Every HTML tag is surrounded by a world of properties that affect how the tag appears in a Web browser. Some propertieslike borders and background colorsare immediately obvious to the naked eye. Others, though, are invisiblelike padding and margin. They provide a bit of empty space on one or more sides of a tag. By understanding how these properties work, you can create attractive columns , decorative sidebars, and control the space around them (what designers call white space ) so your pages look less cluttered, lighter, and more professional. Taken together, the CSS properties discussed in this chapter make up one of the most important concepts in CSSthe box model . |