Recipe 1.12 Creating a Pull Quote with Images

Problem

You want to stylize a pull quote with images on either side, such as the curly braces in Figure 1-23.

Figure 1-23. A Pull quote with images

Solution

Use the blockquote element to mark up the pull quote content:

 <blockquote>  <p>Ma quande lingues coalesce, li grammatica del resultant  lingue es plu simplic e regulari quam ti.</p> </blockquote> 

Then set the style for the pull quote, placing one image in the background of the blockquote element and another in the background of the p :

 blockquote {  background-image: url(/books/3/26/1/html/2/bracket_left.gif);  background-repeat: no-repeat;  float: left;  width: 175px;  margin: 0 0.7em 0 0;  padding: 10px 0 0 27px;  font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif;  font-size: 1.2em;  font-style: italic;  color: black; } blockquote p {  margin: 0;  padding: 0 22px 10px 0;  width:150px;  text-align: justify;  line-height: 1.3em;  background-image: url(/books/3/26/1/html/2/bracket_right.gif);  background-repeat: no-repeat;  background-position: bottom right; } 

Discussion

For this Solution, the bracket images for the pull quote come in a pair, with one at the upper left corner and the other at the bottom right corner. Through CSS, you can assign only one background image per block-level element.

The workaround is to give these images the proper placement; put one image in the background of the blockquote element and the other in the p element that is a child of the blockquote element:

 blockquote {  background-image: url(/books/3/26/1/html/2/bracket_left.gif);  background-repeat: no-repeat;  float: left;  width: 175px; } blockquote p {  background-image: url(/books/3/26/1/html/2/bracket_right.gif);  background-repeat: no-repeat;  background-position: bottom right; } 

Then adjust the padding, margin, and width of the blockquote and p elements so that you have an unobstructed view of the images:

 blockquote {  background-image: url(/books/3/26/1/html/2/bracket_left.gif);  background-repeat: no-repeat;  float: left;  width: 175px;  margin: 0 0.7em 0 0;  padding: 10px 0 0 27px; } blockquote p {  margin: 0;  padding: 0 22px 10px 0;  width:150px;  background-image: url(/books/3/26/1/html/2/bracket_right.gif);  background-repeat: no-repeat;  background-position: bottom right; } 

A benefit of this Solution is that if the text is resized, as shown in Figure 1-24, the images (brackets) stretch like rubber bands.

Figure 1-24. The background images staying in the corners as the text is resized

See Also

Recipe 3.11 for another example of the rubber- band technique.