JaffnaCampus.com » CSS Styling

CSS Tables

admin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:29:01 +0000

The look of an HTML table can be greatly improved with CSS:

Company	Contact	Country
Alfreds Futterkiste	Maria Anders	Germany
Berglunds snabbköp	Christina Berglund	Sweden
Centro comercial Moctezuma	Francisco Chang	Mexico
Ernst Handel	Roland Mendel	Austria
Island Trading	Helen Bennett	UK
Königlich Essen	Philip Cramer	Germany
Laughing Bacchus Winecellars	Yoshi Tannamuri	Canada
Magazzini Alimentari Riuniti	Giovanni Rovelli	Italy
North/South	Simon Crowther	UK
Paris spécialités	Marie Bertrand	France
The Big Cheese	Liz Nixon	USA
Vaffeljernet	Palle Ibsen	Denmark

Table Borders

To specify table borders in CSS, use the border property.

The example below specifies a black border for table, th, and td elements:

Example

table, th, td
{
border: 1px solid black;
}

Notice that the table in the example above has double borders. This is because both the table, th, and td elements have separate borders.

To display a single border for the table, use the border-collapse property.

Collapse Borders

The border-collapse property sets whether the table borders are collapsed into a single border or separated:

Example

table
{
border-collapse:collapse;
}
table,th, td
{
border: 1px solid black;
}

Table Width and Height

Width and height of a table is defined by the width and height properties.

The example below sets the width of the table to 100%, and the height of the th elements to 50px:

Example

table
{
width:100%;
}
th
{
height:50px;
}

Table Text Alignment

The text in a table is aligned with the text-align and vertical-align properties.

The text-align property sets the horizontal alignment, like left, right, or center:

Example

td
{
text-align:right;
}

The vertical-align property sets the vertical alignment, like top, bottom, or middle:

Example

td
{
height:50px;
vertical-align:bottom;
}

Table Padding

To control the space between the border and content in a table, use the padding property on td and th elements:

Example

td
{
padding:15px;
}

Table Color

The example below specifies the color of the borders, and the text and background color of th elements:

Example

table, td, th
{
border:1px solid green;
}
th
{
background-color:green;
color:white;
}

CSS Lists

admin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:26:25 +0000

The CSS list properties allow you to:

Set different list item markers for ordered lists
Set different list item markers for unordered lists
Set an image as the list item marker

List

In HTML, there are two types of lists:

unordered lists – the list items are marked with bullets
ordered lists – the list items are marked with numbers or letters

With CSS, lists can be styled further, and images can be used as the list item marker.

Different List Item Markers

The type of list item marker is specified with the list-style-type property:

Example

ul.a {list-style-type: circle;}
ul.b {list-style-type: square;}

ol.c {list-style-type: upper-roman;}
ol.d {list-style-type: lower-alpha;}

Some of the property values are for unordered lists, and some for ordered lists.

Values for Unordered Lists

Value	Description
none	No marker
disc	Default. The marker is a filled circle
circle	The marker is a circle
square	The marker is a square

Values for Ordered Lists

Value	Description
armenian	The marker is traditional Armenian numbering
decimal	The marker is a number
decimal-leading-zero	The marker is a number padded by initial zeros (01, 02, 03, etc.)
georgian	The marker is traditional Georgian numbering (an, ban, gan, etc.)
lower-alpha	The marker is lower-alpha (a, b, c, d, e, etc.)
lower-greek	The marker is lower-greek (alpha, beta, gamma, etc.)
lower-latin	The marker is lower-latin (a, b, c, d, e, etc.)
lower-roman	The marker is lower-roman (i, ii, iii, iv, v, etc.)
upper-alpha	The marker is upper-alpha (A, B, C, D, E, etc.)
upper-latin	The marker is upper-latin (A, B, C, D, E, etc.)
upper-roman	The marker is upper-roman (I, II, III, IV, V, etc.)

Note: No versions of Internet Explorer (including IE8) support the property values "decimal-leading-zero", "lower-greek", "lower-latin", "upper-latin", "armenian", or "georgian".

