mysql_query(”query”,$db2);At this point you can only fetch records from you previous ResultSet,
i.e $res1 – But you cannot execute new query in $db1, even if you
supply the link as because the link was overwritten by the new db.so at this point the following script will fail
$res3 = mysql_query(”query”,$db1); //this will failSo how to solve that?

take a look below.
$db1 = mysql_connect(”host”,”user”,”pwd”)
mysql_select_db(”db1″, $db1);
$res1 = mysql_query(”query”,$db1);

$db2 = mysql_connect(”host”,”user”,”pwd”, true)
mysql_select_db(”db2″, $db2);
$res2 = mysql_query(”query”,$db2);

So mysql_connect has another optional boolean parameter which
indicates whether a link will be created or not. as we connect to the
$db2 with this optional parameter set to ‘true’, so both link will
remain live.

now the following query will execute successfully.
$res3 = mysql_query(”query”,$db1);

Thanks goes to Hasan and Hasin for this solution.

Q:53 List out the predefined classes in PHP?
A:53 Directory
stdClass
__PHP_Incomplete_Class
exception
php_user_filter

Q:54 How can I make a script that can be bi-language (supports
English, German)?

A:54 You can maintain two separate language file for each of the
language. all the labels are putted in both language files as variables
and assign those variables in the PHP source. on runtime choose the
required language option.

Q:55 What are the difference between abstract class and interface?
A:55 Abstract class: abstract classes are the class where one or more
methods are abstract but not necessarily all method has to be abstract.
Abstract methods are the methods, which are declare in its class but not
define. The definition of those methods must be in its extending class.Interface: Interfaces are one type of class where all the methods are
abstract. That means all the methods only declared but not defined. All
the methods must be define by its implemented class.

Q:56 How can we send mail using JavaScript?
A:56 JavaScript does not have any networking capabilities as it is
designed to work on client site. As a result we can not send mails using
JavaScript. But we can call the client side mail protocol mailto
via JavaScript to prompt for an email to send. this requires the client
to approve it.

Q:57 How can we repair a MySQL table?
A:57 The syntex for repairing a MySQL table is
REPAIR TABLENAME, [TABLENAME, ], [Quick],[Extended]
This command will repair the table specified if the quick is given the
MySQL will do a repair of only the index tree if the extended is given
it will create index row by row

Q:58 What are the advantages of stored procedures, triggers, indexes?
A:58 A stored procedure is a set of SQL commands that can be compiled and
stored in the server. Once this has been done, clients don’t need to
keep re-issuing the entire query but can refer to the stored procedure.
This provides better overall performance because the query has to be
parsed only once, and less information needs to be sent between the
server and the client. You can also raise the conceptual level by having
libraries of functions in the server. However, stored procedures of
course do increase the load on the database server system, as more of
the work is done on the server side and less on the client (application)
side.Triggers will also be implemented. A trigger is effectively a type of
stored procedure, one that is invoked when a particular event occurs.
For example, you can install a stored procedure that is triggered each
time a record is deleted from a transaction table and that stored
procedure automatically deletes the corresponding customer from a
customer table when all his transactions are deleted.Indexes are used to find rows with specific column values quickly.
Without an index, MySQL must begin with the first row and then read
through the entire table to find the relevant rows. The larger the
table, the more this costs. If the table has an index for the columns in
question, MySQL can quickly determine the position to seek to in the
middle of the data file without having to look at all the data. If a
table has 1,000 rows, this is at least 100 times faster than reading
sequentially. If you need to access most of the rows, it is faster to
read sequentially, because this minimizes disk seeks.

Q:59 What is the maximum length of a table name, database name, and
fieldname in MySQL?

A:59 The following table describes the maximum length for each type of
identifier.

