Choose an organization scheme You should choose a consistent organization pattern and stick to it. I’m not going to tell you how to organize your style sheets—that depends on what works for you—but here are a few ideas to consider: Organize by selector type. Start with HTML selectors, then IDs, and then classes. Organize based on page structure. Group rules based on their parent tags. This works even better with HTML5 because page structure is stronger. The downside occurs when the same rules need to be applied at different places in the page.

Once your libraries, frameworks, and sitewide CSS are ready to go live, you need to pick the best strategy for deployment. It is always recommended that you place all your styles in one or more external style sheets, and then use either the @import code to apply them to a Web document. You have two competing priorities: 

1. Add content to your HTML file. Using the HTML file you created in chapter 2, add text and image content. I tend to use Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but anything will do. A great source for text is Project Guttenberg (www.gutenberg. org). 2. Markup your content. All styles require markup in the Web page to give them something to be applied to. Make sure to tag headers and paragraphs. 3. Add classes and IDs to your markup. Classes give you a “hook” to apply specific styles to specific elements. Don’t go overboard, though.

How does CSS work? When a visitor loads one of your Web pages, by either typing in the address or clicking a link, the server (the computer that stores the Web page) sends the HTML file to the visitor’s computer along with any files linked to or embedded in the HTML file. Regardless of where the CSS code is, the visitor’s browser will interpret it and apply it to the HTML to render the Web page using that browser’s particular rendering engine that is then displayed in the browser window.