Getting Set Up

Like HTML, CSS needs no installation — a browser and a text editor are enough. If you've done the HTML course, you're already set up.

Editor

Visual Studio Code understands CSS out of the box: autocompletion for properties and values, color swatches you can click to edit, and hover documentation with browser support. Other good choices are WebStorm, Sublime Text, and Zed.

Project folder

my-site/
  index.html
  css/
    styles.css
  images/

Stylesheets are plain text files with the .css extension, saved as UTF-8.

Browsers

Use a current version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge — and keep a second browser around for testing, because small differences still exist. Firefox's developer tools are particularly good for Grid and Flexbox.

Try it without installing anything

CodePen, JSFiddle, and the MDN Playground show HTML and CSS side by side and update as you type — great for quick experiments. Our HTML Viewer previews a page with a style element too.