Identifier Maximum Length
(bytes)
Database 64
Table 64
Column 64
Index 64
Alias 255

There are some restrictions on the characters that may appear in
identifiers:

Q:60 How many values can the SET function of MySQL take?
A:60 MySQL set can take zero or more values but at the maximum it can
take 64 values

Q:61 What are the other commands to know the structure of table using
MySQL commands except explain command?

A:61 describe Table-Name;

Q:62 How many tables will create when we create table, what are they?
A:62 The ‘.frm’ file stores the table definition.
The data file has a ‘.MYD’ (MYData) extension.
The index file has a ‘.MYI’ (MYIndex) extension,

Q:63 What is the purpose of the following files having extensions 1) .frm
2) .myd 3) .myi? What do these files contain?

A:63 In MySql, the default table type is MyISAM.
Each MyISAM table is stored on disk in three files. The files have names
that begin with the table name and have an extension to indicate the
file type.
The ‘.frm’ file stores the table definition.
The data file has a ‘.MYD’ (MYData) extension.
The index file has a ‘.MYI’ (MYIndex) extension,

Q:64 What is maximum size of a database in MySQL?
A:64 If the operating system or filesystem places a limit on the number
of files in a directory, MySQL is bound by that constraint.The efficiency of the operating system in handling large numbers of
files in a directory can place a practical limit on the number of tables
in a database. If the time required to open a file in the directory
increases significantly as the number of files increases, database
performance can be adversely affected.
The amount of available disk space limits the number of tables.
MySQL 3.22 had a 4GB (4 gigabyte) limit on table size. With the MyISAM
storage engine in MySQL 3.23, the maximum table size was increased to
65536 terabytes (2567 – 1 bytes). With this larger allowed table size,
the maximum effective table size for MySQL databases is usually
determined by operating system constraints on file sizes, not by MySQL
internal limits.The InnoDB storage engine maintains InnoDB tables within a tablespace
that can be created from several files. This allows a table to exceed
the maximum individual file size. The tablespace can include raw disk
partitions, which allows extremely large tables. The maximum tablespace
size is 64TB.
The following table lists some examples of operating system file-size
limits. This is only a rough guide and is not intended to be definitive.
For the most up-to-date information, be sure to check the documentation
specific to your operating system.
Operating System File-size LimitLinux 2.2-Intel 32-bit 2GB (LFS: 4GB)
Linux 2.4+ (using ext3 filesystem) 4TB
Solaris 9/10 16TB
NetWare w/NSS filesystem 8TB
Win32 w/ FAT/FAT32 2GB/4GB
Win32 w/ NTFS 2TB (possibly larger)
MacOS X w/ HFS+ 2TB

Q:65 Give the syntax of Grant and Revoke commands?
A:65 The generic syntax for grant is as following
> GRANT [rights] on [database/s] TO [username@hostname] IDENTIFIED BY
[password]
now rights can be
a) All privileges
b) combination of create, drop, select, insert, update and delete etc.We can grant rights on all databse by using *.* or some specific
database by database.* or a specific table by database.table_name
username@hotsname can be either username@localhost, username@hostname
and username@%
where hostname is any valid hostname and % represents any name, the *.*
any condition
password is simply the password of userThe generic syntax for revoke is as following
> REVOKE [rights] on [database/s] FROM [username@hostname]
now rights can be as explained above
a) All privileges
b) combination of create, drop, select, insert, update and delete etc.
username@hotsname can be either username@localhost, username@hostname
and username@%
where hostname is any valid hostname and % represents any name, the *.*
any condition

Q:66 Explain Normalization concept?
A:66 The normalization process involves getting our data to conform to
three progressive normal forms, and a higher level of normalization
cannot be achieved until the previous levels have been achieved (there
are actually five normal forms, but the last two are mainly academic and
will not be discussed).First Normal FormThe First Normal Form (or 1NF) involves removal of redundant data
from horizontal rows. We want to ensure that there is no duplication of
data in a given row, and that every column stores the least amount of
information possible (making the field atomic).Second Normal FormWhere the First Normal Form deals with redundancy of data across a
horizontal row, Second Normal Form (or 2NF) deals with redundancy of
data in vertical columns. As stated earlier, the normal forms are
progressive, so to achieve Second Normal Form, your tables must already
be in First Normal Form.Third Normal Form

