Chapter 13: Styling Text

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Overview

I think it'd be a good idea to bring it back down to basics for a chapter to talk about using CSS to style text. Manipulating type is probably the area where CSS gets most of its use— even for sites that aren't fully embracing web standards throughout. Stripping repeated <font> tags from site markup was (and is) attractive for designers, and it's not hard to see a major advantage of controlling typography via CSS—further separating the presentation from the content.

We now know, from many of the examples throughout this book, that CSS is capable of so much more—yet styling text can be one of the simplest ways to add design to even the most elementary of web pages. And by relying on CSS to style text, we can avoid adding unnecessary images to our pages.

Throughout this chapter, we'll go over some examples of how CSS can be used creatively to take a block of boring, normal hypertext to new heights (as well as new colors, sizes, and typefaces).

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