HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
that new color. When the
<div>
tag ends, the color reverts to that of the
containing
<body>
tag.
In many of the following property descriptions, we refer to the tag con-
taining the current tag as the
parent element
of that tag.
8.4.3. Font Properties
The loudest complaint that we hear about HTML and its progeny,
XHTML, is that they lack font styles and characteristics that even the
simplest of text editors implement. The various
<font>
attributes ad-
dress part of the problem, but they are tedious to use, because each
text font change requires a different
<font>
tag.
Stylesheets simplify all that, of course. The CSS2 standard provides sev-
en font properties that modify the appearance of text contained within
the affected tag:
font-family, font-size, font-size-adjust, font-style,
font-variant, font-stretch
, and
font-weight
. In addition, there is a uni-
versal
font
property in which you can declare all the font values.
Please be aware that stylesheets cannot overcome limitations of the
user's display/document-rendering system, and the browser cannot
conjure effects if the fonts it uses do not provide the means.
8.4.3.1. The font-family property
The
font-family
property accepts a comma-separated list of font names.
The browser uses the first font named in the list that also is installed
and available for display on the client machine for text display.
Font-name values are for specific font styles, such as Helvetica and
Courier, or for a generic font style, as defined by the CSS2 standard:
serif, sans-serif, cursive, fantasy
, and
monospace
. The browser
defines which font it actually uses for each generic font. For instance,
Courier is the most popular choice for a monospaced font.