I have a confession to make; I do not often use Third Normal Form. In
Third Normal Form we are looking for data in our tables that is not
fully dependant on the primary key, but dependant on another value in
the table

Q:67 How can we find the number of rows in a table using MySQL?
A:67 Use this for mysql
>SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table_name;

Q:68 How can we find the number of rows in a result set using PHP?
A:68 $result = mysql_query($sql, $db_link);
$num_rows = mysql_num_rows($result);
echo “$num_rows rows found”;

Q:69 How many ways we can we find the current date using MySQL?
A:69 SELECT CURDATE();
CURRENT_DATE() = CURDATE()
for time use
SELECT CURTIME();
CURRENT_TIME() = CURTIME()

Q:70 What are the advantages and disadvantages of Cascading Style
Sheets?

A:70 External Style SheetsAdvantagesCan control styles for multiple documents at once. Classes can be
created for use on multiple HTML element types in many documents.
Selector and grouping methods can be used to apply styles under complex
contextsDisadvantagesAn extra download is required to import style information for each
document The rendering of the document may be delayed until the external
style sheet is loaded Becomes slightly unwieldy for small quantities of
style definitionsEmbedded Style Sheets

Advantages

Classes can be created for use on multiple tag types in the document.
Selector and grouping methods can be used to apply styles under complex
contexts. No additional downloads necessary to receive style information

Disadvantages

This method can not control styles for multiple documents at once

Inline Styles

Advantages

Useful for small quantities of style definitions. Can override other
style specification methods at the local level so only exceptions need
to be listed in conjunction with other style methods

Disadvantages

Does not distance style information from content (a main goal of
SGML/HTML). Can not control styles for multiple documents at once.
Author can not create or control classes of elements to control multiple
element types within the document. Selector grouping methods can not be
used to create complex element addressing scenarios

Q:71 What type of inheritance that PHP supports?
A:71 In PHP an extended class is always dependent on a single base class,
that is, multiple inheritance is not supported. Classes are extended
using the keyword ‘extends’.

Q:72 What is the difference between Primary Key and
Unique key?

A:72 Primary Key: A column in a table whose values uniquely identify the
rows in the table. A primary key value cannot be NULL.

Unique Key: Unique Keys are used to uniquely identify each row in the
table. There can be one and only one row for each unique key value. So
NULL can be a unique key.There can be only one primary key for a table but there can be more
than one unique for a table.

Q:73 The structure of table view buyers is as follows:

Field Type Null Key Default Extra
user_pri_id int(15) PRI null auto_increment
userid varchar(10) YES null

the value of user_pri_id the last row 999 then What will happen in
the following conditions?

Condition1: Delete all the rows and insert another row then.
What is the starting value for this auto incremented field user_pri_id ,
Condition2: Delete the last row(having the field value 999) and
insert another row then. What is the value for this auto incremented
field user_pri_id
A:73 In both cases let the value for auto increment field be n then next
row will have value n+1 i.e. 1000

Q:74 What are the advantages/disadvantages of MySQL and PHP?
A:74 Both of them are open source software (so free of cost), support
cross platform. php is faster then ASP and JSP.

Q:75 What is the difference between GROUP BY and ORDER BY in Sql?
A:75 ORDER BY [col1],[col2],…,[coln]; Tels DBMS according to what columns
it should sort the result. If two rows will hawe the same value in col1
it will try to sort them according to col2 and so on.GROUP BY
[col1],[col2],…,[coln]; Tels DBMS to group results with same value of
column col1. You can use COUNT(col1), SUM(col1), AVG(col1) with it, if
you want to count all items in group, sum all values or view average

Q:76 What is the difference between char and varchar data types?
A:76 Set char to occupy n bytes and it will take n bytes even if u r
storing a value of n-m bytes
Set varchar to occupy n bytes and it will take only the required space
and will not use the n bytes
eg. name char(15) will waste 10 bytes if we store ‘mizan’, if each char
takes a byte
eg. name varchar(15) will just use 5 bytes if we store ‘mizan’, if each
char takes a byte. rest 10 bytes will be free.

