17.7. Local HTML/CSS Files¶
Visual Studio Code recognizes many different programming languages. We can use the application for our Python projects and our HTML/CSS work.
Let’s build a simple webpage just like we did in the HTML and CSS chapters. However, this time we will do it locally.
17.7.1. Hello, Web¶
Add a new directory to local_practice called hello_web . Next, create two files in the directory called index.html and style.css .
Our file tree should look something like this:

The hello_web directory tree. ¶
Notice that VS Code displays different symbols next to the files. It uses the .html , .css , and .py extensions to identify the programming language they contain.
Paste this code into index.html :
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html> head> meta charset="utf-8"> meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width"> title>Hello, Web!title> head> body> h1>Hello, Local Webpage!h1> body> html>
Even though the code only contains a single h1 element inside the tags, it is still a fully functional HTML file. Let’s see what it looks like in a browser!
17.7.2. Viewing Local Files in a Browser¶
There are two ways to view our local HTML file in a browser.
-
Option 1: Open a web browser. Click on File –> Open File from the menu options. In the box that pops up, navigate to the .html file we want. Click Open.


Ta da! Our webpage appears. Notice the path in the address bar. It looks very similar to the result we would see from the pwd command in the terminal. The copied path changes depending on the file chosen.

17.7.2.1. Add More Elements¶
- Return to VS Code and add a few more elements to the index.html document. Be sure to use some of the semantic HTML we learned earlier.
- Save your work.
- Go back into the browser and refresh the tab for your HTML file. You should see the results of your changes.
VS Code has a nice feature to let us know if we have saved our work recently! In the editor tabs, if we see a solid dot ( • ) next to a filename, that means we have unsaved changes in our code. If we see an X instead, then all of the code in the file has been saved.

17.7.2.2. For Your Eyes Only¶
Only you can see your local webpage. Looking at the address bar tells us this. Instead of https://www.etc. , we see the file:// prefix. This indicates that the browser opened a file on your personal machine. No one else in the world can view your page unless they are looking over your shoulder right now (or hacked into your device).
Much later in this course, we will learn how to deploy a website and make it visible to anyone who accesses the web.
17.7.3. Adding CSS¶
Since the index.html and style.css files are in the same directory, we can link them together by adding one statement to our head element:
3 4 5 6 7 8
head> meta charset="utf-8"> meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width"> title>Hello, Web!title> link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css"> head>
Line 7 uses the identical format to what we learned in the Linking CSS to HTML section.
17.7.3.1. Try It!¶
- Paste this code into the style.css file:
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h1 < color: purple; text-align: center; text-decoration: underline overline wavy; font-family: impact, helvetica; >section < background-color: lightgreen; text-align: center; font-size: 36px; border: solid 2px; width: 50%; >.shadow

A styled local webpage. ¶
17.7.3.2. style.css in a Different Directory¶
If the CSS file is located in a different directory from the HTML page that uses it, we need to add the proper path inside the tag. Let’s take a look at three possible cases:

style.css is inside the subfolder the_styles . ¶
When the stylesheet is one level down from our HTML file, update the href attribute by adding a relative path that points to the CSS file.
link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="./the_styles/style.css">
The path ./the_styles/style.css tells VS Code, From the current directory, find the folder called the_styles. Move into that folder and find the file called style.css.

