HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
8.4.3.3. The font-stretch property
In addition to different sizes, font families sometimes contain condensed
and expanded versions, in which the characters are squeezed or
stretched, respectively. Use the
font-stretch
property to choose more
compressed or stretched-out characters from your font.
Use the property value of
normal
to select the normal-size version of
the font. The relative values
wider
and
narrower
select the next-wider
or next-narrower variant of the font's characters, respectively, but not
wider or narrower than the most ("ultra") expanded or contracted one
in the family.
The remaining
font-stretch
property values choose specific variants
from the font family. Starting from the most condensed and ending with
the most expanded, the values are
ultra-condensed, extra-condensed,
condensed, semi-condensed, semi-expanded, expanded, extra-expanded
,
and
ultra-expanded
.
The
font-stretch
property, of course, assumes that your display fonts
support stretchable fonts. Even so, the currently popular browsers ig-
nore this property.
8.4.3.4. The font-size-adjust property
Without too many details, the legibility and display size of a font depend
principally on its
aspect ratio
: the ratio of its rendered size to its x-
height, which is a measure of the font's lowercase glyph height. Fonts
with aspect ratios approaching 1.0 tend to be more legible at smaller
sizes than fonts with aspect ratios approaching 0.
Also, because of aspect ratios, the actual display size of one font may
appear smaller or larger than another font at the same size. So, when
one font is not available for rendering, the substituted font may distort
the presentation.