Q:77 What is the functionality of md5 function in PHP?
A:77 Calculate the md5 hash of a string. The hash is a 32-character
hexadecimal number. I use it to generate keys which I use to identify
users etc. If I add random no techniques to it the md5 generated now
will be totally different for the same string I am using.

Q:78 How can I load data from a text file into a table?
A:78 you can use LOAD DATA INFILE file_name; syntax to load data
from a text file. but you have to make sure thata) data is delimited
b) columns and data matched correctly

Q:79 How can we know the number of days between two given dates using
MySQL?

A:79 SELECT DATEDIFF(’2007-03-07′,’2005-01-01′);

Q:80 How can we know the number of days between two given dates using
PHP?

A:80 $date1 = date(’Y-m-d’);
$date2 = ‘2006-08-15′;
$days = (strtotime($date1) – strtotime($date2)) / (60 * 60 * 24);

 

Q:81 What is ‘float’ property in CSS?

A:81 The float property sets where an image or a text will appear in another element.

    

Q:82 What is descendant structure in CSS?

A:82 Descendant selectors are used to select elements that are descendants of another element in the document tree.For example, you may wish to target a specific <em> element on the page, but not all <em> elements. A sample document could contain the following code: <body>

<h1>Heading <em>here</em> </h1>

<p>Lorem ipsum dolor <em>sit</em> amet.</p>

</body> The document tree diagram (with the <em> element to be targeted) would be:Document tree showing descendant selectorsIf you use a type selector like the example below, you will select all <em> elements on the page:

 

em {color: blue; } However, if you use a descendant selector, you can refine the <em> elements that you select. The rule below will only select <em> elements that are descendants of <p> elements. If this rule is applied, the <em> element within the <h1> will not be colored blue.

 

p em {color: blue; } You can also jump levels in the document tree structure to select descendants. For example, the following code:

 

<body>

<p>Lorem ipsum dolor <em>sit</em> amet.</p>

<ul>

<li>item 1</li>

<li>item 2</li>

<li><em>item 3</em></li>

</ul>

</body> The document tree (with a third-level <em> element highlighted) would be:

 

Document tree showing descendant selectors

 

Using the following rule you can isolate any <em> element inside a <ul> element, without having to describe the <li> element. If this rule is applied, any <em> element within a <ul> element will be colored blue. However, the <em> element within the <p> will not be colored blue:

 

ul em {color: blue; } Descendant selectors are well supported across standards-compliant browsers.

    

Q:83 What is Child Descendant structure in CSS?

A:83

Child selectors

 

A child selector is used to select an element that is a direct child of another element (parent). Child selectors will not select all descendants, only direct children.

 

For example, you may wish to target an <em> that is a direct child of a <div>, but not other <em> elements that are descendants of the <div>. A sample document could contain the following code:

 

<body>

<h1>Heading <em>text</em></h1>

<div>

This is some <em>text</em>

<p>This is a paragraph of <em>text</em></p>

</div>

</body>

The document tree (highlighting the <em> that is a child of the <div>) would be:

 

Document tree showing child selector

 

Using the following rule you can target any <em> element that is a child of the <div>. Other <em> elements that are descendants but not direct children of the <div> will not be targeted.

 

div > em { color: blue; }

 

OR

 

div>em { color: blue; }

Child selectors are not supported by Windows Internet Explorer 5, 5.5 and 6, but are supported by most other standards-compliant browsers.

    

Q:84 How to create a class in JavaScript?

