2. Objectives
When you complete this chapter, you will be able to:
• Understand type design principles
• Understand Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
measurement units
• Use the CSS font properties
• Use the CSS text-spacing properties
• Build a font and text properties style sheet
• Customize bulleted and numbered lists
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4. Understanding Type Design
Principles
• Choose fewer fonts and sizes
• Choose available fonts
• Design for legibility
• Avoid using text as graphics
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5. Choose Fewer Fonts and Sizes
• Your pages will look cleaner when you choose fewer
fonts and sizes of type
• Decide on a font for each different level of topic
importance, such as page headings, section headings,
and body text
• Communicate the hierarchy of information with changes
in the size, weight, or color of the typeface
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7. Use Common Web Fonts
• The user’s browser and operating system
determine how a font is displayed
• To control more effectively how text appears on
your pages, think in terms of font families, such as
serif and sans-serif typefaces
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10. Specifying Proprietary Web Fonts
• The CSS3 font-face property lets you link to a font,
download it, and use it in style rules
• The common browsers support the font-face
property, though they each implement it differently
• The font-face property opens a new range of fonts
to make Web pages more attractive and legible
• Web designers or the clients they work with must
be prepared to pay licensing fees
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11. Design for Legibility
• Browser version, operating system, and video
capabilities can produce variations in the weight,
spacing, and rendering of the font families to
individual users
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13. Avoid Creating Text as Graphics
• New font options means less text as graphics
• Most Web sites use text graphics in one form or
another whether for a main logo, banner, or
advertisement
• Because you add download overhead with every
additional graphic, save text graphics for important
purposes
• Whenever possible, use HTML-styled text on your
pages, including creating HTML and CSS-based
navigation
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15. Understanding CSS
Measurement Units
• CSS offers a variety of measurement units
• The measurement values you choose depends on
the destination medium
• For print media, use absolute units of
measurement
• For the Web, use relative units of measurement
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17. Absolute Units
• Specify a fixed value
P {margin: 1.25in;}
• Cannot be scaled to client display
• Should only be used when exact measurements of
destination medium are known
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18. Relative Units
• Enables scalable Web pages that adapt to different
display types and sizes
• Recommended method for Web page design
• Relative measurement values such as em and px are
designed to let you build scalable Web pages that adapt
to different display types and sizes
• The W3C recommends that you always use relative
values
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19. The em Unit
• The em is a printing measurement, traditionally equal to
the horizontal length of the capital letter M in any given
font size
• In CSS, the em unit is equal to the font size of an
element
• It can be used for both horizontal and vertical
measurement
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20. Percentages
• Percentages for fonts work exactly the same as
ems
• For example, if the default paragraph font size is
12-point text, a 100% font size equals 12 point; a
font size set to 125% based on a 12-point default
would be 15 points.
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21. The ex Unit
• The ex unit is equal to the height of the lowercase
letter x in any given font
• The height of the lowercase letter x varies widely from
one typeface to another
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23. The px Unit
• Pixels are the basic picture element of a computer
display
• The size of the pixel is determined by the display
resolution
• Pixel measurements work well for computer displays,
but they are not so well suited to other media, such as
printing
• Pixels are not a good choice for font sizing
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25. Using the CSS Font Properties
• font-family
• font-face
• font-size
• font-style
• font-variant
• font-weight
• font-stretch
• font-size-adjust
• font (shorthand property)
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26. Specifying Font Family
• Allows specification of generic font family
names (e.g., sans-serif) or a specific name
(e.g., Arial)
p {font-family: sans-serif;}
p {font-family: arial;}
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27. Generic Font Families
• Serif
• Sans serif
• Monospace
• Cursive
• Fantasy
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29. Specific Font Families
• The font-family property lets you declare a specific
font family such as Arial or Verdana
• The user must have the font installed on his or her
computer; otherwise, the browser uses the default
font
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30. Font Fallbacks
• You can specify a list of alternate fonts
• The browser will attempt to load each successive
font in the list
• If no fonts match, the browser falls back to the
default font
p {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-
serif;}
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31. Specifying Font Face
• The @font-face property lets you specify a font to
be downloaded
• In the style sheet:
@font-face {font-family: Generica;
src: url(http://www.generic.com/fonts/generica.ttf)}
• In the document:
h1 {font-family: generica, serif;}
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32. Specifying Font Size
• The font-size property gives you control over the
specific sizing of your type
• You can choose from various length units such as
ems or percentages
