Kimmer,
You are correct, the styles you created
will apply to every link on the site/page. The fix for having different styles in different places is easy, of course, and is exactly what CSS is for. I do the same thing for links in my main navigation bar (actually a horizontally displayed list), the page nav list on the right-hand side of each page and other links in the body of the page. Just create a class for each type/location for those links.
a.menubutton:link {blah, blah, blah...;}
a.menubutton:visited {blah, blah, blah...;}
a.menubutton:hover {blah, blah, blah...;}
.
.
.
a.text:link {blah, blah, blah...;}
a.text:visited {blah, blah, blah...;}
a.text:active {blah, blah, blah...;}
.
.
.
a.whatever:kind_of_link...
Then, in the "menu" div, for example just use:
<a class="menubutton" href=".....">Home</a>
Then, in the "body" section, for example just use:
'...some interesting <a class="text" href=".....">some interesting text 'link'</a> in a paragraph...'
Note, you don't specify whether it is a "link", "active", "hover", etc. The browser does all that work, all you need to do is tell it which style to use in that area of the page with the 'class="..." ' label.
Jane,
"Borrowing" page layouts/designs as well as CSS techniques can help you understand the html/CSS. But cutting and pasting is a good way to create problems for yourself if you don't understand exactly what all the code does! That may be the only consequence you suffer, but it can be a very big one and waste a lot of time. The hardest part of a good site is the design part, as far as I'm concerned. The color palette, consistent page layout, paragraph, link, headline, sub-heads, sidebars, header/footer details...if all that is not helpful and easy to find/use, the viewers simply will not return or use the site as often as you might want. Of course, moving all the styling info to a style sheet makes the html much more compact and easier to edit but you'll probably find that you'll then be doing most of your 'tweaking' in the style sheet rather than in the html. ;-)
