(15) CSS (Fonts)
Google Fonts
If you do not want to use any of the standard fonts in HTML, you can use the Google Fonts API to add hundreds of other fonts to your page. Just add a stylesheet link and refer to a font family of your choice: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Sofia"> <style> body { font-family: "Sofia"; font-size: 22px; } </style> </head> <body> <h1>Sofia Font</h1> <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.</p> </body> </html>
CSS Font Families
In CSS, there are two types of font family names: generic family - a group of font families with a similar look (like "Serif" or "Monospace") font family - a specific font family (like "Times New Roman" or "Arial") Generic family Font family Description Serif Times New Roman Georgia Serif fonts have small lines at the ends on some characters Sans-serif Arial Verdana "Sans" means without - these fonts do not have the lines at the ends of characters Monospace Courier New Lucida Console All monospace characters have the same width Note: On computer screens, sans-serif fonts are considered easier to read than serif fonts.
All CSS Font Properties
Property Description font Sets all the font properties in one declaration font-family Specifies the font family for text font-size Specifies the font size of text font-style Specifies the font style for text font-variant Specifies whether or not a text should be displayed in a small-caps font font-weight Specifies the weight of a font
Set Font Size With Pixels
Setting the text size with pixels gives you full control over the text size: Example h1 { font-size: 40px; } h2 { font-size: 30px; } p { font-size: 14px; } Tip: If you use pixels, you can still use the zoom tool to resize the entire page.
CSS Fonts
The CSS font properties define the font family, boldness, size, and the style of a text.
Font Family
The font family of a text is set with the font-family property. The font-family property should hold several font names as a "fallback" system. If the browser does not support the first font, it tries the next font, and so on. Start with the font you want, and end with a generic family, to let the browser pick a similar font in the generic family, if no other fonts are available. Note: If the name of a font family is more than one word, it must be in quotation marks, like: "Times New Roman". More than one font family is specified in a comma-separated list: Example p { font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif; }
Font Size
The font-size property sets the size of the text. Being able to manage the text size is important in web design. However, you should not use font size adjustments to make paragraphs look like headings, or headings look like paragraphs. Always use the proper HTML tags, like <h1> - <h6> for headings and <p> for paragraphs. The font-size value can be an absolute, or relative size. Absolute size: Sets the text to a specified size Does not allow a user to change the text size in all browsers (bad for accessibility reasons) Absolute size is useful when the physical size of the output is known Relative size: Sets the size relative to surrounding elements Allows a user to change the text size in browsers Note: If you do not specify a font size, the default size for normal text, like paragraphs, is 16px (16px=1em).
Font Style
The font-style property is mostly used to specify italic text. This property has three values: normal - The text is shown normally italic - The text is shown in italics oblique - The text is "leaning" (oblique is very similar to italic, but less supported) Example p.normal { font-style: normal; } p.italic { font-style: italic; } p.oblique { font-style: oblique; }
Font Variant
The font-variant property specifies whether or not a text should be displayed in a small-caps font. In a small-caps font, all lowercase letters are converted to uppercase letters. However, the converted uppercase letters appears in a smaller font size than the original uppercase letters in the text. Example p.normal { font-variant: normal; } p.small { font-variant: small-caps; }
Font Weight
The font-weight property specifies the weight of a font: Example p.normal { font-weight: normal; } p.thick { font-weight: bold; }
Use a Combination of Percent and Em
The solution that works in all browsers, is to set a default font-size in percent for the <body> element: Example body { font-size: 100%; } h1 { font-size: 2.5em; } h2 { font-size: 1.875em; } p { font-size: 0.875em; }
Responsive Font Size
The text size can be set with a vw unit, which means the "viewport width". That way the text size will follow the size of the browser window: Hello World Resize the browser window to see how the font size scales. Example <h1 style="font-size:10vw">Hello World</h1> Viewport is the browser window size. 1vw = 1% of viewport width. If the viewport is 50cm wide, 1vw is 0.5cm.
Set Font Size With Em
To allow users to resize the text (in the browser menu), many developers use em instead of pixels. The em size unit is recommended by the W3C. 1em is equal to the current font size. The default text size in browsers is 16px. So, the default size of 1em is 16px. The size can be calculated from pixels to em using this formula: pixels/16=em Example h1 { font-size: 2.5em; /* 40px/16=2.5em */ } h2 { font-size: 1.875em; /* 30px/16=1.875em */ } p { font-size: 0.875em; /* 14px/16=0.875em */ } In the example above, the text size in em is the same as the previous example in pixels. However, with the em size, it is possible to adjust the text size in all browsers. Unfortunately, there is still a problem with older versions of IE. The text becomes larger than it should when made larger, and smaller than it should when made smaller.
Font Property
To shorten the code, it is also possible to specify all the individual font properties in one property. The font property is a shorthand property for: font-style font-variant font-weight font-size/line-height font-family Set some font properties with the shorthand declaration: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <style> p.a { font: 20px Arial, sans-serif; } p.b { font: italic bold 12px/30px Georgia, serif; } </style> </head> <body> <h1>The font Property</h1> <p class="a">This is a paragraph. The font size is set to 20 pixels, and the font family is Arial.</p> <p class="b">This is a paragraph. The font is set to italic and bold, the font size is set to 12 pixels, the line height is set to 30 pixels, and the font family is Georgia.</p> </body> </html> Note: The font-size and font-family values are required. If one of the other values is missing, their default value are used.