21 Website Authoring: Relative File Paths for Stylesheets

Objective

Understand the reasons why relative file paths must be used for attached stylesheets in website authoring.

Why Use Relative File Paths?

When creating a website, it's common to separate the content (HTML) from the presentation (CSS stylesheets). Using relative file paths allows your website to be easily moved and updated without breaking the links between the HTML and CSS files.

Understanding Relative Paths

A relative path specifies the location of a file relative to the current location of the HTML file. This makes your website more portable.

There are two main types of relative paths:

• Relative to the current directory: This is the most common type. It specifies the path from the current HTML file to the CSS file.
• Relative to a parent directory: This path uses `../` to move up one directory level.

Why are Relative Paths Important for Stylesheets?

1. Portability: If you move your entire website to a new location on a server, relative paths will still work correctly because the paths are relative to the HTML file's location. Absolute paths, which specify the full URL of a file, would break.
2. Organization: Relative paths help maintain a clear and organized directory structure for your website files.
3. Avoidance of URL Changes: Relative paths are not affected by changes to the website's base URL. This is crucial if your website is hosted on different domains or subdomains.

Example

Consider a simple website structure:

Directory	File
/htdocs/mywebsite/	index.html
/htdocs/mywebsite/styles/	style.css

In the index.html file, the correct relative path to link the stylesheet would be "styles/style.css".

If the style.css file were moved to a different directory within the mywebsite folder (e.g., /htdocs/mywebsite/css/style.css), the relative path in index.html would need to be updated to "css/style.css".

Absolute vs. Relative Paths

Absolute paths specify the full URL of a file, including the domain name. For example: http://www.example.com/mywebsite/styles/style.css. Absolute paths are not portable.

Relative paths specify the location of a file relative to the current location of the HTML file. Relative paths are portable.

In summary

Using relative file paths for stylesheets is essential for creating websites that are portable, maintainable, and easy to update. They ensure that your website will continue to function correctly even if the website's directory structure changes.