A:84 Classes can seem off-putting at first, but once you see the point of them, their use can be invaluable.We have already met objects. A computer object is a representation of a real object. For an estate agent the object may be a house, including information about the number of rooms and the price.An estate agent may have a lot of houses available. These houses all have different characteristics, and as objects they all go through the same processes. They are viewed, surveyed and bought, and so on.A full estate agent program would be difficult to demonstrate here, but we can introduce the use of classes.In this example, we have the house class. The house class produces house objects, all with object properties, such as number of rooms and price, and all having access to the same methods, such as sold and bought.

 

So a class can create objects with a group of properties and methods.

 

JavaScript doesn’t have a keyword specific to class, so we must go back to basics and develop classes in a different way. This isn’t very difficult.

Class Properties

 

Let us examine a very small estate agent program.

 

<HTML>

<HEAD>

<TITLE>Estate Agent</TITLE>

<SCRIPT>

function House(rooms,price,garage) {

this.rooms=rooms;

this.price=price;

this.garage=garage;

}

house1=new House(4,100000,false);

house2=new House(5,200000,true);

with (house1) document.write(’House 1 has ‘+rooms+’ rooms, ‘+(garage?’a’:’no’)+’ garage, and costs £’+price+’<BR>’);

with (house2) document.write(’House 2 has ‘+rooms+’ rooms, ‘+(garage?’a’:’no’)+’ garage, and costs £’+price+’<BR>’);

</SCRIPT>

</HEAD>

</HTML>

 

We define a House function that takes three parameters, rooms, price and garage. The function uses the this keyword to create an object.

 

When we call the House function, we assign the result to our variable, which becomes an object.

 

So, identical code would be:

 

house1=new Object();

house1.rooms=4;

house1.price=100000;

house1.garage=false;

 

We would have to type this in for all houses, which would be very tedious and is why we use the class structure instead.

 

When we display the details for a house, I have introduced the ternary operator, ‘?:’. The ternary operator is a compacted version of:

 

if (garage) str=’a’; else str=’no’;

 

(garage?’a’:’no’) means if garage is true, return ‘a’ else return ‘no’. Using the ternary operator removes a line of code, and avoids having to create a new variable.

Class Methods

 

The House class we have so far defined only contains object properties. We could add a method to replace the document.write() action we used before. (See example)

 

<HTML>

<HEAD>

<TITLE>Estate Agent 2</TITLE>

<SCRIPT>

function House(name,rooms,price,garage) {

this.name=name;

this.rooms=rooms;

this.price=price;

this.garage=garage;

this.view=view;

}

function view() {

with (this) document.write(name+’ has ‘+rooms+’ rooms, ‘+(garage?’a’:’no’)+’ garage, and costs £’+price+’<BR>’);

}

house1=new House(’House 1′,4,100000,false);

house2=new House(’Big House’,5,200000,true);

house1.view();

house2.view();

</SCRIPT>

</HEAD>

</HTML>

 

Much better!

 

Note how we must add another property, name, so that we can identify the house in question. This offers more flexibility than re-using the variable name, and the variable name is inaccessible anyway, i.e. it is very difficult, if not impossible, to get the view() function to use the string ‘house1′.

    

Q:85 Are namespaces are there in JavaScript?

A:81 A namespace is a container and allows you to bundle up all your functionality using a unique name. In JavaScript, a namespace is really just an object that you’ve attached all further methods, properties and objects. But it is not always necessary to use namespace.

    

Q:86 What is JSON? What are the notations used in JSON?

A:86 JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format. It is easy for humans to read and write. It is easy for machines to parse and generate. It is based on a subset of the JavaScript Programming Language, Standard ECMA-262 3rd Edition – December 1999. JSON is a text format that is completely language independent but uses conventions that are familiar to programmers of the C-family of languages, including C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Perl, Python, and many others. These properties make JSON an ideal data-interchange language.

    

Q:87 How to get Query String in PHP for http request?

