Units and values cover a wide spectrum of areas, from length units to
special keywords that describe relationships (such as
smaller) to color units to the location of files
(such as images). For the most part, units are the one area that user
agents get almost totally correct; it’s those few
little bugs and quirks that get you, though. Navigator
4.x’s failure to interpret relative URLs correctly,
for example, has bedeviled many authors, and lead to an overreliance
on absolute URLs. Colors are another area where user agents almost
always do well, except for a few little quirks here and there. The
vagaries of length units, however, far from being bugs, are an
interesting problem for any author to tackle.
These units all have their advantages and drawbacks, depending on the circumstance in which they’re used. We’ve already seen some of these (and the nuances of such circumstances will be discussed in the rest of the book), beginning with the CSS properties that describe ways to alter the way text is displayed.
Get Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
