OK, we have a lot to do this week so let's get started with a game plan of the activities for this week.

Now whether you read the assigned textbook reading or start with the online lecture pages is up to you. However, you should read both before starting any homework and/or lab exercises.

The on-line lecture covers these important topics this week:

• Revisit the DOM, or Document Object Model. This is a continuation of the subject started last week which emphasizes the structure of a web document. Every HTML element relates to other elements in a page. Understanding the relationship of objects within the DOM helps CSS designers to then control elements via inheritance and the cascade.
• We then look at advanced selectors which provides the power to provide a style rule for a special or specific situation/relationship between elements within a document.
• Pseudo classes and pseudo elements allow us to style the 4 states of links, create drop caps, style the first line differently from other lines in a paragraph, and more... lots of useful capabilities.
• Inheritance covers which properties inherit from their parents/ancestors and which properties do not. And most importantly why (and which) properties inherit or do not inherit.
• The cascade documents introduce the concepts of multiple style sheets, specificity, and which style rule wins out if there is a conflict between rules in different style sheets.
• And finally, there is a topic which discusses additional browser tools which you might want to explore and use to make your more productive with CSS development.

The Homework Assignment(s) this Week

There are 3 separate tasks assigned this week:

• The first task is to create a document which asks you to use pseudo elements. This document requires you to link to an external style sheet and asks that you explore the different pseudo elements and classes. The markup is provided, you just need to follow the instructions and create style rules in the external stylesheet to match the example illustration.
• The second task asks you to create a number of documents. The point of this task is to focus on cascade and specificity.
• And the final task is to re-style your existing home.html page by creating a linked stylesheet. The point being, that the content on a page is separate from its presentation and we can quickly change a page's appearance by altering its style sheet.

Time to get started!

Please let me know in the forum if you have any questions or issues.