A:87 $_GET[] and $_REQUEST[]

    

Q:88 How to get the http Request in PHP?

A:88 When PHP is used on a Web server to handle a HTTP request, it converts information submitted in the HTTP request as predefined variables:

 

    * $_GET – Associate array of variables submitted with GET method.

    * $_POST – Associate array of variables submitted with POST method.

    * $_COOKIE – Associate array of variables submitted as cookies.

    * $_REQUEST – Associate array of variables from $_GET, $_POST, and $_COOKIE.

    * $_SERVER – Associate array of all information from the server and the HTTP request.

 

    

Q:89 How you provide security for PHP application?

A:89 There are many ways to accomplish the security tasks but the most common 7 ways are1. Validate Input. Never trust your user and always filter input before taking it to any operation.2. Provide access control.3. Session ID protection4. preventing Cross Site Scripting (XSS) flaws

 

5. SQL injection vulnerabilities.

 

6. Turning off error reporting and exposing to the site for hackers. Instead use log file to catch exceptions

 

7. Effective Data handling

    

Q:90 What is SQL Injection in PHP security?

A:90 SQL injection attacks are extremely simple to defend against, but many applications are still vulnerable. Consider the following SQL statement:

 

<?php

$sql = “INSERT

        INTO   users (reg_username,

                      reg_password,

                      reg_email)

        VALUES (‘{$_POST[‘reg_username’]}’,

                ‘$reg_password’,

                ‘{$_POST[‘reg_email’]}’)”;

?>

 

This query is constructed with $_POST, which should immediately look suspicious.

 

Assume that this query is creating a new account. The user provides a desired username and an email address. The registration application generates a temporary password and emails it to the user to verify the email address. Imagine that the user enters the following as a username:

 

bad_guy’, ‘mypass’, ”), (‘good_guy

 

This certainly doesn’t look like a valid username, but with no data filtering in place, the application can’t tell. If a valid email address is given (shiflett@php.net, for example), and 1234 is what the application generates for the password, the SQL statement becomes the following:

 

<?php

 

$sql = “INSERT

        INTO   users (reg_username,

                      reg_password,

                      reg_email)

        VALUES (‘bad_guy’, ‘mypass’, ”),

          (‘good_guy’,

                ‘1234’,

                ‘shiflett@php.net’)”; ?>

 

Rather than the intended action of creating a single account (good_guy) with a valid email address, the application has been tricked into creating two accounts, and the user supplied every detail of the bad_guy account.

 

While this particular example might not seem so harmful, it should be clear that worse things could happen once an attacker can make modifications to your SQL statements.

 

For example, depending on the database you are using, it might be possible to send multiple queries to the database server in a single call. Thus, a user can potentially terminate the existing query with a semicolon and follow this with a query of the user’s choosing.

 

MySQL, until recently, does not allow multiple queries, so this particular risk is mitigated. Newer versions of MySQL allow multiple queries, but the corresponding PHP extension (ext/mysqli) requires that you use a separate function if you want to send multiple queries (mysqli_multi_query() instead of mysqli_query()). Only allowing a single query is safer, because it limits what an attacker can potentially do.

 

Protecting against SQL injection is easy:

 

    * Filter your data.This cannot be overstressed. With good data filtering in place, most security concerns are mitigated, and some are practically eliminated.

    * Quote your data.If your database allows it (MySQL does), put single quotes around all values in your SQL statements, regardless of the data type.

    * Escape your data.Sometimes valid data can unintentionally interfere with the format of the SQL statement itself. Use mysql_escape_string() or an escaping function native to your particular database. If there isn’t a specific one, addslashes() is a good last resort.

 

    

Q:91 What is cross site Scripting?

