CSS and HTML When HTML was first created, style properties were defined directly in the code. However, rather than just adding more and more tags to HTML, the W3C introduced Cascading Style Sheets to fill the design void in straight HTML, allowing the Web to become semantic in structure. For example. In HTML, the strong tag does one thing and one thing only: It makes text “stronger,” usually by making it bolder. However, using CSS, you can “redefine” the tag so that it not only makes text bolder, but also displays text in all caps and in a particular font to add more emphasis. You could even make the tag not make text bold. Although both HTML and CSS have evolved over the years, they have rarely evolved in tandem. Instead, each standard has pretty much followed its own path. However, both CSS3 and HTML5 will be hitting prime time over the next few years, creating the new foundation and framework for modern Web sites. The power of CSS comes from its ability to mix and match rules from different sources to tailor your Web pages’ layout to your exact needs. In some ways, it resembles computer programming—which is not too surprising, because a lot of this stuff was created by programmers instead of designers. But once you get the hang of it, “speaking” CSS will become as natural as putting together a sentence.