An Image as The List Item Marker

To specify an image as the list item marker, use the list-style-image property:

Example

ul
{
list-style-image: url(’sqpurple.gif’);
}

The example above does not display equally in all browsers. IE and Opera will display the image-marker a little bit higher than Firefox, Chrome, and Safari.

If you want the image-marker to be placed equally in all browsers, a crossbrowser solution is explained below.

Crossbrowser Solution

The following example displays the image-marker equally in all browsers:

Example

ul
{
list-style-type: none;
padding: 0px;
margin: 0px;
}
li
{
background-image: url(sqpurple.gif);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: 0px 5px;
padding-left: 14px;
}

Example explained:

For ul:
- Set the list-style-type to none to remove the list item marker
- Set both padding and margin to 0px (for cross-browser compatibility)
For li:
- Set the URL of the image, and show it only once (no-repeat)
- Position the image where you want it (left 0px and down 5px)
- Position the text in the list with padding-left

List – Shorthand property

It is also possible to specify all the list properties in one, single property. This is called a shorthand property.

The shorthand property used for lists, is the list-style property:

Example

ul
{
list-style: square url("sqpurple.gif");
}

When using the shorthand property, the order of the values are:

list-style-type
list-style-position (for a description, see the CSS properties table below)
list-style-image

It does not matter if one of the values above are missing, as long as the rest are in the specified order.

All CSS List Properties

The number in the "CSS" column indicates in which CSS version the property is defined (CSS1 or CSS2).

Property	Description	Values	CSS
list-style	Sets all the properties for a list in one declaration	list-style-type list-style-position list-style-image inherit	1
list-style-image	Specifies an image as the list-item marker	URL none inherit	1
list-style-position	Specifies if the list-item markers should appear inside or outside the content flow	inside outside inherit	1
list-style-type	Specifies the type of list-item marker	none disc circle square decimal decimal-leading-zero armenian georgian lower-alpha upper-alpha lower-greek lower-latin upper-latin lower-roman upper-roman inherit	1

CSS Links

admin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:22:42 +0000

Links can be styled in different ways.

Styling Links

Links can be style with any CSS property (e.g. color, font-family, background-color).

Special for links are that they can be styled differently depending on what state they are in.

The four links states are:

a:link – a normal, unvisited link
a:visited – a link the user has visited
a:hover – a link when the user mouses over it
a:active – a link the moment it is clicked

Example

a:link {color:#FF0000;} /* unvisited link */
a:visited {color:#00FF00;} /* visited link */
a:hover {color:#FF00FF;} /* mouse over link */
a:active {color:#0000FF;} /* selected link */

When setting the style for several link states, there are some order rules:

a:hover MUST come after a:link and a:visited
a:active MUST come after a:hover

Common Link Styles

In the example above the link changes color depending on what state it is in.

Lets go through some of the other common ways to style links:

Text Decoration

The text-decoration property is mostly used to remove underlines from links:

Example

a:link {text-decoration:none;}
a:visited {text-decoration:none;}
a:hover {text-decoration:underline;}
a:active {text-decoration:underline;}

Background Color

The background-color property specifies the background color for links:

Example

a:link {background-color:#B2FF99;}
a:visited {background-color:#FFFF85;}
a:hover {background-color:#FF704D;}
a:active {background-color:#FF704D;}

CSS Font

admin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:21:00 +0000

CSS font properties define the font family, boldness, size, and the style of a text.

Difference Between Serif and Sans-serif Fonts

On computer screens, sans-serif fonts are considered easier to read than serif fonts.

CSS Font Families

In CSS, there are two types of font family names:

generic family – a group of font families with a similar look (like "Serif" or "Monospace")
font family – a specific font family (like "Times New Roman" or "Arial")

Generic family	Font family	Description
Serif	Times New Roman Georgia	Serif fonts have small lines at the ends on some characters
Sans-serif	Arial Verdana	"Sans" means without – these fonts do not have the lines at the ends of characters
Monospace	Courier New Lucida Console	All monospace characters has the same width

Font Family

The font family of a text is set with the font-family property.