style.css is inside the parent directory of hello_web . ¶
When the stylesheet is one level up from our HTML file, use the .. shortcut in the relative path.
link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../style.css">
The path ../style.css tells VS Code, From the current directory, move up one level into the parent folder. Find the file called style.css.
If we pull a stylesheet from a website (like Bootstrap ), use the web address for the href attribute.
link rel="stylesheet" href="https://websiteURL">
Notice that the external link does not include the type attribute.
Finally, we can always use the full path to the stylesheet. Right click on the style.css tab and choose the Copy Path option. Paste the path inside the quotes for the href attribute.
17.7.4. Local Project¶
- In the HTML Me Something assignment, you built and styled your own webpage in repl.it or Trinket. Login to your account now and open up that project.
- In VS Code, create a new directory called html_me .
- Inside this directory, create an index.html file.
- Copy your HTML code from your repl.it/Trinket project and paste it into VS Code.
- Repeat this copy/paste process for the style.css file.
- If your repl.it/Trinket project contains any other files (like images, gifs, etc.), drag and drop copies of these files into the html_me directory.
- Open your new index.html file in a browser. Properly done, you should see your awesome webpage! However, now you have it saved on your personal device.
17.7.5. Check Your Understanding¶
Visual Studio Code automatically saves our work.
Visual Studio Code works with other languages besides Python, HTML, and CSS.
After making a change in our HTML or CSS code, how do we see those updates in a web browser?
- Refresh the tab in the browser.
- Save our work in VS Code.
- Save our work in VS Code, then refresh the tab in the browser.
- Refresh the tab in the browser, then save our work in VS Code.
Style Sheets
With WebStorm, you can write style definitions in CSS as well as in various languages that compile into it, such as Sass, Less, SCSS, or Stylus.
You can also look up documentation for Style Sheets, create and move rulesets, introduce variables, and more.
Before you start
Make sure the CSS plugin is enabled in the settings. Press Control+Alt+S to open the IDE settings and then select Plugins . Click the Installed tab. In the search field, type CSS . For more information about plugins, refer to Managing plugins.
Code completion
WebStorm provides code completion for properties, their values, selectors, variables, and mixins.
Complete Style Sheet classes
Completion for CSS, SCSS, Less, and Sass classes and ids is available in HTML files, in various types of templates (for example, in Angular or Vue.js), as well as in JSX code.
In HTML files, WebStorm first suggests classes and ids from the style tag and files linked with link tags. If no matching results are found, WebStorm also suggests symbols defined in all stylesheet files in the project. To see all classes and ids defined in the project straight away, before you start typing, press Control+Space twice.

Complete Style Sheet classes from external libraries
With WebStorm, you can also get completion for class names from Twitter Bootstrap or other CSS libraries that are linked from a CDN in an HTML file without adding these libraries to your project dependencies.
- Open the HTML file with a CDN link to an external CSS library. WebStorm highlights the link.
- To enable completion for the library, press Alt+Enter on the link and select Download library from the list. Alternatively, hover over the link and click Download library .
The library is added to the list of JavaScript libraries on the Settings | Languages and Frameworks | JavaScript | Libraries page. For more information, refer to Configuring a library added via a CDN link.
Complete Sass and SCSS selectors
WebStorm also provides completion for Sass and SCSS selectors — including nested selectors and selectors created with an ampersand (&).

Search and navigation
- To find usages of a Style Sheet symbol, place the caret at it and press Alt+F7 . Learn more from Search for usages in a project.
- To jump from a usage of a Style Sheet symbol to its definition, press Control+B . Navigation to definition is available for classes, ids, selectors – including nested selectors and selectors with an ampersand & — as well as for variables and mixins. Learn more from Go to declaration.
Documentation look-up
For properties and pseudo-elements, WebStorm can show you a summary from the corresponding MDN article. This summary is displayed in the Documentation popup which shows a brief description of the property and its values, as well as information about its compatibility with various browsers.

If the property is available in all versions of browsers, WebStorm does not show any information about its compatibility.
Otherwise, the Documentation popup also lists the browsers and their versions that support the property.
Note that compatibility is checked only for Chrome, Chrome Android, Safari, Safari iOS, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Edge.
For selectors, WebStorm also shows their specificity.

