I'm modifying an existing style sheet and this (to me) somewhat complex font declaration has some elements in it I don't understand (even after reading about the syntax at w3school). Here's the syntax:



I understand that "Times New Roman" invokes the specific font, and Times is the family-name and Serif is the generic-family.

What is this 62.5% Georgia doing? I know you can specify a font-size using a percentage, but Georgia? Why is that in there?

The other question is based on the included comment: how did they come to that value (1em to 10px) from the provided syntax?

Many thanks in advance.

Spinny,

The preferred font is listed first (Georgia in this case) and then the others in order of preference.

Here is a link that explains em http://webdesign.about.com/od/fonts/qt/ … m.htm?nl=1

Here is a quote from that page that will help explain the 1em to 10px statement, but I think the comment is not always true.



.65*16=10.4

Percentages are based on surrounding text, so I also do not understand why 65% unless there is another font setting before this one that sets the overall font size. If this setting is in a class or ID, it may be based on something defined higher up in the CSS file.

Hope some of my rambling helps.

Okay, I got that, then. Ten is exactly 62.5% of 16. What threw me is there's no comma between the percentage and the Georgia element, so I read that as applying only to "Georgia" as one compound item. I was trying to read it as: "size Times New Roman to be 62.5% of Georgia." I thought elements in a compound font declaration always had to be separated by commas.

Thanks, that helps a lot.

Spinny,

Here is something I just copied from W3Schools:

font:italic small-caps 900 12px arial;

That example shows 5 settings for that declaration.

The font property sets all the font settings in a single declaration.
font-style
font-variant
font-weight
font-size/line-height
font-family
caption
icon
menu
message-box
small-caption
status-bar

Thanks, Bill. I don't know where I got the idea there had to be commas, guess I'm hallucinating or something.

It appears the order isn't important, nor do you need placeholders for missing elements. Guess the parser is smart enough to assign values by type.

Spinny,

I have never seen anything that said the order was specific, but then I haven't read the standards on the W3C site. Every example I remember has had them in this order, but no place holders needed for the missing items.

As for the hallucinations, I am not qualified to answer that question. Those that deal in that field make a lot more money than I.