Web Design in a Nutshell

Properties

The real meat of style sheets lies in the collection of properties that can be applied to selected elements. The properties reviewed in this chapter reflect those provided in the CSS Level 1 specification (CSS1). The CSS Level 2 specification, released in May 1998, contains many additional properties and additional values for existing properties (see “What’s New in CSS2” later in this chapter). However, because current browsers are still struggling with bug-free and consistent support of CSS1, these properties should be enough to give you a good start in working with style sheets.

First, a disclaimer—the explanations provided here describe how each property ought to work according to the specification. Most of these will work differently on different browsers and many are not supported at all. For a listing of which browsers support which properties, see the charts in Appendix E.

Type-Related Properties

Style sheets offer controls for type presentation similar to those found in desktop publishing. The following group of properties affects the way type is displayed, both in terms of font and text spacing.

Box Properties

Style sheets treat each element on a page as though it were contained within a box (imagine four lines drawn against the edges of this paragraph). More accurately, each element is in a series of containing boxes (see Figure 23.2), beginning with the content itself, surrounded by padding, then the border, which is surrounded by the margin.

Figure 23-2. The ...