CSS2 interview questions(91-100)
Border around a table?
Try the following:
.tblboda {
border-width: 1px;
border-style: solid;
border-color: #CCCCCC;
}
/*color, thickness and style can be altered*/
You put this style declaration either in
an external stylesheet, or you can stuff it in
the
<head></head>
section, like:
<style type="text/css"> (here you can place your styles) </style> and apply it to the table as follows: <div class="tblboda"> <table yaddayadda> <tr> <td>Content text and more content</td> </tr> </table> </div>
That should give you a grey thin border around this table.
If you want the border to ’shrink wrap’ around the table, then you have to use the
<span>
tag instead the
tag. But that is not quite proper CSS or HTML, because a is for inline elements. A table is not an inline element, therefore the correct tag is a
<div>.
If you play around with it a bit then you have a good chance to achieve what you want and still have correct HTML/CSS.
The other way would be that you apply the class .tblboda directly to the table (for IE and other contemporary browsers), like
<table ... class="tableboda">
and you define another class for each stylesheet: .tblboda2
In the NN4.xx stylesheet, you use the same properties as above, and in the IE and other contemporary browsers you carefully set all those properties to default, like {border-style: none;}
Then you wrap the table in the
<div>
with the class .tblboda2 (NN4.xx does that) (IE a.o.c.b. don’t do anything, because the border-style is set to “none” = no border at all).
This way you have a table that is wrapped in a nice little border: .tblboda2 for NN4.xx, .tblboda for IE and other modern browsers.
How do you target a certain browser?
IE can be targetted by preceding your properties with ‘* html’. For example…
#nav {
position:fixed;
}
* html #nav { /* this will target IE */
position:absolute;
}
Another way to target IE is with conditional comments. Put this (below) in the head – just before the closing tag – and put anything you want to be directed only at IE in another stylesheet.
<!--[if IE]> <link href="ieonly.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <![endif]-->
If you need to target IE5x…
#wrap {
width:760px; /* for IE5x */
w\idth:780px; /* for all other major browsers */
}
How does inheritance work?
HTML documents are structured hierarchically. There is an ancestor, the top level element, the HTML element, from which all other elements (children) are descended. As in any other family also children of the HTML family can inherit their parents, e.g. color or size.
By letting the children inherit their parents a default style can be created for top level elements and their children. (Note: not all properties can be inherited). The inheritance starts at the oldest ancestor and is passed on to its children and then their children and the children’s children and so on.
Inherited style can be overridden by declaring specific style to child element. For example if the EM element is not to inherit its parent P then own style must be declared to it. For example:
BODY {font-size: 10pt}
All text will be displayed in a 10 point font
BODY {font-size: 10pt}
H1 {font-size: 14pt} or H1 {font-size: 180%}
All text except for the level 1 headings will be displayed in a 10 point font. H1 will be displayed in a 14 point font (or in a font that is 80% larger than the one set to BODY). If the element H1 contains other elements, e.g. EM then the EM element will also be displayed in a 14 point font (or 180%) it will inherit the property of the parent H1. If the EM element is to be displayed in some other font then own font properties must be declared to it, e.g.:
BODY {font-size: 10pt}
H1 {font-size: 14pt} or H1 {font-size: 180%}
EM {font-size: 15pt} or EM {font-size: 110%}
The EM element will be displayed in a 15 point font or will be 10% larger than H1. NOTE: EM is, in this example, inside H1 therefore will inherit H1’s properties and not Body’s.
The above declaration will display all EM elements in 15 point font or font that is 10% larger than font declared to the parent element. If this specific font is to apply to EM elements but only if they are inside H1 and not every occurrence of EM then EM must take a form of a contextual selector.
H1 EM {font-size: 15pt} or H1 EM {font-size: 110%}
In the example above EM is a contextual selector. It will be displayed in specified font only if it will be found in the context of H1.
Not all properties are inherited. One such property is background. However, since it’s initial value is transparent the background of the parent element will shine through by default unless it is explicitly set.
What is the percentage value in ‘font-size’ relative to?
It is relative to the parent element’s font-size. For example, if the style sheet says:
H1 {font-size: 20pt;}
SUP {font-size: 80%;}
…then a
<SUP> inside an <H1>
will have a font-size of 80% times 20pt, or 16pt.
What is wrong with font-family: “Verdana, Arial, Helvetica”?
The quotes. This is actually a list with a single item containing the well-known ‘Verdana, Arial, Helvetica’ font family. It is probably intended to be a list of three items.
