HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
Part II
Working with Text
Good-looking, readable text is vital to the success of a website. CSS has a large number of properties
devoted to formatting text, giving you control not only over fonts and colors, but also allowing you
to adjust the distance between lines, words, and individual letters. For many years, one of the most
frustrating aspects of styling text on the Web has been the limited range of fonts considered safe to use
because browsers rely on what's available on the user's computer. Thankfully, those days are over. You
can now embed a wide range of fonts in web pages, either by storing them on your own web server or
using a font hosting service.
The CSS3 Text module is still only a working draft. Chapter 4 covers all CSS2.1 text properties and
introduces several new ones from CSS3, such as
text-shadow
, that have already stabilized and are widely
supported by browsers.
Chapter 5 shows you how to widen your choice of typeface by using web fonts in your styles, and
guides you through the sometimes confusing syntax needed to embed them. The accompanying source
files contain several open source fonts for you to practice with.
