Let’s be honest. Typography and the web do not go hand-in-hand. You’re limited to a choice of about 5 fonts, most of which are cheap knockoffs of ‘proper’ typefaces. You’ve got practically no fine control over kerning or line spacing, and – worst of all – there’s a very good chance that no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try – your type is going to look different on every single browser and operating system. So what is an avid graphic designer-cum-web designer to do when faced with the seemingly insurmountable task of making web type look good?

Tip 1: Don’t limit your size options

Once upon a time, we were limited to a mere 7 sizes via use of the <font> tag – thankfully current incarnations of CSS grant us much better control, so quite a fine level of control over the size can be had.

Figure 1: Newer methods of specifying sizes in CSS allow for more flexibility when choosing type size. Don’t stick to standard sizes – experiment!

Relative sizes work best- don’t forget your visitors may have a different font size setting to the default, so specifying fixed point or pixel values may make things look awfully strange. ‘Em’ units – so called as 1em is equal to the width of the lowercase ‘m’ character, are one of a few ways to scale your text proportionally. All things being equal, at default settings 1em is the same size as 12 points.

You’re not limited to while numbers, either – 0.8em is a good body font size, typically being rendered at 10pt. You can specify any number you like, and as large as you like – don’t limit yourself to sub-24pt sizes if the design warrants a larger size. Read the rest of this entry »

1- CSS font shorthand rule

When styling fonts with CSS you may be doing this:

There’s no need though as you can use this CSS shorthand property:

Much better! Just a couple of words of warning: This CSS shorthand version will only work if you’re specifying both the font-size and the font-family. Also, if you don’t specify the font-weight, font-style, or font-varient then these values will automatically default to a value of normal, so do bear this in mind too.

2- Two classes together

Usually attributes are assigned just one class, but this doesn’t mean that that’s all you’re allowed. In reality, you can assign as many classes as you like! For example:

Using these two classes together (separated by a space, not with a comma) means that the paragraph calls up the rules assigned to both Class1 and Class2. If any rules overlap between the two classes then the class which is below the other in the CSS document will take precedence.

Read the rest of this entry »