The font-family property should hold several font names as a "fallback" system. If the browser does not support the first font, it tries the next font.

Start with the font you want, and end with a generic family, to let the browser pick a similar font in the generic family, if no other fonts are available.

Note: If the name of a font family is more than one word, it must be in quotation marks, like font-family: "Times New Roman".

More than one font family is specified in a comma-separated list:

Example

p{font-family:"Times New Roman", Times, serif;}

Font Style

The font-style property is mostly used to specify italic text.

This property has three values:

normal – The text is shown normally
italic – The text is shown in italics
oblique – The text is "leaning" (oblique is very similar to italic, but less supported)

Example

p.normal {font-style:normal;}
p.italic {font-style:italic;}
p.oblique {font-style:oblique;}

–

for headings and
for paragraphs.

The font-size value can be an absolute, or relative size.

Absolute size:

Sets the text to a specified size

Does not allow a user to change the text size in all browsers (bad for accessibility reasons)

Absolute size is useful when the physical size of the output is known

Relative size:

Sets the size relative to surrounding elements

Allows a user to change the text size in browsers

If you do not specify a font size, the default size for normal text, like paragraphs, is 16px (16px=1em).

Set Font Size With Pixels

Setting the text size with pixels, gives you full control over the text size:

Example

h1 {font-size:40px;}
h2 {font-size:30px;}
p {font-size:14px;}

The example above allows Firefox, Chrome, and Safari to resize the text, but not Internet Explorer.

The text can be resized in all browsers using the zoom tool (however, this resizes the entire page, not just the text).

Set Font Size With Em

To avoid the resizing problem with Internet Explorer, many developers use em instead of pixels.

The em size unit is recommended by the W3C.

1em is equal to the current font size. The default text size in browsers is 16px. So, the default size of 1em is 16px.

The size can be calculated from pixels to em using this formula: pixels/16=em

Example

h1 {font-size:2.5em;} /* 40px/16=2.5em */
h2 {font-size:1.875em;} /* 30px/16=1.875em */
p {font-size:0.875em;} /* 14px/16=0.875em */

In the example above, the text size in em is the same as the previous example in pixels. However, with the em size, it is possible to adjust the text size in all browsers.

Unfortunately, there is still a problem with IE. When resizing the text, it becomes larger than it should when made larger, and smaller than it should when made smaller.

Use a Combination of Percent and Em

The solution that works in all browsers, is to set a default font-size in percent for the body element:

Example

body {font-size:100%;}
h1 {font-size:2.5em;}
h2 {font-size:1.875em;}
p {font-size:0.875em;}

Our code now works great! It shows the same text size in all browsers, and allows all browsers to zoom or resize the text!

CSS Text

admin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:18:16 +0000

text formatting

This text is styled with some of the text formatting properties. The heading uses the text-align, text-transform, and color properties. The paragraph is indented, aligned, and the space between characters is specified.

Text Color

The color property is used to set the color of the text. The color can be specified by:

name – a color name, like "red"
RGB – an RGB value, like "rgb(255,0,0)"
Hex – a hex value, like "#ff0000"

The default color for a page is defined in the body selector.

Example

body {color:blue;}
h1 {color:#00ff00;}
h2 {color:rgb(255,0,0);}

For W3C compliant CSS: If you define the color property, you must also define the background-color property.

Text Alignment

The text-align property is used to set the horizontal alignment of a text.

Text can be centered, or aligned to the left or right, or justified.

When text-align is set to "justify", each line is stretched so that every line has equal width, and the left and right margins are straight (like in magazines and newspapers).

Example

h1 {text-align:center;}
p.date {text-align:right;}
p.main {text-align:justify;}

Text Decoration

The text-decoration property is used to set or remove decorations from text.