View documentation for a property
- Position the caret at the property and press Control+Q or select View | Quick Documentation Lookup from the main menu.
- When you hover over a property, WebStorm immediately displays the reference for it in the Documentation popup. You can turn off this behavior or configure the popup to appear faster or slower, refer to Configuring the behavior of Documentation popup below.
Configure the behavior of Documentation popup
- To turn off showing documentation automatically when you hover over code symbols, Click in the popup and disable the Show on Mouse Move option.
- To have the Documentation popup shown faster or slower, open the Settings dialog ( Control+Alt+S ), go to Editor | General | Code Completion , then select the Show the documentation popup checkbox and specify the delay time.
Open the MDN documentation in the browser
- In the Documentation popup Control+Q , click the link at the bottom.
- Press Shift+F1 or select View | External Documentation from the main menu.
Formatting
With WebStorm built-in formatter, you can reformat fragments of Style Sheet code as well as entire files and folders to meet the language-specific code style requirements. The formatter also wakes up automatically when you generate or refactor your code.
- To configure formatting for a Style Sheet language, open the Settings dialog ( Control+Alt+S ), go to Editor | Code Style | Style Sheets | , and configure the language-specific settings for tabs and indents, spaces, wrapping and braces, hard and soft margins, and so on. In the CSS, SCSS, and Less context, WebStorm by default uses double quotes for generated string literals in import statements and URLs. To use single quotes, open the Other tab, and select Single from the Quote marks list. To apply the chosen style to the entire file after reformatting, select the Enforce on format checkbox below the list. Currently changing the configuration for quotation marks does not affect injected style sheets and CSS code inside the tags.
- To reformat a code fragment, select it in the editor and press Control+Alt+L .
- To reformat a file or a folder, select it in the Project tool window and press Control+Alt+L .
Alternatively, you can use the Prettier. For more information, refer to Prettier.
Refactoring
With WebStorm, you can convert expressions in Style Sheets into variables and introduce these variables using the var(—var-name) syntax in .css files or the $ syntax in .scss and .sass files.
Introduce variables
- In the editor, place the caret at the expression to convert into a variable and press Control+Alt+V or select Refactor | Introduce | Introduce Variable from the context menu or from the main menu.
- If more than one occurrence of the selected expression is found, select Replace this occurrence only or Replace all occurrences from the Multiple occurrences found list.
- For .scss , and .sass , select the global or local scope for the variable.
- In the field with red borders, accept the suggested variable name or specify a custom name. Press Enter when ready.
With WebStorm, you can create new rulesets from existing declarations in CSS, SCSS, Sass, or Less files and even move entire rulesets between files using refactoring and intention actions.
Introduce rulesets
- Select the declarations to introduce. If you need only one declaration, just place the caret inside it.
- Press Alt+Enter and select Introduce ruleset from the list.
WebStorm creates a new ruleset with the same selector and moves the selected declarations to it. If the selection contains comments, nested selectors, and so on, they are also moved to the new ruleset.
Move rulesets to other files
- Place the caret anywhere in the ruleset to move and press F6 .
- In the dialog that opens, specify the file to move the ruleset to. If the specified file does not exist, WebStorm will suggest creating it.
- By default, WebStorm automatically opens the file where the ruleset is moved. To change this behavior, clear the Open in editor checkbox.
Common refactorings, such as Copy , Move , or Rename , are also available.
Checking compatibility with browsers
Besides looking up in the documentation popup, you can check Style Sheet properties for compatibility with specific browsers on the fly. This inspection is based on the MDN Browser Compatibility Data and shows you a warning every time a property is not supported in one of the targeted browsers.

Turn on compatibility check

- In the Settings dialog ( Control+Alt+S ), go to Editor | Inspections .
- Expand the CSS node and select the Browser compatibility for properties . In the Options area, select the browsers you want to target and the minimum versions for them.
Changing color values
With WebStorm, you can easily change color values in Style Sheets without typing hexadecimal codes.
Choose colors
- Open the desired Style Sheet for editing.
- Type color: , and then press Control+Space .
- Select the desired color value from the suggestion list or choose color. to pick a custom one.
Change colors
- Open the desired Style Sheet for editing, and locate the color property that you want to change.
- Click the color icon in the gutter. Alternatively, if the icons are not shown, press Alt+Enter and select Change color from the list. See To show color icons in the gutter below.
- In the Choose color dialog that opens, pick the desired new color and click Choose .
Preview the code of colors
- WebStorm marks each color property with a gutter icon of the corresponding color. When you hover over a color icon, WebStorm displays a popup that shows the color preview and its hexadecimal code. To use a code instead of a human-readable color name, press Alt+Enter and select Convert color to from the list, where is HEX, HSL, HWB, or RGB
Show color icons in the gutter
By default, WebStorm displays color icons in the gutter. If they are hidden, you can return them at any time.
- In the Settings dialog ( Control+Alt+S ), go to Editor | General | Gutter Icons . The Gutter Icons page opens.
- In the Common area, select the Color preview checkbox.
Viewing the styles applied to a tag
In HTML and XHTML files, WebStorm can show you all the styles applied to an arbitrary tag.
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