Unlike in most other CSS1 properties, values for the font-family are separated by a comma to indicate that they are alternatives. Font names containing whitespace should be quoted. If quoting is omitted, any whitespace characters before and after the font name are ignored and any sequence of whitespace characters inside the font name is converted to a single space.
So to ask for two fonts foo and bar the syntax is:
font-family: foo, bar
To ask for the two fonts Revival 555 and Iodine you can do this:
font-family: “Revival 555″, Iodine
You could also do this:
font-family: Revival 555, Iodine
which is equivalent. Notice that this is not three fonts; you can tell because after the “l” you didn’t hit a comma, (more list items to come) a semicolon (end of that property, another property coming up) or a curly brace (end of that rule). This is also equivalent:
font-family: Revival 555, Iodine
^^^^^^ whole bunch of spaces converts to one space
But this next one is asking for a different font with two spaces in the name
font-family: “Revival 555″, Iodine
^^two spaces, which are not converted
In general it is more tolerant of user typing to leave out the quotes. Sometimes you need them, for example there is a real font sold by Fontworks and designed in 1995 by Stephan Müller called Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Yes, two commas in the actual font name. CSS1 can handle this:
font-family: “Friday, Saturday, Sunday”, cursive
Because it can handle this, the example in the title is syntactically correct. But what the author or tool wrote was almost certainly not what the document author intended.
How do I centre my page?
This is very easy. If we take the code in the last question and change it to this :
CSS
body, html {
height:100%;
}
body {
margin:0;
padding:0;
}
#wrap {
position:relative;
width:780px;
margin:auto; min-height:100%;
}
* html #wrap {
height:100%;
}
you get a page that fits an 800×600 resolution screen without a horizontal scrollbar, which will be centered at higher resolutions
Must I quote property values?
Generally no. However, values containing white spaces, e.g. font-family names should be quoted as whitespaces surrounding the font name are ignored and whitespaces inside the font name are converted to a single space, thus font names made up of more than one word (e.g.) ‘Times New Roman’ are interpreted as three different names: Times, New and Roman.
Do any WYSIWYG editors support the creation of Style Sheets? Any text-based HTML editors?
As support for CSS in browsers has matured in the last year, both WYSIWYG and Text-based HTML editors have appeared that allow the creation or the assistance of creating Cascading Style Sheet syntax. There are now at least two dozen editors supporting CSS syntax in some form. The W3C maintains an up-to-date list of these WYSIWYG and text-based editors.
Which style specification method should be used? Why?
The answer to this one is tricky. The short answer is: “it depends.” The long answer is, however, another story.
If you are planning on using more than one style specification method in your document, you must also worry about Cascading Order of Style methods (see question 11.) If you are going to use only one method, then some guidelines about the nature of each method need to be kept in mind. The answer to this question is also very much related to the advantages and disadvantages to using each of them (next question.)
Method 1: External Style Sheets (The LINK [-->Index DOT Html] element)
This method should be used if you want to apply the same style to multiple documents. Each document can reference the stand-alone style sheet and use the styles contained within. Using this method, the appearance of many documents can be controlled using a single or small number of style sheets. This can save a LOT of time for an author.
Method 2: Embedded Style Sheets (The Style [-->Index DOT Html] element)
The syntax used with Method 2 is the same as that for Method 1. This method is a happy medium between External Style Sheets and Inline Styles (see below.). It should be used in place of Method 1 if you only want to specify styles for a single document. This method should also be used when you want to specify a style for multiple tag types at once or the list of style definitions is of larger size. Method 3: Inline Styles (STYLE attribute to HTML elements)
If you only have to apply style to one or a few elements in a single document, your best bet will often be an Inline Style. This method attaches a style definition within the HTML element it is modifying.
Justified Text?
You redefine the
<p>
tag like:
p {text-align: justify;}
and that renders all
<p>
s with justified text.
Another possibility is to define a class, like:
.just {text-align: justify;}
and then you style the paragraphs in question like:
<td class="just">text </td>
Note that NN 4.xx has problems with the inheritance of styles; that some NN4.xx browsers have a funny way to interpret “justify”; and that you have to have at least one blank space between the last character and the
</p>
tag, because otherwise NN 4.xx likes to justify even a three word half-sentence… also, some browsers do a pretty ugly job of rendering justified text, adding spaces between words, instead of spaces between letters, as with word-processing programs.