The text-decoration property is mostly used to remove underlines from links for design purposes:

Example

a {text-decoration:none;}

It can also be used to decorate text:

Example

h1 {text-decoration:overline;}
h2 {text-decoration:line-through;}
h3 {text-decoration:underline;}
h4 {text-decoration:blink;}

It is not recommended to underline text that is not a link, as this often confuse users.

Text Transformation

The text-transform property is used to specify uppercase and lowercase letters in a text.

It can be used to turn everything into uppercase or lowercase letters, or capitalize the first letter of each word.

Example

p.uppercase {text-transform:uppercase;}
p.lowercase {text-transform:lowercase;}
p.capitalize {text-transform:capitalize;}

Text Indentation

The text-indentation property is used to specify the indentation of the first line of a text.

Example

p {text-indent:50px;}

All CSS Text Properties

The number in the "CSS" column indicates in which CSS version the property is defined (CSS1 or CSS2).

Property	Description	Values	CSS
color	Sets the color of a text	color	1
direction	Sets the text direction	ltr rtl	2
line-height	Sets the distance between lines	normal number length %	1
letter-spacing	Increase or decrease the space between characters	normal length	1
text-align	Aligns the text in an element	left right center justify	1
text-decoration	Adds decoration to text	none underline overline line-through blink	1
text-indent	Indents the first line of text in an element	length %	1
text-shadow		none color length
text-transform	Controls the letters in an element	none capitalize uppercase lowercase	1
unicode-bidi		normal embed bidi-override	2
vertical-align	Sets the vertical alignment of an element	baseline sub super top text-top middle bottom text-bottom length %	1
white-space	Sets how white space inside an element is handled	normal pre nowrap	1
word-spacing	Increase or decrease the space between words	normal length	1

CSS Background

admin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:12:43 +0000

CSS background properties are used to define the background effects of an element.

CSS properties used for background effects:

background-color
background-image
background-repeat
background-attachment
background-position

Background Color

The background-color property specifies the background color of an element.

The background color of a page is defined in the body selector:

Example

body {background-color:#b0c4de;}

The background color can be specified by:

name – a color name, like "red"
RGB – an RGB value, like "rgb(255,0,0)"
Hex – a hex value, like "#ff0000"

In the example below, the h1, p, and div elements have different background colors:

Example

h1 {background-color:#6495ed;}
p {background-color:#e0ffff;}
div {background-color:#b0c4de;}

Background Image

The background-image property specifies an image to use as the background of an element.

By default, the image is repeated so it covers the entire element.

The background image for a page can be set like this:

Example

body {background-image:url(‘paper.gif’);}

Below is an example of a bad combination of text and background image. The text is almost not readable:

Example

body {background-image:url(‘bgdesert.jpg’);}

Background Image – Repeat Horizontally or Vertically

By default, the background-image property repeats an image both horizontally and vertically.

Some images should be repeated only horizontally or vertically, or they will look strange, like this:

Example

body
{
background-image:url(‘gradient2.png’);
}

If the image is repeated only horizontally (repeat-x), the background will look better:

Example

body
{
background-image:url(‘gradient2.png’);
background-repeat:repeat-x;
}

Background Image – Set position and no-repeat

When using a background image, use an image that does not disturb the text.

Showing the image only once is specified by the background-repeat property:

Example

body
{
background-image:url(‘img_tree.png’);
background-repeat:no-repeat;
}

In the example above, the background image is shown in the same place as the text. We want to change the position of the image, so that it does not disturb the text too much.

The position of the image is specified by the background-position property:

Example

body
{
background-image:url(‘img_tree.png’);
background-repeat:no-repeat;
background-position:top right;
}

Background – Shorthand property

As you can see from the examples above, there are many properties to consider when dealing with backgrounds.

To shorten the code, it is also possible to specify all the properties in one single property. This is called a shorthand property.

The shorthand property for background is simply "background":

Example

body {background:#ffffff url(‘img_tree.png’) no-repeat top right;}

When using the shorthand property the order of the property values are:

background-color
background-image
background-repeat
background-attachment
background-position

It does not matter if one of the property values are missing, as long as the ones that are present are in this order.