There are essentially two style sheets being used today. Cascading style sheets (CSS) and extensible style sheet language (XSL). CSS is used for Web pages written in hypertext mark up language (HTML), and XSL is used with extensible mark up language used for reading out of databases. CSS is important when the Web is used to build a brand, and the customer must be able to associate individual pages to the Website. CSS also enables faster development of uniform look and feel pages. In a scenario of fast labour turnover on the Web, CSS provides ability for new designers to develop pages in the same look and feel that their predecessors had. CSS first invented in 1994, is now being used widely by a many Web enterprises.

CSS is nothing but a file that tells the hypertext mark up language file how to display fonts, headings background color, etc. The most common use would be giving uniform headings for text all through the Website. The programmers will write a CSS file that will specify the font size, font face and colour of the heading and store on the Web server. The Web page designer just has to call this CSS file on each and every Web page that he designs. It will make all the headings across the Website look similar.

Once the programmer has written all the CSS files the designer can keep calling and using the style sheets in Web page to give a consistent look and feel to the whole Website. A well-stocked CSS library means that nitty gritty of choosing background colour, fonts in every page is done away with.

This enables the rapid development of Websites and quickens content management processes. In case of labour turnover, designers have to just refer to the CSS files to maintain look and feel consistency. XSL on the other hand, which is of more recent origin, is used to display content out of databases to the end user. Content is now increasingly being stored in databases in XML formatting. While XML itself has no standards, there are specific industries working to standardize XML.

This however does not change the fact that XSL will enable once again a uniform look and feel to content displayed out of databases. This is something very difficult to achieve with Java or Active Server Pages (ASP) embedded in plain HTML. The unique features of CSS are that it can be used to style HTML documents. XSL, on the other hand, is able to transform documents. For example, XSL can be used to transform XML data into HTML/CSS documents on the Web server. This way, the two languages complement each other and can be used together. CSS and XSL will use the same underlying formatting model, and designers will therefore have access to the same formatting features in both languages.