• The following rule sets the block quote element to
1.5 em Arial:
blockquote {font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-
size: 1.5em;}
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34. Specifying Font Style
• This font-style property lets you specify italic text
• Remember that italic text is hard to read on a
computer display
• Use italics for special emphasis only
• The following rule sets italicized text for the note
class attribute
.note {font-style: italic;}
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35. Specifying Font Variant
• The font-variant property lets you define small
capitals
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36. Specifying Font Weight
• The font-weight property lets you set the weight of
the typeface
• You can use numerical keyword values
• The following style rule sets the warning class to
bold
.warning {font-weight: bold;}
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37. Specifying Font Stretch
• The font-stretch property lets you expand or
compress the font face
• This is a CSS3 property that is not yet commonly
supported
h1 {font-family: sans-serif; font-
stretch: expanded}
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38. Using the Font Shortcut Property
• The font shortcut property lets you abbreviate the more
verbose individual property listings
• The following rules produce the same results
p {font-weight: bold; font-size: 18pt;
line-height: 24pt; font-family:
arial;}
p {font: bold 18pt/24pt arial;}
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40. Using the CSS Text Spacing
Properties
• text-indent
• text-align
• line-height
• vertical-align
• letter-spacing
• word-spacing
• text-decoration
• text-transform
• text-shadow
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41. Specifying Text Indents
• Use the text-indent property to set the amount of
indentation for the first line of text and element
such as a paragraph
• You can specify a length or percentage value
• The following rules set an indent of 2em for the <p>
element and -2em for the <blockquote> element:
p {text-indent: 2em;}
blockquote {text-indent: −2em;}
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43. Specifying Text Alignment
• Use the text-align property to set a horizontal
alignment for the lines of text and element
• You can specify for alignment values
– Left
– Center
– Right
– Justify
• The following style rule sets the P element to
justified alignment
p {text-align: justify;}
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45. Specifying Line Height
• You can specify either a length or percentage value
for the line height
• Line height is also known as leading the white
space between lines of text
• The following rule sets the line height to 150%
p {line-height: 150%;}
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47. Specifying Vertical Alignment
• The vertical-align property lets you adjust the
vertical line of text within the line box
• Vertical line works only on in-line elements
• You can use this property to superscript or
subscript characters
• The baseline sub and super values are the most
evenly supported
• You can also use vertical alignment to align text
with graphics
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50. Specifying Letter Spacing
• The letter-spacing property lets you adjust the
white space between letters, often called kerning
• Length you specify is added to the default letter
spacing
• The following rule sets the letter spacing to four
pixels:
h1 {letter-spacing: 4px;}
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52. Specifying Word Spacing
• The word-spacing property lets you adjust the
white space between words in the text
• The length you specify is added to the default
spacing
• The following rule sets the word spacing to 2 em
h1 {word-spacing: 2em;}
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53. Specifying Text Decoration
• The text-decoration property lets you apply line
effects to your text
• Underlining should not be used except for
hypertext links
• Some sites choose to remove the underlining from
the hypertext links with this property
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54. Specifying Capitalization
• The text-transform property lets you change the
capitalization of text
• Useful for headings
• Lets you change text formatting without actually
editing the text
h1 {text-transform: uppercase;}
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55. Specifying Text Shadow
• The text shadow property lets you define a shadow
that is displayed behind text
• You can specify the horizontal and vertical offset as
well as the blur value
• The first two length values indicate the horizontal
and vertical offset
• The third length value specifies the blur amount
h1 {text-shadow: 2px 2px 2px #666;}
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58. Customizing Bulleted and
Numbered Lists
• The list-style properties let you control the visual
characteristics of bulleted and numbered lists
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60. Specifying the list-style-type
Property
• The list-style-type property lets you specify one of
three types of markers for a list
• You can choose a symbol, a numbering system, or
an alphabetical system
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62. Specifying the list-style-image
Property
• The list-style-image property lets you easily attach
an image to a list and have it repeated as the list
symbol
• The following code shows the style rule that
attaches an image to a bulleted list:
ul {list-style-image: url(pawprint.gif);}
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66. Summary
• Use type to communicate information structure
• HTML text downloads faster than graphics-based
text
• Use fonts that appear consistently across operating
systems
• Standardize your styles
• Use external style sheets
• Test your work
• Design for legibility
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67. Summary
• Choose the correct measurement unit based on the
destination medium
• Use font properties to control the look of your letter
forms
• Use text spacing properties to create more visually
interesting and legible text
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