The Cascade is a powerful mechanism. Understanding it helps you write CSS in the most economical and easily editable way and enables you to create documents that are viewed as you mean them to be seen, while leaving appropriate control of aspects of the document's display, such as overall font sizes, with users who have special needs.

Here is the order in which the browser looks at, or cascades through, the various locations:

1) Default browser style sheet

2) User style sheet

3) Author style sheet

4) Author embeddes styles

5) Author inline styles

The Cascade Rules

Rule 1: Find all declarations that apply to each element and property

Rule 2: Sort by order and weight

Rule 3) Sort by specificity

Rule 4) Sort by order

Rule Declarations

1) Words

2) Numerical Values

3) Color Values