A:91 To understand what Cross Site Scripting is, let’s see a usual situation, common to many sites. Let’s say we are taking some information passed in on a querystring (the string after the (?) character within a URL), with the purpose of displaying the content of a variable, for example, the visitor’s name:

 

http://www.yourdomain.com/welcomedir/welcomepage.php?name=John

As we can see in this simple querystring, we are passing the visitor’s name as a parameter in the URL, and then displaying it on our “welcomepage.php” page with the following PHP code:

 

<?php

 

echo ‘Welcome to our site ’ . stripslashes($_GET[‘name’]);

 

?>

The result of this snippet is shown below:

 

Welcome to our site John

This is pretty simple and straightforward. We’re displaying the content of the “name” variable, by using the $_GET superglobal PHP array, as we have done probably hundreds of times. Everything seems to be fine. Now, what’s wrong with this code? Nothing really. But let’s modify the querystring by replacing our visitor’s name passed in the URL:

 

http://www.yourdomain.com/welcomedir/

welcomepage.php?name=John

with something like this:

 

http://www.yourdomain.com/welcomedir/

welcomepage.php?name=

<script language=javascript>alert

(‘Hey, you are going to be hijacked!’);</script>

Do you remember the PHP code included in our “welcome.php” page? Yes, you’re correct. When we modify the querystring, the following code is executed:

 

<?php

 

echo ‘Welcome to our site ‘ .

<script language=javascript> alert(‘Hey, you are going

to be hijacked!’);</script>

 

?>

The output of this code is an alert JavaScript box telling you “Hey, you are going be hijacked!” after the “Welcome to our site” phrase.

 

Very ugly stuff, right? That’s a simple example of the Cross Site Scripting vulnerability. This means that any pasted JavaScript code into the URL will be executed happily with no complaints at all.

 

    

Q:92 Which method do you follow to get a record from a million records? (Searching, …. not from database, from an array in php)

A:92 use array_search(), array_keys(), array_values(), array_key_exists(), and in_array().

    

Q:93 Which sorting method is lowest time consumable?

A:93 HeapSort, Merge sort are the lowest time consumable sorting algorithm.

    

Q:94 Which sorting method is lowest memory consumable?

A:9412341

HTML, CSS & JavaScript Web Designer or Web Developer Interview Questions

HTML, CSS & JavaScript Web Designer or web Developer Interview Questions

HTML Web Standards Interview Question

 

What is a DTD? What DTD do you generally use? Why? Pros and cons.

A DTD is a Document Type Definition, also know as DOCTYPE. In a document served as text/html, the DOCTYPE informs the browswer how to interpret the content of the page. If the the doctype is not declared, the browser assumes you don’t know how to code, and goes into “quirks mode”. If you know what you are doing and include a correct XHTML DOCTYPE, your page will be rendered in “standards mode”.

Accessibility Interview Question

Importance in selecting font size for a web page?

Font sizes should be declared using relative measurement values, such as ems, via a style sheet, without the use of the term !important. There are issues with browser font size enlarging which can be rectified via CSS.

CSS Interview Question

a) What are the possible values for the display attribute that are supported by all browsers?

b) What is the default value for the display attribute for the image element? (what is the difference between inline and block level elements)
c)What does display: run-in do?
d) Difference between “visibility:hidden” and “display:none”? What are the pros and cons of using display:none?

Answer

main values: none, block, inline, list-item, run-in
all values: inline | block | list-item | run-in | compact | marker | table | inline-table | table-row-group | table-header-group | table-footer-group | table-row | table-column-group | table-column | table-cell | table-caption | none | inherit
default value: inline, block or list-item, depending on the element. The <img> is an inline element.
Run-in should make the run-in element be the first line of the next sibling block level element, if it is before a block level element that is not floated or absolutely positioned. If the next sibling is positioned or floated, then the run-in element will be a block level element instead of appearing in-line.
PPK’s Quirksmode explains it well. The w3schools lists table display values.
When visibility is set to hidden, the element being hidden still occupies its same place in the layout of the page. If the display is set to none, the element does not occupy any space on the page — as if it didn’t exist..

