A backend engineer has shared their experience of learning CSS and how they broke the process down into four steps.
They explain the concept of the cascade, which dictates how styles are applied from multiple sources in a hierarchical manner, with browsers defaults, external stylesheets, and inline styles all playing a role.
Learning different selectors, such as element, class, and ID selectors, as well as understanding attribute selectors and pseudo-classes, enables efficient targeting of HTML elements for styling.
Grasping the concept of specificity, which determines which CSS rule takes precedence when multiple rules target the same element, is also key.
Lastly, mastering the box model, which defines the composition of every CSS element as a box comprising content, padding, border, and margin is important for comprehensive understanding.
They recommend using browser developer tools to inspect and understand the cascade and see which styles are being applied.