Here's the secret: end users, clients, existing customers, potential customers, and your company management all make their first assessment of the value of your software based upon their first impressions of how cool it looks.

Not upon features and functions.

Not upon scalability and reliability.

Not upon performance.

Not upon minimization of defects.

Upon how cool it looks.

I can hear what you're saying. Surely people couldn't be that stupid? Surely they see past the surface? Surely they aren't so shallow as to judge the quality of software based on how cool the user interface is?

Well here's some tragic news for you: people are that shallow. I don't know why. Maybe it's because the underlying concepts of a new software application are too complex for most people to grasp immediately. Maybe it's a natural human tendency to value things that have an attractive visual appearance.

The good news is that if your target user interface is Web browser based, there's an easy solution: CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Cascading Style Sheets give you an enormous degree of control over the display of HTML page elements. More control than anything you can do with plain old HTML alone.

If you're doing browser based development and you don't understand Cascading Style Sheets, you should instantly drop everything you are doing and learn. Right now. Seriously.

Even better, Cascading Style Sheets are easy to implement and will reduce the amount of time that it takes you to develop HTML. You heard me right--it will reduce your HTML coding time. No more digging through hundreds of lines of code changing <FONT> tags in every possible location because someone wanted to see your pages with Verdana instead of MSComicSanSerif.

Cascading Style Sheets are highly relevant for Lotus Domino programmers too. Lotus Domino browser-based applications tend to have a distinctive Lotus-ish look about them. Develop your application using Cascading Style Sheets, and it's only the URLs that will betray the fact that you've built it using Lotus Domino.

Cascading Style Sheets will allow you to turn that tired old HTML application interface into a sleek, 21st century, ergo-dynamic, rip-roaring funk machine worthy of inclusion in The Matrix 4. Your clients will be blown away. Your customers will buy your software. Your peers will respect you. Your manager will pat you on the head. And it will only take you a single day. One day.

Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho, it's off to work we go
So let's get down to work. This month I'm going to show you how you can get going with Cascading Style Sheets with virtually no code at all. I'm going to do that by showing you a number of examples of HTML page elements that have Cascading Style Sheets applied to them. You can see a sample of what we'll be discussing at http://www.touchdown.com.au/dpapr2002.html.

There are three key methods for implementing Cascading Style Sheets. Linked CSS uses an external file containing all of the CSS properties. Embedded CSS is the term used when the style sheet is contained on the HTML page. Inline CSS is the term used when the CSS properties are actually included within the HTML page element, using the STYLE tag.