 

CSS Interview Question

Question

a) What are the five possible values for “position”?
b) What is the default/initial value for “position”?
c) How does the browser determine where to place positioned elements
d) What are the pros and cons of using absolute positioning?
e) if they are really advanced, ask about IE z-index issues with positioned elements.

Answer

a) Values for position: static, relative, absolute, fixed, inherit
b) Static
c) They are placed relative to the next parent element that has absolute or relative value declared
d) Absolutely positioned elements are removed from the document flow. The positioned element does not flow around the content of other elements, nor does their content flow around the positioned element. An absolutely positioned element may overlap other elements, or be overlapped by them.
e) IE treats a position like a z-index reset, so you have to declare position of static on the parent element containing the z-indexed elements to have them responsd to z-index correctly.

 

CSS Interview Question

Question:

Write a snippet of CSS that will display a paragraph in blue in older browsers, red in newer browsers, green in IE6 and black in IE7

Possible Answer:

#content p{color:blue}
html>body #content p {color:red}
* html #content p{color:green}
html>body #content p {*color:black;}

 

Basic Javascript Interview Question

Question:

What is the correct way to include JavaScript into your HTML?

Answer:

correct explanation using inline event handlers or inline code

Basic Javascript Array / XHTML Form Interview Question

Question

Are the following all equal, and, if so, what would your code look like to make the following all equal the same thing:

  alert(document.forms["myform"].elements["field"].value);
  alert(document.forms[1].elements[1].value);
  alert(document.myform.field.value);

answer:

<form name="myform" method="post" action="something">
<input name="anything" value="anything" type="something" />
<input name="field" value="something" type="something" />
</form>

Answer includes knowing that the form is the second form on the page, and that the field input element is the second element within that form.

 

JavaScript Interview Question

Question:

How do you dynamically add a paragraph with stylized content to a page?

Possible Answer:

newParagraph = document.createElement('p');
newParagraph.setAttribute('class', 'myClass');
newText = document.createTextNode('this is a new paragraph');
newParagraph.appendChild(newText);
myLocation = document.getElementById('parent_of_new_paragraph);
myLocation.appendChild(newParagraph);

 

Other questions ideas:

Q: How do you organize your CSS? How do you come up with id and class names (what naming conventions do you use)?
A: While there are no right answers, there are best practices. Issues to look for are not having div mania, no inline CSS, no presentational markup, minimal use of classes, understanding the CSS cascade.

Q: What do you think of hacks? When should you use them? If you use them, how do you maintain them? What can be done to avoid needing to use box-model hacks? (if they aren’t pros, you can ask them what is the issue with x-browsers and the box model)

Q: What are the pros and cons of using tables for layout? Do you use tables? What are the pros and cons of tableless design? How do you generally layout your pages?
A: check for them NOT using tables

Q: What are some deprecated elements and attributes that you use, and in what instances do you use them?

A: List of deprecated elements and attributes.

Q: What is involved in making a website accessible? What are arguments you use to convince others to invest in making their web site accessible.
A:  Making sites accessible also makes them more search engine friendly (saves money), makes your pages accessible to the 20% of the population that has some type of disability (so you can make more money) and it’s the law in many places.

Q: Define what web standards mean to you? How do you implement web standards?

Standardized specifications for Internet markup languages such as HTML, CSS, and XML. Formulated by the W3 organisation, these standards enable people to create websites that will work in almost any browser or internet-enabled device, instead of being specific to certain versions of Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator.

Q: In CSS, how can you make a form elments background-color change when the user is entering text? will this work in all browsers?

It’s possible to change the default look of form elements by styling their html tags: inputselect and textarea.

but it won’t work in all browsers

Q: How can you target an element in your HTML using the DOM?

by using the nodes of the DOm elements we can target any element on any event in HTML

var gaJsHost = ((“https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.&#8221; : “http://www.&#8221;);
document.write(unescape(“%3Cscript src='” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));

try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(“UA-1855756-5”);
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}