b Making Text Bold

Making Text Bold

The  element makes its enclosed text appear in boldface. This element is supported in XHTML 1.0 Strict, XHTML 1.0 Transitional, XHTML 1.0 Frameset, and XHTML 1.1. Here are its attributes:

class Gives the style class of the element. (XHTML 1.0 Strict, XHTML 1.0 Transitional, XHTML 1.0 Frameset, XHTML 1.1.)
dir Sets the direction of text that doesn't have an inherent direction in which you should read it, called directionally neutral text. You can set this attribute to LTR , for left-to-right text, or RTL , for right-to-left text. (XHTML 1.0 Strict, XHTML 1.0 Transitional, XHTML 1.0 Frameset, XHTML 1.1.)
id Refers to the element; set this attribute to a unique identifier. (XHTML 1.0 Strict, XHTML 1.0 Transitional, XHTML 1.0 Frameset, XHTML 1.1.)
lang Specifies the base language used in the element. Applies only when the document is interpreted as HTML. (XHTML 1.0 Strict, XHTML 1.0 Transitional, XHTML 1.0 Frameset, XHTML 1.1.)
style Set to an inline style to specify how the browser should display the element. (XHTML 1.0 Strict, XHTML 1.0 Transitional, XHTML 1.0 Frameset, XHTML 1.1.)
title Contains the title of the element (which might be displayed in ToolTips). (XHTML 1.0 Strict, XHTML 1.0 Transitional, XHTML 1.0 Frameset, XHTML 1.1.)
xml:lang Specifies the base language for the element when the document is interpreted as an XML document. (XHTML 1.0 Strict, XHTML 1.0 Transitional, XHTML 1.0 Frameset, XHTML 1.1.)

Here are the official XHTML events this element supports: onclick , ondblclick , onmousedown , onmouseup , onmouseover , onmousemove , onmouseout , onkeypress , onkeydown , and onkeyup .

The  element gives you a simple inline way of bolding text. Although plenty of experts would prefer that you use stylesheets to display text in bold, you can still use the  element. The following listing displays text in both italics and bold. (I'm using the line break element,   , which we'll see later, to separate the lines of text.)

Listing ch16_07.html

 <?xml version="1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">     <head>         <title>             Bold and Italic Text         </title>     </head>     <body>  <i>This text is italic.</i>   <br />   <b>This text is bold.</b>   <br />   <b><i>This text is both.</i></b>  </body> </html>

The results of this XHTML appear in Figure 16-5; you can see text that's bold, italic, and both bold and italic. The  tag is a favorite one among Web page authors because it's so easy to use.

Figure 16-5. Displaying bold and italic text in Netscape Navigator.

graphics/16fig05.gif

<b> Making Text Bold

Listing ch16_07.html

Figure 16-5. Displaying bold and italic text in Netscape Navigator.