HTML, XHTML & CSS

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Part III: Taking Precise Control Over Web Pages and Styles
What you can do with CSS
You have a healthy collection of properties to work with as you write your
style rules. You can control just about every aspect of a page’s display —
from borders to font sizes and everything in-between:
✓ Background properties control the background colors associated with
blocks of text and with images. You can also use these properties to
attach background colors to your page or to individual elements, such
as horizontal rules.
✓ Border properties control borders associated with a page, lists, tables,
images, and block elements (such as paragraphs). You can specify
border width, color, style, and distance from element content.
✓ Classification properties control how elements (such as images) flow
on the page relative to other elements. You can use these properties to
integrate images and tables with the text on your page.
✓ List properties control how lists appear on your page, such as
• Managing list markers
• Using images in place of bullets
✓ Margin properties control the margins of the page and margins around
block elements, tables, and images. These properties extend ultimate
control over the white space on your page.
✓ Padding properties control the amount of white space around any block
element on the page. When you use these with margin and border properties,
you can create complex layouts.
✓ Positioning properties control where elements sit on the page; you can
use them to put elements in specific places on the page.
✓ Size properties control how much space (in height and width) your elements
(both text and images) take up on your page. They’re especially
handy for limiting the size of text boxes and images.
✓ Table properties control the layout of tables. You can use them to control
cell spacing and other table-layout specifics.
✓ Text properties control how text appears on a page. You can set such
properties as font size, font family, height, text color, letter and line
spacing, alignment, and white space. These properties give you more
control over text with style sheets than the font HTML element can.
Entire books and Web sites are devoted to the fine details of using each and
every property in these categories. We suggest one of these references: