#next contents index first _________________________________________________________________ W3C Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 revision 1 CSS 2.1 Specification W3C Working Draft 11 April 2006 This version: http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-CSS21-20060411 Latest version: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21 Previous version: http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-CSS21-20050613 Editors: Bert Bos Tantek Çelik Ian Hickson Håkon Wium Lie This document is also available in these non-normative formats: plain text, gzip'ed tar file, zip file, gzip'ed PostScript, PDF. See also translations. Copyright © 2006 W3C^® (MIT, ERCIM, Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability, trademark and document use rules apply. _________________________________________________________________ Abstract This specification defines Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 revision 1 (CSS 2.1). CSS 2.1 is a style sheet language that allows authors and users to attach style (e.g., fonts and spacing) to structured documents (e.g., HTML documents and XML applications). By separating the presentation style of documents from the content of documents, CSS 2.1 simplifies Web authoring and site maintenance. CSS 2.1 builds on CSS2 [CSS2] which builds on CSS1 [CSS1]. It supports media-specific style sheets so that authors may tailor the presentation of their documents to visual browsers, aural devices, printers, braille devices, handheld devices, etc. It also supports content positioning, table layout, features for internationalization and some properties related to user interface. CSS 2.1 corrects a few errors in CSS2 (the most important being a new definition of the height/width of absolutely positioned elements, more influence for HTML's "style" attribute and a new calculation of the 'clip' property), and adds a few highly requested features which have already been widely implemented. But most of all CSS 2.1 represents a "snapshot" of CSS usage: it consists of all CSS features that are implemented interoperably at the date of publication of the Recommendation. CSS 2.1 is derived from and is intended to replace CSS2. Some parts of CSS2 are unchanged in CSS 2.1, some parts have been altered, and some parts removed. The removed portions may be used in a future CSS3 specification. Future specs should refer to CSS 2.1 (unless they need features from CSS2 which have been dropped in CSS 2.1, and then they should only reference CSS2 for those features, or preferably reference such feature(s) in the respective CSS3 Module that includes those feature(s)). Status of this document This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at http://www.w3.org/TR/. This working draft contains most of the changes that resulted from comments on the previous draft, but not all of them. It is published in the hope that it can help people check that those changes are correct. It is expected that the next publication will be a Candidate Recommendation. The (archived) public mailing list www-style@w3.org (see instructions) is preferred for discussion of this and other specifications in the Style area. When commenting on this document, please put the text "CSS21" in the subject, preferably like this: "[CSS21] " Publication as a Working Draft does not imply endorsement by the W3C Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress. A test suite and a report on implementations will be provided before the document becomes a Proposed Recommendation. This document is produced by the CSS working group (part of the Style Activity, see summary). This document was produced by a group operating under the 24 January 2002 CPP as amended by the W3C Patent Policy Transition Procedure. W3C maintains a public list of any patent disclosures made in connection with the deliverables of the group; that page also includes instructions for disclosing a patent. An individual who has actual knowledge of a patent which the individual believes contains Essential Claim(s) must disclose the information in accordance with section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy. Candidate Recommendation Exit Criteria For this specification to exit the CR stage, the following conditions must be met: 1. There must be at least two interoperable implementations for every feature. For the purposes of this criterion, we define the following terms: feature A section or subsection of the specification. interoperable passing the respective test cases in the test suite, or, if the implementation is not a web browser, equivalent tests. Every relevant test in the test suite should have an equivalent test created if such a UA is to be used to claim interoperability. In addition if such a UA is to be used to claim interoperability, then there must one or more additional UAs which can also pass those equivalent tests in the same way for the purpose of interoperability. The equivalent tests must be made publicly available for the purposes of peer review. implementation a user agent which: 1. implements the feature. 2. is available (i.e. publicly downloadable or available through some other public point of sale mechanism). This is the "show me" requirement. 3. is shipping (i.e. development, private or unofficial versions are insufficient). 4. is not experimental (i.e. is intended for a wide audience and could be used on a daily basis). 2. A minimum of six months of the CR period must have elapsed. This is to ensure that enough time is given for any remaining major errors to be caught. 3. The CR period will be extended if implementations are slow to appear. 4. Features that were not in CSS1 will be dropped (thus reducing the list of "all" features mentioned above) if two or more interoperable implementations of those features are not found by the end of the CR period. 5. Features will also be dropped if sufficient and adequate tests (by judgment of the working group) have not been produced for those features by the end of the CR period. Features at risk The working group has identified the following features as being currently poorly implemented by UAs. They are therefore most at risk of being removed from CSS 2.1 when exiting CR. (Any changes of this nature will still result in the specification being returned to last call.) Implementors are urged to implement these features, or correct bugs in their implementations, if they wish to see these features remain in this specification. New 'list-style-type' values + 'armenian' + 'georgian' + 'lower-greek' Implementors should look at CSS3 Lists instead, where these and many other new values not found in CSS1 are defined in detail. [CSS3LIST] Support for multiple ID attributes for the ID selector Because implementations are not expected to support multiple IDs per element soon, this feature may be made informative. The W3C Selectors specification will continue to have this feature normatively. (Section 5.9.) Automatic table layout algorithm The input to the suggested (non-normative) automatic layout algorithm for tables is restricted to (1) the containing block width and (2) the content and properties of the table and its children. This restriction may be lifted. Quotes The 'quotes' property and the 'open-quote', 'close-quote', 'no-open-quote' and 'no-close-quote' keywords may be dropped. Quick Table of Contents * 1 About the CSS 2.1 Specification * 2 Introduction to CSS 2.1 * 3 Conformance: Requirements and Recommendations * 4 Syntax and basic data types * 5 Selectors * 6 Assigning property values, Cascading, and Inheritance * 7 Media types * 8 Box model * 9 Visual formatting model * 10 Visual formatting model details * 11 Visual effects * 12 Generated content, automatic numbering, and lists * 13 Paged media * 14 Colors and Backgrounds * 15 Fonts * 16 Text * 17 Tables * 18 User interface * Appendix A. Aural style sheets * Appendix B. Bibliography * Appendix C. Changes * Appendix D. Default style sheet for HTML 4 * Appendix E. Elaborate description of Stacking Contexts * Appendix F. Full property table * Appendix G. Grammar of CSS 2.1 * Appendix I. Index Full Table of Contents * 1 About the CSS 2.1 Specification + 1.1 CSS 2.1 vs CSS 2 + 1.2 Reading the specification + 1.3 How the specification is organized + 1.4 Conventions o 1.4.1 Document language elements and attributes o 1.4.2 CSS property definitions # 1.4.2.1 Value # 1.4.2.2 Initial # 1.4.2.3 Applies to # 1.4.2.4 Inherited # 1.4.2.5 Percentage values # 1.4.2.6 Media groups # 1.4.2.7 Computed value o 1.4.3 Shorthand properties o 1.4.4 Notes and examples o 1.4.5 Images and long descriptions + 1.5 Acknowledgments * 2 Introduction to CSS 2.1 + 2.1 A brief CSS 2.1 tutorial for HTML + 2.2 A brief CSS 2.1 tutorial for XML + 2.3 The CSS 2.1 processing model o 2.3.1 The canvas o 2.3.2 CSS 2.1 addressing model + 2.4 CSS design principles * 3 Conformance: Requirements and Recommendations + 3.1 Definitions + 3.2 Conformance + 3.3 Error conditions + 3.4 The text/css content type * 4 Syntax and basic data types + 4.1 Syntax o 4.1.1 Tokenization o 4.1.2 Keywords # 4.1.2.1 Vendor-specific extensions # 4.1.2.2 Informative Historical Notes o 4.1.3 Characters and case o 4.1.4 Statements o 4.1.5 At-rules o 4.1.6 Blocks o 4.1.7 Rule sets, declaration blocks, and selectors o 4.1.8 Declarations and properties o 4.1.9 Comments + 4.2 Rules for handling parsing errors + 4.3 Values o 4.3.1 Integers and real numbers o 4.3.2 Lengths o 4.3.3 Percentages o 4.3.4 URL + URN = URI o 4.3.5 Counters o 4.3.6 Colors o 4.3.7 Strings o 4.3.8 Unsupported Values + 4.4 CSS style sheet representation o 4.4.1 Referring to characters not represented in a character encoding * 5 Selectors + 5.1 Pattern matching + 5.2 Selector syntax o 5.2.1 Grouping + 5.3 Universal selector + 5.4 Type selectors + 5.5 Descendant selectors + 5.6 Child selectors + 5.7 Adjacent sibling selectors + 5.8 Attribute selectors o 5.8.1 Matching attributes and attribute values o 5.8.2 Default attribute values in DTDs o 5.8.3 Class selectors + 5.9 ID selectors + 5.10 Pseudo-elements and pseudo-classes + 5.11 Pseudo-classes o 5.11.1 :first-child pseudo-class o 5.11.2 The link pseudo-classes: :link and :visited o 5.11.3 The dynamic pseudo-classes: :hover, :active, and :focus o 5.11.4 The language pseudo-class: :lang + 5.12 Pseudo-elements o 5.12.1 The :first-line pseudo-element o 5.12.2 The :first-letter pseudo-element o 5.12.3 The :before and :after pseudo-elements * 6 Assigning property values, Cascading, and Inheritance + 6.1 Specified, computed, and actual values o 6.1.1 Specified values o 6.1.2 Computed values o 6.1.3 Used values o 6.1.4 Actual values + 6.2 Inheritance o 6.2.1 The 'inherit' value + 6.3 The @import rule + 6.4 The cascade o 6.4.1 Cascading order o 6.4.2 !important rules o 6.4.3 Calculating a selector's specificity o 6.4.4 Precedence of non-CSS presentational hints * 7 Media types + 7.1 Introduction to media types + 7.2 Specifying media-dependent style sheets o 7.2.1 The @media rule + 7.3 Recognized media types o 7.3.1 Media groups * 8 Box model + 8.1 Box dimensions + 8.2 Example of margins, padding, and borders + 8.3 Margin properties: 'margin-top', 'margin-right', 'margin-bottom', 'margin-left', and 'margin' o 8.3.1 Collapsing margins + 8.4 Padding properties: 'padding-top', 'padding-right', 'padding-bottom', 'padding-left', and 'padding' + 8.5 Border properties o 8.5.1 Border width: 'border-top-width', 'border-right-width', 'border-bottom-width', 'border-left-width', and 'border-width' o 8.5.2 Border color: 'border-top-color', 'border-right-color', 'border-bottom-color', 'border-left-color', and 'border-color' o 8.5.3 Border style: 'border-top-style', 'border-right-style', 'border-bottom-style', 'border-left-style', and 'border-style' o 8.5.4 Border shorthand properties: 'border-top', 'border-right', 'border-bottom', 'border-left', and 'border' + 8.6 The box model for inline elements in bidirection context * 9 Visual formatting model + 9.1 Introduction to the visual formatting model o 9.1.1 The viewport o 9.1.2 Containing blocks + 9.2 Controlling box generation o 9.2.1 Block-level elements and block boxes # 9.2.1.1 Anonymous block boxes o 9.2.2 Inline-level elements and inline boxes # 9.2.2.1 Anonymous inline boxes o 9.2.3 Run-in boxes o 9.2.4 The 'display' property + 9.3 Positioning schemes o 9.3.1 Choosing a positioning scheme: 'position' property o 9.3.2 Box offsets: 'top', 'right', 'bottom', 'left' + 9.4 Normal flow o 9.4.1 Block formatting contexts o 9.4.2 Inline formatting context o 9.4.3 Relative positioning + 9.5 Floats o 9.5.1 Positioning the float: the 'float' property o 9.5.2 Controlling flow next to floats: the 'clear' property + 9.6 Absolute positioning o 9.6.1 Fixed positioning + 9.7 Relationships between 'display', 'position', and 'float' + 9.8 Comparison of normal flow, floats, and absolute positioning o 9.8.1 Normal flow o 9.8.2 Relative positioning o 9.8.3 Floating a box o 9.8.4 Absolute positioning + 9.9 Layered presentation o 9.9.1 Specifying the stack level: the 'z-index' property + 9.10 Text direction: the 'direction' and 'unicode-bidi' properties * 10 Visual formatting model details + 10.1 Definition of "containing block" + 10.2 Content width: the 'width' property + 10.3 Calculating widths and margins o 10.3.1 Inline, non-replaced elements o 10.3.2 Inline, replaced elements o 10.3.3 Block-level, non-replaced elements in normal flow o 10.3.4 Block-level, replaced elements in normal flow o 10.3.5 Floating, non-replaced elements o 10.3.6 Floating, replaced elements o 10.3.7 Absolutely positioned, non-replaced elements o 10.3.8 Absolutely positioned, replaced elements o 10.3.9 'Inline-block', non-replaced elements in normal flow o 10.3.10 'Inline-block', replaced elements in normal flow + 10.4 Minimum and maximum widths: 'min-width' and 'max-width' + 10.5 Content height: the 'height' property + 10.6 Calculating heights and margins o 10.6.1 Inline, non-replaced elements o 10.6.2 Inline replaced elements, block-level replaced elements in normal flow, 'inline-block' replaced elements in normal flow and floating replaced elements o 10.6.3 Block-level non-replaced elements in normal flow when 'overflow' computes to 'visible' o 10.6.4 Absolutely positioned, non-replaced elements o 10.6.5 Absolutely positioned, replaced elements o 10.6.6 Block-level, non-replaced elements in normal flow when 'overflow' does not compute to 'visible'; 'inline-block', non-replaced elements; and floating, non-replaced elements o 10.6.7 'Auto' heights for block formatting context roots + 10.7 Minimum and maximum heights: 'min-height' and 'max-height' + 10.8 Line height calculations: the 'line-height' and 'vertical-align' properties o 10.8.1 Leading and half-leading * 11 Visual effects + 11.1 Overflow and clipping o 11.1.1 Overflow: the 'overflow' property o 11.1.2 Clipping: the 'clip' property + 11.2 Visibility: the 'visibility' property * 12 Generated content, automatic numbering, and lists + 12.1 The :before and :after pseudo-elements + 12.2 The 'content' property + 12.3 Quotation marks o 12.3.1 Specifying quotes with the 'quotes' property o 12.3.2 Inserting quotes with the 'content' property + 12.4 Automatic counters and numbering o 12.4.1 Nested counters and scope o 12.4.2 Counter styles o 12.4.3 Counters in elements with 'display: none' + 12.5 Lists o 12.5.1 Lists: the 'list-style-type', 'list-style-image', 'list-style-position', and 'list-style' properties * 13 Paged media + 13.1 Introduction to paged media + 13.2 Page boxes: the @page rule o 13.2.1 Page margins # 13.2.1.1 Rendering page boxes that do not fit a target sheet # 13.2.1.2 Positioning the page box on the sheet o 13.2.2 Page selectors: selecting left, right, and first pages o 13.2.3 Content outside the page box + 13.3 Page breaks o 13.3.1 Page break properties: 'page-break-before', 'page-break-after', 'page-break-inside' o 13.3.2 Breaks inside elements: 'orphans', 'widows' o 13.3.3 Allowed page breaks o 13.3.4 Forced page breaks o 13.3.5 "Best" page breaks + 13.4 Cascading in the page context * 14 Colors and Backgrounds + 14.1 Foreground color: the 'color' property + 14.2 The background o 14.2.1 Background properties: 'background-color', 'background-image', 'background-repeat', 'background-attachment', 'background-position', and 'background' + 14.3 Gamma correction * 15 Fonts + 15.1 Introduction + 15.2 Font matching algorithm + 15.3 Font family: the 'font-family' property + 15.4 Font styling: the 'font-style' property + 15.5 Small-caps: the 'font-variant' property + 15.6 Font boldness: the 'font-weight' property + 15.7 Font size: the 'font-size' property + 15.8 Shorthand font property: the 'font' property * 16 Text + 16.1 Indentation: the 'text-indent' property + 16.2 Alignment: the 'text-align' property + 16.3 Decoration o 16.3.1 Underlining, overlining, striking, and blinking: the 'text-decoration' property + 16.4 Letter and word spacing: the 'letter-spacing' and 'word-spacing' properties + 16.5 Capitalization: the 'text-transform' property + 16.6 Whitespace: the 'white-space' property o 16.6.1 The 'white-space' processing model o 16.6.2 Example of bidirectionality with white-space collapsing o 16.6.3 Control and combining characters' details * 17 Tables + 17.1 Introduction to tables + 17.2 The CSS table model o 17.2.1 Anonymous table objects + 17.3 Columns + 17.4 Tables in the visual formatting model o 17.4.1 Caption position and alignment + 17.5 Visual layout of table contents o 17.5.1 Table layers and transparency o 17.5.2 Table width algorithms: the 'table-layout' property # 17.5.2.1 Fixed table layout # 17.5.2.2 Automatic table layout o 17.5.3 Table height algorithms o 17.5.4 Horizontal alignment in a column o 17.5.5 Dynamic row and column effects + 17.6 Borders o 17.6.1 The separated borders model # 17.6.1.1 Borders and Backgrounds around empty cells: the 'empty-cells' property o 17.6.2 The collapsing border model # 17.6.2.1 Border conflict resolution o 17.6.3 Border styles * 18 User interface + 18.1 Cursors: the 'cursor' property + 18.2 CSS2 System Colors + 18.3 User preferences for fonts + 18.4 Dynamic outlines: the 'outline' property o 18.4.1 Outlines and the focus + 18.5 Magnification * Appendix A. Aural style sheets + A.1 The media types 'aural' and 'speech' + A.2 Introduction to aural style sheets o A.2.1 Angles o A.2.2 Times o A.2.3 Frequencies + A.3 Volume properties: 'volume' + A.4 Speaking properties: 'speak' + A.5 Pause properties: 'pause-before', 'pause-after', and 'pause' + A.6 Cue properties: 'cue-before', 'cue-after', and 'cue' + A.7 Mixing properties: 'play-during' + A.8 Spatial properties: 'azimuth' and 'elevation' + A.9 Voice characteristic properties: 'speech-rate', 'voice-family', 'pitch', 'pitch-range', 'stress', and 'richness' + A.10 Speech properties: 'speak-punctuation' and 'speak-numeral' + A.11 Audio rendering of tables o A.11.1 Speaking headers: the 'speak-header' property + A.12 Sample style sheet for HTML + A.13 Emacspeak * Appendix B. Bibliography + B.1 Normative references + B.2 Informative references * Appendix C. Changes + C.1 Additional property values o C.1.1 Section 4.3.5 Colors o C.1.2 Section 9.2.4 The 'display' property o C.1.3 Section 12.2 The 'content' property o C.1.4 Section 18.1 Cursors: the 'cursor' property o C.1.5 Section 16.6 Whitespace: the 'white-space' property + C.2 Changes o C.2.1 Section 3.2 Conformance o C.2.2 Section 6.1.2 Computed values o C.2.3 Section 6.4.3 Calculating a selector's specificity o C.2.4 Section 6.4.4 Precedence of non-CSS presentational hints o C.2.5 Chapter 9 Visual formatting model o C.2.6 Section 10.3.7 Absolutely positioned, non-replaced elements o C.2.7 Section 10.6.4 Absolutely positioned, non-replaced elements o C.2.8 Section 11.1.2 Clipping: the 'clip' property o C.2.9 Section 14.2.1 Background properties o C.2.10 17.4.1 Caption position and alignment o C.2.11 17.5.4 Horizontal alignment in a column o C.2.12 Section 17.6 Borders o C.2.13 Chapter 12 Generated content, automatic numbering, and lists o C.2.14 Chapter 13 Paged media o C.2.15 Chapter 15 Fonts o C.2.16 Chapter 16 Text o C.2.17 Appendix A. Aural style sheets o C.2.18 Other + C.3 Errors o C.3.1 Shorthand properties o C.3.2 Section 4.1.1 (and G2) o C.3.3 4.1.3 Characters and case o C.3.4 Section 4.3 (Double sign problem) o C.3.5 Section 4.3.2 Lengths o C.3.6 Section 4.3.6 o C.3.7 5.10 Pseudo-elements and pseudo-classes o C.3.8 8.2 Example of margins, padding, and borders o C.3.9 Section 8.5.2 Border color: 'border-top-color', 'border-right-color', 'border-bottom-color', 'border-left-color', and 'border-color' o C.3.10 Section 8.4 Padding properties o C.3.11 8.5.3 Border style o C.3.12 Section 8.5.4 Border shorthand properties: 'border-top', 'border-bottom', 'border-right', 'border-left', and 'border' o C.3.13 8.5.4 Border shorthand properties: 'border-top', 'border-bottom', 'border-right', 'border-left', and 'border' o C.3.14 Section 9.3.1 o C.3.15 Section 9.3.2 o C.3.16 Section 9.4.3 o C.3.17 Section 9.7 Relationships between 'display', 'position', and 'float' o C.3.18 Section 10.3.2 Inline, replaced elements (and 10.3.4, 10.3.6, and 10.3.8) o C.3.19 Section 10.3.3 o C.3.20 Section 10.6.2 Inline, replaced elements ... (and 10.6.5) o C.3.21 Section 10.6.3 o C.3.22 Section 11.1.1 o C.3.23 11.2 Visibility: the 'visibility' property o C.3.24 12.6.2 Lists o C.3.25 Section 15.5 o C.3.26 Section 16.6 Whitespace: the 'white-space' property o C.3.27 Section 17.2 The CSS table model o C.3.28 17.2.1 Anonymous table objects o C.3.29 17.5 Visual layout of table contents o C.3.30 17.5 Visual layout of table contents o C.3.31 Section 17.5.1 Table layers and transparency o C.3.32 Section 17.6.1 The separated borders model o C.3.33 Appendix D.2 Lexical scanner + C.4 Clarifications o C.4.1 2.2 A brief CSS2 tutorial for XML o C.4.2 Section 4.1.1 o C.4.3 Section 5.5 o C.4.4 Section 5.9 ID selectors o C.4.5 Section 5.12.1 The :first-line pseudo-element o C.4.6 Section 6.2.1 o C.4.7 6.4 The Cascade o C.4.8 Section 6.4.3 Calculating a selector's specificity o C.4.9 Section 7.3 Recognized media types o C.4.10 Section 8.1 o C.4.11 Section 8.3.1 o C.4.12 Section 9.4.2 o C.4.13 Section 9.4.3 o C.4.14 Section 9.10 o C.4.15 10.3.3 Block-level, non-replaced elements in normal flow o C.4.16 Section 10.5 Content height: the 'height' property o C.4.17 Section 10.8.1 o C.4.18 Section 11.1 o C.4.19 Section 11.1.1 o C.4.20 Section 11.1.2 o C.4.21 12.1 The :before and :after pseudo-elements o C.4.22 Section 12.4.2 Inserting quotes with the 'content' property o C.4.23 Lists 12.6.2 o C.4.24 14.2 The background o C.4.25 14.2.1 Background properties o C.4.26 Section 16.1 o C.4.27 16.2 Alignment: the 'text-align' property o C.4.28 Section 17.5.1 Table layers and transparency o C.4.29 Section 17.5.2 Table width algorithms o C.4.30 17.6.1 The separated borders model o C.4.31 Borders around empty cells: the 'empty-cells' property o C.4.32 Section 17.6.2 The collapsing borders model o C.4.33 Section 18.2 o C.4.34 Section A.3 o C.4.35 Appendix G.2 Lexical scanner o C.4.36 Appendix E. References * Appendix D. Default style sheet for HTML 4 * Appendix E. Elaborate description of Stacking Contexts + E.1 Definitions + E.2 Painting order + E.3 Notes * Appendix F. Full property table * Appendix G. Grammar of CSS 2.1 + G.1 Grammar + G.2 Lexical scanner + G.3 Comparison of tokenization in CSS 2.1 and CSS1 * Appendix I. Index _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ 1 About the CSS 2.1 Specification Contents * 1.1 CSS 2.1 vs CSS 2 * 1.2 Reading the specification * 1.3 How the specification is organized * 1.4 Conventions + 1.4.1 Document language elements and attributes + 1.4.2 CSS property definitions o 1.4.2.1 Value o 1.4.2.2 Initial o 1.4.2.3 Applies to o 1.4.2.4 Inherited o 1.4.2.5 Percentage values o 1.4.2.6 Media groups o 1.4.2.7 Computed value + 1.4.3 Shorthand properties + 1.4.4 Notes and examples + 1.4.5 Images and long descriptions * 1.5 Acknowledgments 1.1 CSS 2.1 vs CSS 2 The CSS community has gained significant experience with the CSS2 specification since it became a recommendation in 1998. Errors in the CSS2 specification have subsequently been corrected via the publication of various errata, but there has not yet been an opportunity for the specification to be changed based on experience gained. While many of these issues will be addressed by the upcoming CSS3 specifications, the current state of affairs hinders the implementation and interoperability of CSS2. The CSS 2.1 specification attempts to address this situation by: * Maintaining compatibility with those portions of CSS2 that are widely accepted and implemented. * Incorporating all published CSS2 errata. * Where implementations overwhelmingly differ from the CSS2 specification, modifying the specification to be in accordance with generally accepted practice. * Removing CSS2 features which, by virtue of not having been implemented, have been rejected by the CSS community. CSS 2.1 aims to reflect what CSS features are reasonably widely implemented for HTML and XML languages in general (rather than only for a particular XML language, or only for HTML). * Removing CSS2 features that will be obsoleted by CSS3, thus encouraging adoption of the proposed CSS3 features in their place. * Adding a (very) small number of new property values, when implementation experience has shown that they are needed for implementing CSS2. Thus, while it is not the case that a CSS2 style sheet is necessarily forwards-compatible with CSS 2.1, it is the case that a style sheet restricting itself to CSS 2.1 features is more likely to find a compliant user agent today and to preserve forwards compatibility in the future. While breaking forward compatibility is not desirable, we believe the advantages to the revisions in CSS 2.1 are worthwhile. CSS 2.1 is derived from and is intended to replace CSS2. Some parts of CSS2 are unchanged in CSS 2.1, some parts have been altered, and some parts removed. The removed portions may be used in a future CSS3 specification. Future specs should refer to CSS 2.1 (unless they need features from CSS2 which have been dropped in CSS 2.1, and then they should only reference CSS2 for those features, or preferably reference such feature(s) in the respective CSS3 Module that includes those feature(s)). 1.2 Reading the specification This section is non-normative. This specification has been written with two types of readers in mind: CSS authors and CSS implementors. We hope the specification will provide authors with the tools they need to write efficient, attractive, and accessible documents, without overexposing them to CSS's implementation details. Implementors, however, should find all they need to build conforming user agents. The specification begins with a general presentation of CSS and becomes more and more technical and specific towards the end. For quick access to information, a general table of contents, specific tables of contents at the beginning of each section, and an index provide easy navigation, in both the electronic and printed versions. The specification has been written with two modes of presentation in mind: electronic and printed. Although the two presentations will no doubt be similar, readers will find some differences. For example, links will not work in the printed version (obviously), and page numbers will not appear in the electronic version. In case of a discrepancy, the electronic version is considered the authoritative version of the document. 1.3 How the specification is organized This section is non-normative. The specification is organized into the following sections: Section 2: An introduction to CSS 2.1 The introduction includes a brief tutorial on CSS 2.1 and a discussion of design principles behind CSS 2.1. Sections 3 - 20: CSS 2.1 reference manual. The bulk of the reference manual consists of the CSS 2.1 language reference. This reference defines what may go into a CSS 2.1 style sheet (syntax, properties, property values) and how user agents must interpret these style sheets in order to claim conformance. Appendixes: Appendixes contain information about aural properties (non-normative), a sample style sheet for HTML 4, changes from CSS2, the grammar of CSS 2.1, a list of normative and informative references, and two indexes: one for properties and one general index. 1.4 Conventions 1.4.1 Document language elements and attributes * CSS property and pseudo-class names are delimited by single quotes. * CSS values are delimited by single quotes. * Document language attribute names are in lowercase letters and delimited by double quotes. 1.4.2 CSS property definitions Each CSS property definition begins with a summary of key information that resembles the following: 'property-name' Value: legal values & syntax Initial: initial value Applies to: elements this property applies to Inherited: whether the property is inherited Percentages: how percentage values are interpreted Media: which media groups the property applies to Computed value: how to compute the computed value 1.4.2.1 Value This part specifies the set of valid values for the property whose name is 'property-name'. Value types may be designated in several ways: 1. keyword values (e.g., auto, disc, etc.) 2. basic data types, which appear between "<" and ">" (e.g., , , etc.). In the electronic version of the document, each instance of a basic data type links to its definition. 3. types that have the same range of values as a property bearing the same name (e.g., <'border-width'> <'background-attachment'>, etc.). In this case, the type name is the property name (complete with quotes) between "<" and ">" (e.g., <'border-width'>). Such a type does not include the value 'inherit'. In the electronic version of the document, each instance of this type of non-terminal links to the corresponding property definition. 4. non-terminals that do not share the same name as a property. In this case, the non-terminal name appears between "<" and ">", as in . Notice the distinction between and <'border-width'>; the latter is defined in terms of the former. The definition of a non-terminal is located near its first appearance in the specification. In the electronic version of the document, each instance of this type of value links to the corresponding value definition. Other words in these definitions are keywords that must appear literally, without quotes (e.g., red). The slash (/) and the comma (,) must also appear literally. Values may be arranged as follows: * Several juxtaposed words mean that all of them must occur, in the given order. * A bar (|) separates two or more alternatives: exactly one of them must occur. * A double bar (||) separates two or more options: one or more of them must occur, in any order. * Brackets ([ ]) are for grouping. Juxtaposition is stronger than the double bar, and the double bar is stronger than the bar. Thus, the following lines are equivalent: a b | c || d e [ a b ] | [ c || [ d e ]] Every type, keyword, or bracketed group may be followed by one of the following modifiers: * An asterisk (*) indicates that the preceding type, word, or group occurs zero or more times. * A plus (+) indicates that the preceding type, word, or group occurs one or more times. * A question mark (?) indicates that the preceding type, word, or group is optional. * A pair of numbers in curly braces ({A,B}) indicates that the preceding type, word, or group occurs at least A and at most B times. The following examples illustrate different value types: Value: N | NW | NE Value: [ | thick | thin ]{1,4} Value: [ , ]* Value: ? [ / ]? Value: || Value types are specified in terms of tokens, as described in Appendix G.2. As the grammar allows spaces between tokens in the components of the expr production, spaces may appear between tokens in values. Note: In many cases, spaces will in fact be required between tokens in order to distinguish them from each other. For example, the value '1em2em' would be parsed as a single DIMEN token with the number '1' and the identifier 'em2em', which is an invalid unit. In this case, a space would be required before the '2' to get this parsed as the two lengths '1em' and '2em'. 1.4.2.2 Initial This part specifies the property's initial value. If the property is inherited, this is the value that is given to the root element of the document tree. Please consult the section on the cascade for information about the interaction between style sheet-specified, inherited, and initial values. 1.4.2.3 Applies to This part lists the elements to which the property applies. All elements are considered to have all properties, but some properties have no rendering effect on some types of elements. For example, the 'clear' property only affects block-level elements. 1.4.2.4 Inherited This part indicates whether the value of the property is inherited from an ancestor element. Please consult the section on the cascade for information about the interaction between style sheet-specified, inherited, and initial values. 1.4.2.5 Percentage values This part indicates how percentages should be interpreted, if they occur in the value of the property. If "N/A" appears here, it means that the property does not accept percentages as values. 1.4.2.6 Media groups This part indicates the media groups to which the property applies. Information about media groups is non-normative. 1.4.2.7 Computed value This part describes the computed value for the property. See the section on computed values for how this definition is used. 1.4.3 Shorthand properties Some properties are shorthand properties, meaning that they allow authors to specify the values of several properties with a single property. For instance, the 'font' property is a shorthand property for setting 'font-style', 'font-variant', 'font-weight', 'font-size', 'line-height', and 'font-family' all at once. When values are omitted from a shorthand form, each "missing" property is assigned its initial value (see the section on the cascade). Example(s): The multiple style rules of this example: h1 { font-weight: bold; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 14pt; font-family: Helvetica; font-variant: normal; font-style: normal; } may be rewritten with a single shorthand property: h1 { font: bold 12pt/14pt Helvetica } In this example, 'font-variant', and 'font-style' take their initial values. 1.4.4 Notes and examples All examples that illustrate illegal usage are clearly marked as "ILLEGAL EXAMPLE". HTML examples lacking DOCTYPE declarations are SGML Text Entities conforming to the HTML 4.01 Strict DTD [HTML4]. Other HTML examples conform to the DTDs given in the examples. All notes are informative only. Examples and notes are marked within the source HTML for the specification and CSS user agents will render them specially. 1.4.5 Images and long descriptions Most images in the electronic version of this specification are accompanied by "long descriptions" of what they represent. A link to the long description is denoted by a "[D]" after the image. Images and long descriptions are informative only. 1.5 Acknowledgments This section is non-normative. CSS 2.1 is based on CSS2. See the acknowledgments section of CSS2 for the people that contributed to CSS2. We would like to thank the following people who, through their input and feedback on the www-style mailing list, have helped us with the creation of this specification: Andrew Clover, Bernd Mielke, C. Bottelier, Christian Roth, Christoph Päper, Claus Färber, Coises, Craig Saila, Darren Ferguson, Dylan Schiemann, Etan Wexler, George Lund, James Craig, Jan Eirik Olufsen, Jan Roland Eriksson, Joris Huizer, Joshua Prowse, Kai Lahmann, Kevin Smith, Lachlan Cannon, Lars Knoll, Lauri Raittila, Mark Gallagher, Michael Day, Peter Sheerin, Rijk van Geijtenbeek, Robin Berjon, Scott Montgomery, Shelby Moore, Stuart Ballard, Tom Gilder, Vadim Plessky, and the Open eBook Publication Structure Working Group Editors. We would also like to thank Glenn Adams and Susan Lesch who helped proofread this document. In addition, we would like to extend special thanks to fantasai, Ada Chan and Boris Zbarsky who have contributed significant time to CSS 2.1, and to Kimberly Blessing for help with the editing. _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ 2 Introduction to CSS 2.1 Contents * 2.1 A brief CSS 2.1 tutorial for HTML * 2.2 A brief CSS 2.1 tutorial for XML * 2.3 The CSS 2.1 processing model + 2.3.1 The canvas + 2.3.2 CSS 2.1 addressing model * 2.4 CSS design principles 2.1 A brief CSS 2.1 tutorial for HTML This section is non-normative. In this tutorial, we show how easy it can be to design simple style sheets. For this tutorial, you will need to know a little HTML (see [HTML4]) and some basic desktop publishing terminology. We begin with a small HTML document: Bach's home page

Bach's home page

Johann Sebastian Bach was a prolific composer. To set the text color of the H1 elements to red, you can write the following CSS rules: h1 { color: red } A CSS rule consists of two main parts: selector ('h1') and declaration ('color: red'). In HTML, element names are case-insensitive so 'h1' works just as well as 'H1'. The declaration has two parts: property ('color') and value ('red'). While the example above tries to influence only one of the properties needed for rendering an HTML document, it qualifies as a style sheet on its own. Combined with other style sheets (one fundamental feature of CSS is that style sheets are combined) it will determine the final presentation of the document. The HTML 4 specification defines how style sheet rules may be specified for HTML documents: either within the HTML document, or via an external style sheet. To put the style sheet into the document, use the STYLE element: Bach's home page

Bach's home page

Johann Sebastian Bach was a prolific composer. For maximum flexibility, we recommend that authors specify external style sheets; they may be changed without modifying the source HTML document, and they may be shared among several documents. To link to an external style sheet, you can use the LINK element: Bach's home page

Bach's home page

Johann Sebastian Bach was a prolific composer. The LINK element specifies: * the type of link: to a "stylesheet". * the location of the style sheet via the "href" attribute. * the type of style sheet being linked: "text/css". To show the close relationship between a style sheet and the structured markup, we continue to use the STYLE element in this tutorial. Let's add more colors: Bach's home page

Bach's home page

Johann Sebastian Bach was a prolific composer. The style sheet now contains four rules: the first two set the color and background of the BODY element (it's a good idea to set the text color and background color together), while the last two set the color and the background of the H1 element. Since no color has been specified for the P element, it will inherit the color from its parent element, namely BODY. The H1 element is also a child element of BODY but the second rule overrides the inherited value. In CSS there are often such conflicts between different values, and this specification describes how to resolve them. CSS 2.1 has more than 90 properties, including 'color'. Let's look at some of the others: Bach's home page

Bach's home page

Johann Sebastian Bach was a prolific composer. The first thing to notice is that several declarations are grouped within a block enclosed by curly braces ({...}), and separated by semicolons, though the last declaration may also be followed by a semicolon. The first declaration on the BODY element sets the font family to "Gill Sans". If that font isn't available, the user agent (often referred to as a "browser") will use the 'sans-serif' font family which is one of five generic font families which all users agents know. Child elements of BODY will inherit the value of the 'font-family' property. The second declaration sets the font size of the BODY element to 12 points. The "point" unit is commonly used in print-based typography to indicate font sizes and other length values. It's an example of an absolute unit which does not scale relative to the environment. The third declaration uses a relative unit which scales with regard to its surroundings. The "em" unit refers to the font size of the element. In this case the result is that the margins around the BODY element are three times wider than the font size. 2.2 A brief CSS 2.1 tutorial for XML This section is non-normative. CSS can be used with any structured document format, for example with applications of the eXtensible Markup Language [XML10]. In fact, XML depends more on style sheets than HTML, since authors can make up their own elements that user agents don't know how to display. Here is a simple XML fragment:

Fredrick the Great meets Bach Johann Nikolaus Forkel One evening, just as he was getting his flute ready and his musicians were assembled, an officer brought him a list of the strangers who had arrived.
To display this fragment in a document-like fashion, we must first declare which elements are inline-level (i.e., do not cause line breaks) and which are block-level (i.e., cause line breaks). INSTRUMENT { display: inline } ARTICLE, HEADLINE, AUTHOR, PARA { display: block } The first rule declares INSTRUMENT to be inline and the second rule, with its comma-separated list of selectors, declares all the other elements to be block-level. Element names in XML are case-sensitive, so a selector written in lowercase (e.g. 'instrument') is different from uppercase (e.g. 'INSTRUMENT'). One way of linking a style sheet to an XML document is to use a processing instruction:
Fredrick the Great meets Bach Johann Nikolaus Forkel One evening, just as he was getting his flute ready and his musicians were assembled, an officer brought him a list of the strangers who had arrived.
A visual user agent could format the above example as: Example rendering [D] Notice that the word "flute" remains within the paragraph since it is the content of the inline element INSTRUMENT. Still, the text isn't formatted the way you would expect. For example, the headline font size should be larger than then the rest of the text, and you may want to display the author's name in italic: INSTRUMENT { display: inline } ARTICLE, HEADLINE, AUTHOR, PARA { display: block } HEADLINE { font-size: 1.3em } AUTHOR { font-style: italic } ARTICLE, HEADLINE, AUTHOR, PARA { margin: 0.5em } A visual user agent could format the above example as: Example rendering [D] Adding more rules to the style sheet will allow you to further describe the presentation of the document. 2.3 The CSS 2.1 processing model This section presents one possible model of how user agents that support CSS work. This is only a conceptual model; real implementations may vary. In this model, a user agent processes a source by going through the following steps: 1. Parse the source document and create a document tree. 2. Identify the target media type. 3. Retrieve all style sheets associated with the document that are specified for the target media type. 4. Annotate every element of the document tree by assigning a single value to every property that is applicable to the target media type. Properties are assigned values according to the mechanisms described in the section on cascading and inheritance. Part of the calculation of values depends on the formatting algorithm appropriate for the target media type. For example, if the target medium is the screen, user agents apply the visual formatting model. 5. From the annotated document tree, generate a formatting structure. Often, the formatting structure closely resembles the document tree, but it may also differ significantly, notably when authors make use of pseudo-elements and generated content. First, the formatting structure need not be "tree-shaped" at all -- the nature of the structure depends on the implementation. Second, the formatting structure may contain more or less information than the document tree. For instance, if an element in the document tree has a value of 'none' for the 'display' property, that element will generate nothing in the formatting structure. A list element, on the other hand, may generate more information in the formatting structure: the list element's content and list style information (e.g., a bullet image). Note that the CSS user agent does not alter the document tree during this phase. In particular, content generated due to style sheets is not fed back to the document language processor (e.g., for reparsing). 6. Transfer the formatting structure to the target medium (e.g., print the results, display them on the screen, render them as speech, etc.). Step 1 lies outside the scope of this specification (see, for example, [DOM]). Steps 2-5 are addressed by the bulk of this specification. Step 6 lies outside the scope of this specification. 2.3.1 The canvas For all media, the term canvas describes "the space where the formatting structure is rendered." The canvas is infinite for each dimension of the space, but rendering generally occurs within a finite region of the canvas, established by the user agent according to the target medium. For instance, user agents rendering to a screen generally impose a minimum width and choose an initial width based on the dimensions of the viewport. User agents rendering to a page generally impose width and height constraints. Aural user agents may impose limits in audio space, but not in time. 2.3.2 CSS 2.1 addressing model CSS 2.1 selectors and properties allow style sheets to refer to the following parts of a document or user agent: * Elements in the document tree and certain relationships between them (see the section on selectors). * Attributes of elements in the document tree, and values of those attributes (see the section on attribute selectors). * Some parts of element content (see the :first-line and :first-letter pseudo-elements). * Elements of the document tree when they are in a certain state (see the section on pseudo-classes). * Some aspects of the canvas where the document will be rendered. * Some system information (see the section on user interface). 2.4 CSS design principles This section is non-normative. CSS 2.1, as CSS2 and CSS1 before it, is based on a set of design principles: * Forward and backward compatibility. CSS 2.1 user agents will be able to understand CSS1 style sheets. CSS1 user agents will be able to read CSS 2.1 style sheets and discard parts they don't understand. Also, user agents with no CSS support will be able to display style-enhanced documents. Of course, the stylistic enhancements made possible by CSS will not be rendered, but all content will be presented. * Complementary to structured documents. Style sheets complement structured documents (e.g., HTML and XML applications), providing stylistic information for the marked-up text. It should be easy to change the style sheet with little or no impact on the markup. * Vendor, platform, and device independence. Style sheets enable documents to remain vendor, platform, and device independent. Style sheets themselves are also vendor and platform independent, but CSS 2.1 allows you to target a style sheet for a group of devices (e.g., printers). * Maintainability. By pointing to style sheets from documents, webmasters can simplify site maintenance and retain consistent look and feel throughout the site. For example, if the organization's background color changes, only one file needs to be changed. * Simplicity. CSS is a simple style language which is human readable and writable. The CSS properties are kept independent of each other to the largest extent possible and there is generally only one way to achieve a certain effect. * Network performance. CSS provides for compact encodings of how to present content. Compared to images or audio files, which are often used by authors to achieve certain rendering effects, style sheets most often decrease the content size. Also, fewer network connections have to be opened which further increases network performance. * Flexibility. CSS can be applied to content in several ways. The key feature is the ability to cascade style information specified in the default (user agent) style sheet, user style sheets, linked style sheets, the document head, and in attributes for the elements forming the document body. * Richness. Providing authors with a rich set of rendering effects increases the richness of the Web as a medium of expression. Designers have been longing for functionality commonly found in desktop publishing and slide-show applications. Some of the requested rendering effects conflict with device independence, but CSS 2.1 goes a long way toward granting designers their requests. * Alternative language bindings. The set of CSS properties described in this specification form a consistent formatting model for visual and aural presentations. This formatting model can be accessed through the CSS language, but bindings to other languages are also possible. For example, a JavaScript program may dynamically change the value of a certain element's 'color' property. * Accessibility. Several CSS features will make the Web more accessible to users with disabilities: + Properties to control font appearance allow authors to eliminate inaccessible bit-mapped text images. + Positioning properties allow authors to eliminate mark-up tricks (e.g., invisible images) to force layout. + The semantics of !important rules mean that users with particular presentation requirements can override the author's style sheets. + The 'inherit' value for all properties improves cascading generality and allows for easier and more consistent style tuning. + Improved media support, including media groups and the braille, embossed, and tty media types, will allow users and authors to tailor pages to those devices. Note. For more information about designing accessible documents using CSS and HTML, see [WAI-PAGEAUTH]. _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ 3 Conformance: Requirements and Recommendations Contents * 3.1 Definitions * 3.2 Conformance * 3.3 Error conditions * 3.4 The text/css content type 3.1 Definitions The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 (see [RFC2119]). However, for readability, these words do not appear in all uppercase letters in this specification. At times, this specification recommends good practice for authors and user agents. These recommendations are not normative and conformance with this specification does not depend on their realization. These recommendations contain the expression "We recommend ...", "This specification recommends ...", or some similar wording. The fact that a feature is marked as deprecated (namely the 'aural' keyword) or going to be deprecated in CSS3 (namely the system colors) also has no influence on conformance. (For example, 'aural' is marked as non-normative, so UAs do not need to support it; the system colors are normative, so UAs must support them.) All sections of this specification, including appendices, are normative unless otherwise noted. Examples and notes are not normative. Example(s): Examples usually have the word "example" near their start ("Example:", "The following example...," "For example," etc.) and are shown in the color maroon, like this paragraph. Notes start with the word "Note," are indented and shown in green, like this paragraph. Figures are for illustration only, they are not reference renderings, unless explicitly stated. Style sheet A set of statements that specify presentation of a document. Style sheets may have three different origins: author, user, and user agent. The interaction of these sources is described in the section on cascading and inheritance. Valid style sheet The validity of a style sheet depends on the level of CSS used for the style sheet. All valid CSS1 style sheets are valid CSS 2.1 style sheets, but some changes from CSS1 mean that a few CSS1 style sheets will have slightly different semantics in CSS 2.1. Some features in CSS2 are not part of CSS 2.1, so not all CSS2 style sheets are valid CSS 2.1 style sheets. A valid CSS 2.1 style sheet must be written according to the grammar of CSS 2.1. Furthermore, it must contain only at-rules, property names, and property values defined in this specification. An illegal (invalid) at-rule, property name, or property value is one that is not valid. Source document The document to which one or more style sheets apply. This is encoded in some language that represents the document as a tree of elements. Each element consists of a name that identifies the type of element, optionally a number of attributes, and a (possibly empty) content. For example, the source document could be an XML or SGML instance. Document language The encoding language of the source document (e.g., HTML, XHTML or SVG). CSS is used to describe the presentation of document languages and CSS does not change the underlying semantics of the document languages. Element (An SGML term, see [ISO8879].) The primary syntactic constructs of the document language. Most CSS style sheet rules use the names of these elements (such as P, TABLE, and OL in HTML) to specify how the elements should be rendered. Replaced element An element that is outside the scope of the CSS formatter, such as an image, embedded document, or applet. For example, the content of the HTML IMG element is often replaced by the image that its "src" attribute designates. Replaced elements often have intrinsic dimensions: an intrinsic width, an intrinsic height, and an intrinsic ratio. For example, a bitmap image has an intrinsic width and an intrinsic height specified in absolute units (from which the intrinsic ratio can obviously be determined). On the other hand, other documents may not have any intrinsic dimensions (for example a blank HTML document). User agents may consider a replaced element to not have any intrinsic dimensions if it is believed that those dimensions could leak sensitive information to a third party. For example, if an HTML document changed intrinsic size depending on the user's bank balance, then the UA might want to act as if that resource had no intrinsic dimensions. Intrinsic dimensions The width and height as defined by the element itself, not imposed by the surroundings. CSS does not define how the intrinsic dimensions are found. In CSS 2.1 it is assumed that all replaced elements, and only replaced elements, come with intrinsic dimensions. Attribute A value associated with an element, consisting of a name, and an associated (textual) value. Content The content associated with an element in the source document. Some elements have no content, in which case they are called empty. The content of an element may include text, and it may include a number of sub-elements, in which case the element is called the parent of those sub-elements. Ignore This term has two slightly different meanings in this specification. First, a CSS parser must follow certain rules when it discovers unknown or illegal syntax in a style sheet. The parser must then ignore certain parts of the style sheets. The exact rules for what parts must be ignored is given in these section: Declarations and properties, Rules for handling parsing errors, Unsupported Values, or may be explained in the text where the term "ignore" appears. Second, a user agent may (and, in some cases must) disregard certain properties or values in the style sheet even if the syntax is legal. For example, table-column elements can't affect the font of the column, so the font properties must be ignored. Rendered content The content of an element after the rendering that applies to it according to the relevant style sheets has been applied. The rendered content of a replaced element comes from outside the source document. Rendered content may also be alternate text for an element (e.g., the value of the XHTML "alt" attribute), and may include items inserted implicitly or explicitly by the style sheet, such as bullets, numbering, etc. Document tree The tree of elements encoded in the source document. Each element in this tree has exactly one parent, with the exception of the root element, which has none. Child An element A is called the child of element B if and only if B is the parent of A. Descendant An element A is called a descendant of an element B, if either (1) A is a child of B, or (2) A is the child of some element C that is a descendant of B. Ancestor An element A is called an ancestor of an element B, if and only if B is a descendant of A. Sibling An element A is called a sibling of an element B, if and only if B and A share the same parent element. Element A is a preceding sibling if it comes before B in the document tree. Element B is a following sibling if it comes after A in the document tree. Preceding element An element A is called a preceding element of an element B, if and only if (1) A is an ancestor of B or (2) A is a preceding sibling of B. Following element An element A is called a following element of an element B, if and only if B is a preceding element of A. Author An author is a person who writes documents and associated style sheets. An authoring tool generates documents and associated style sheets. User A user is a person who interacts with a user agent to view, hear, or otherwise use a document and its associated style sheet. The user may provide a personal style sheet that encodes personal preferences. User agent (UA) A user agent is any program that interprets a document written in the document language and applies associated style sheets according to the terms of this specification. A user agent may display a document, read it aloud, cause it to be printed, convert it to another format, etc. An HTML user agent is one that supports the HTML 2.x, HTML 3.x, or HTML 4.x specifications. A user agent that supports XHTML [XHTML], but not HTML (as listed in the previous sentence) is not considered an HTML user agent for the purpose of conformance with this specification. Here is an example of a source document written in HTML: My home page

My home page

Welcome to my home page! Let me tell you about my favorite composers:

  • Elvis Costello
  • Johannes Brahms
  • Georges Brassens
This results in the following tree: Sample document tree [D] According to the definition of HTML 4, HEAD elements will be inferred during parsing and become part of the document tree even if the "head" tags are not in the document source. Similarly, the parser knows where the P and LI elements end, even though there are no

and tags in the source. Documents written in XHTML (and other XML-based languages) behave differently: there are no inferred elements and all elements must have end tags. 3.2 Conformance This section defines conformance with the CSS 2.1 specification only. There may be other levels of CSS in the future that may require a user agent to implement a different set of features in order to conform. In general, the following points must be observed by a user agent claiming conformance to this specification: 1. It must support one or more of the CSS 2.1 media types. 2. For each source document, it must attempt to retrieve all associated style sheets that are appropriate for the supported media types. If it cannot retrieve all associated style sheets (for instance, because of network errors), it must display the document using those it can retrieve. 3. It must parse the style sheets according to this specification. In particular, it must recognize all at-rules, blocks, declarations, and selectors (see the grammar of CSS 2.1). If a user agent encounters a property that applies for a supported media type, the user agent must parse the value according to the property definition. This means that the user agent must accept all valid values and must ignore declarations with invalid values. User agents must ignore rules that apply to unsupported media types. 4. For each element in a document tree, it must assign a value for every applicable property according to the property's definition and the rules of cascading and inheritance. 5. If the source document comes with alternate style sheet sets (such as with the "alternate" keyword in HTML 4 [HTML4]), the UA must allow the user to select which style sheet set the UA should apply. 6. The UA must allow the user to turn off the influence of author style sheets. Not every user agent must observe every point, however: * An application that reads style sheets without rendering any content (e.g., a CSS 2.1 validator) must respect points 1-3. * An authoring tool is only required to output valid style sheets * A user agent that renders a document with associated style sheets must respect points 1-5 and render the document according to the media-specific requirements set forth in this specification. Values may be approximated when required by the user agent. The inability of a user agent to implement part of this specification due to the limitations of a particular device (e.g., a user agent cannot render colors on a monochrome monitor or page) does not imply non-conformance. UAs must allow users to specify a file that contains the user style sheet. UAs that run on devices without any means of writing or specifying files are exempted from this requirement. Additionally, UAs may offer other means to specify user preferences, for example through a GUI. CSS 2.1 does not define which properties apply to form controls and frames, or how CSS can be used to style them. User agents may apply CSS properties to these elements. Authors are recommended to treat such support as experimental. A future level of CSS may specify this further. 3.3 Error conditions In general, this document specifies error handling behavior throughout the specification. For example, see the rules for handling parsing errors. 3.4 The text/css content type CSS style sheets that exist in separate files are sent over the Internet as a sequence of bytes accompanied by encoding information. The structure of the transmission, termed a message entity, is defined by RFC 2045 and RFC 2616 (see [RFC2045] and [RFC2616]). A message entity with a content type of "text/css" represents an independent CSS document. The "text/css" content type has been registered by RFC 2318 ([RFC2318]). _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ 4 Syntax and basic data types Contents * 4.1 Syntax + 4.1.1 Tokenization + 4.1.2 Keywords o 4.1.2.1 Vendor-specific extensions o 4.1.2.2 Informative Historical Notes + 4.1.3 Characters and case + 4.1.4 Statements + 4.1.5 At-rules + 4.1.6 Blocks + 4.1.7 Rule sets, declaration blocks, and selectors + 4.1.8 Declarations and properties + 4.1.9 Comments * 4.2 Rules for handling parsing errors * 4.3 Values + 4.3.1 Integers and real numbers + 4.3.2 Lengths + 4.3.3 Percentages + 4.3.4 URL + URN = URI + 4.3.5 Counters + 4.3.6 Colors + 4.3.7 Strings + 4.3.8 Unsupported Values * 4.4 CSS style sheet representation + 4.4.1 Referring to characters not represented in a character encoding 4.1 Syntax This section describes a grammar (and forward-compatible parsing rules) common to any level of CSS (including CSS 2.1). Future updates of CSS will adhere to this core syntax, although they may add additional syntactic constraints. These descriptions are normative. They are also complemented by the normative grammar rules presented in Appendix G. 4.1.1 Tokenization All levels of CSS -- level 1, level 2, and any future levels -- use the same core syntax. This allows UAs to parse (though not completely understand) style sheets written in levels of CSS that didn't exist at the time the UAs were created. Designers can use this feature to create style sheets that work with older user agents, while also exercising the possibilities of the latest levels of CSS. At the lexical level, CSS style sheets consist of a sequence of tokens. The list of tokens for CSS 2.1 is as follows. The definitions use Lex-style regular expressions. Octal codes refer to ISO 10646 ([ISO10646]). As in Lex, in case of multiple matches, the longest match determines the token. Token Definition _________________________________________________________________ IDENT {ident} ATKEYWORD @{ident} STRING {string} INVALID {invalid} HASH #{name} NUMBER {num} PERCENTAGE {num}% DIMENSION {num}{ident} URI url\({w}{string}{w}\) |url\({w}([!#$%&*-~]|{nonascii}|{escape})*{w}\) UNICODE-RANGE U\+[0-9A-F?]{1,6}(-[0-9A-F]{1,6})? CDO ; ; { \{ } \} ( \( ) \) [ \[ ] \] S [ \t\r\n\f]+ COMMENT \/\*[^*]*\*+([^/*][^*]*\*+)*\/ FUNCTION {ident}\( INCLUDES ~= DASHMATCH |= DELIM any other character not matched by the above rules, and neither a single nor a double quote The macros in curly braces ({}) above are defined as follows: Macro Definition _________________________________________________________________ ident [-]?{nmstart}{nmchar}* name {nmchar}+ nmstart [_a-zA-Z]|{nonascii}|{escape} nonascii [^\0-\177] unicode \\[0-9a-f]{1,6}(\r\n|[ \n\r\t\f])? escape {unicode}|\\[^\n\r\f0-9a-f] nmchar [_a-zA-Z0-9-]|{nonascii}|{escape} num [0-9]+|[0-9]*\.[0-9]+ string {string1}|{string2} string1 \"([^\n\r\f\\"]|\\{nl}|{escape})*\" string2 \'([^\n\r\f\\']|\\{nl}|{escape})*\' invalid {invalid1}|{invalid2} invalid1 \"([^\n\r\f\\"]|\\{nl}|{escape})* invalid2 \'([^\n\r\f\\']|\\{nl}|{escape})* nl \n|\r\n|\r|\f w [ \t\r\n\f]* Below is the core syntax for CSS. The sections that follow describe how to use it. Appendix G describes a more restrictive grammar that is closer to the CSS level 2 language. stylesheet : [ CDO | CDC | S | statement ]*; statement : ruleset | at-rule; at-rule : ATKEYWORD S* any* [ block | ';' S* ]; block : '{' S* [ any | block | ATKEYWORD S* | ';' S* ]* '}' S*; ruleset : selector? '{' S* declaration? [ ';' S* declaration? ]* '}' S*; selector : any+; declaration : DELIM? property S* ':' S* value; property : IDENT; value : [ any | block | ATKEYWORD S* ]+; any : [ IDENT | NUMBER | PERCENTAGE | DIMENSION | STRING | DELIM | URI | HASH | UNICODE-RANGE | INCLUDES | DASHMATCH | FUNCTION S* any* ')' | '(' S* any* ')' | '[' S* any* ']' ] S*; COMMENT tokens do not occur in the grammar (to keep it readable), but any number of these tokens may appear anywhere between other tokens. The token S in the grammar above stands for whitespace. Only the characters "space" (U+0020), "tab" (U+0009), "line feed" (U+000A), "carriage return" (U+000D), and "form feed" (U+000C) can occur in whitespace. Other space-like characters, such as "em-space" (U+2003) and "ideographic space" (U+3000), are never part of whitespace. The meaning of input that cannot be tokenized or parsed is undefined in CSS 2.1. 4.1.2 Keywords Keywords have the form of identifiers. Keywords must not be placed between quotes ("..." or '...'). Thus, red is a keyword, but "red" is not. (It is a string.) Other illegal examples: Illegal example(s): width: "auto"; border: "none"; background: "red"; 4.1.2.1 Vendor-specific extensions In CSS 2.1, identifiers may begin with '-' (dash) or '_' (underscore). Keywords and property names, beginning with -' or '_' are reserved for vendor-specific extensions. Such vendor-specific extensions should have one of the following formats: '-' + vendor identifier + '-' + meaningful name '_' + vendor identifier + '-' + meaningful name Example(s): For example, if XYZ organization added a property to describe the color of the border on the East side of the display, they might call it -xyz-border-east-color. Other known examples: -moz-box-sizing -moz-border-radius -wap-accesskey An initial dash or underscore is guaranteed never to be used in a property or keyword by any current or future level of CSS. Thus typical CSS implementations may not recognize such properties and may ignore them according to the rules for handling parsing errors. However, because the initial dash or underscore is part of the grammar, CSS 2.1 implementers should always be able to use a CSS-conforming parser, whether or not they support any vendor-specific extensions. 4.1.2.2 Informative Historical Notes This section is informative. At the time of writing, the following prefixes are known to exist: prefix organization -ms- Microsoft Corporation -moz- The Mozilla Organization -o- Opera Software -atsc- Advanced Television Standards Committee -wap- The WAP Forum Vendor/organization specific extensions should be avoided. 4.1.3 Characters and case The following rules always hold: * All CSS style sheets are case-insensitive, except for parts that are not under the control of CSS. For example, the case-sensitivity of values of the HTML attributes "id" and "class", of font names, and of URIs lies outside the scope of this specification. Note in particular that element names are case-insensitive in HTML, but case-sensitive in XML. * In CSS 2.1, identifiers (including element names, classes, and IDs in selectors) can contain only the characters [A-Za-z0-9] and ISO 10646 characters U+00A1 and higher, plus the hyphen (-) and the underscore (_); they cannot start with a digit, or a hyphen followed by a digit. Only properties, values, units, pseudo-classes, pseudo-elements, and at-rules may start with a hyphen (-); other identifiers (e.g. element names, classes, or IDs) may not. Identifiers can also contain escaped characters and any ISO 10646 character as a numeric code (see next item). For instance, the identifier "B&W?" may be written as "B\&W\?" or "B\26 W\3F". Note that Unicode is code-by-code equivalent to ISO 10646 (see [UNICODE] and [ISO10646]). * In CSS 2.1, a backslash (\) character indicates three types of character escapes. First, inside a string, a backslash followed by a newline is ignored (i.e., the string is deemed not to contain either the backslash or the newline). Second, it cancels the meaning of special CSS characters. Any character (except a hexadecimal digit) can be escaped with a backslash to remove its special meaning. For example, "\"" is a string consisting of one double quote. Style sheet preprocessors must not remove these backslashes from a style sheet since that would change the style sheet's meaning. Third, backslash escapes allow authors to refer to characters they can't easily put in a document. In this case, the backslash is followed by at most six hexadecimal digits (0..9A..F), which stand for the ISO 10646 ([ISO10646]) character with that number, which must not be zero. (It is undefined in CSS 2.1 what happens if a style sheet does contain a character with Unicode codepoint zero.) If a character in the range [0-9a-fA-F] follows the hexadecimal number, the end of the number needs to be made clear. There are two ways to do that: 1. with a space (or other whitespace character): "\26 B" ("&B"). In this case, user agents should treat a "CR/LF" pair (U+000D/U+000A) as a single whitespace character. 2. by providing exactly 6 hexadecimal digits: "\000026B" ("&B") In fact, these two methods may be combined. Only one whitespace character is ignored after a hexadecimal escape. Note that this means that a "real" space after the escape sequence must itself either be escaped or doubled. * Note: Backslash escapes, where allowed, are always considered to be part of an identifier or a string (i.e., "\7B" is not punctuation, even though "{" is, and "\32" is allowed at the start of a class name, even though "2" is not). The identifier "te\st" is exactly the same identifier as "test". 4.1.4 Statements A CSS style sheet, for any level of CSS, consists of a list of statements (see the grammar above). There are two kinds of statements: at-rules and rule sets. There may be whitespace around the statements. In this specification, the expressions "immediately before" or "immediately after" mean with no intervening whitespace or comments. 4.1.5 At-rules At-rules start with an at-keyword, an '@' character followed immediately by an identifier (for example, '@import', '@page'). An at-rule consists of everything up to and including the next semicolon (;) or the next block, whichever comes first. CSS 2.1 user agents must ignore any '@import' rule that occurs inside a block or after any valid rule other than an @charset or an @import rule. Illegal example(s): Assume, for example, that a CSS 2.1 parser encounters this style sheet: @import "subs.css"; h1 { color: blue } @import "list.css"; The second '@import' is illegal according to CSS 2.1. The CSS 2.1 parser ignores the whole at-rule, effectively reducing the style sheet to: @import "subs.css"; h1 { color: blue } Illegal example(s): In the following example, the second '@import' rule is invalid, since it occurs inside a '@media' block. @import "subs.css"; @media print { @import "print-main.css"; body { font-size: 10pt } } h1 {color: blue } Instead, to achieve the effect of only importing a style sheet for 'print' media, use the @import with media syntax, e.g.: @import "subs.css"; @import "print-main.css" print; @media print { body { font-size: 10pt } } h1 {color: blue } 4.1.6 Blocks A block starts with a left curly brace ({) and ends with the matching right curly brace (}). In between there may be any characters, except that parentheses (( )), brackets ([ ]) and braces ({ }) must always occur in matching pairs and may be nested. Single (') and double quotes (") must also occur in matching pairs, and characters between them are parsed as a string. See Tokenization above for the definition of a string. Illegal example(s): Here is an example of a block. Note that the right brace between the double quotes does not match the opening brace of the block, and that the second single quote is an escaped character, and thus doesn't match the first single quote: { causta: "}" + ({7} * '\'') } Note that the above rule is not valid CSS 2.1, but it is still a block as defined above. 4.1.7 Rule sets, declaration blocks, and selectors A rule set (also called "rule") consists of a selector followed by a declaration block. A declaration block (also called a {}-block in the following text) starts with a left curly brace ({) and ends with the matching right curly brace (}). In between there must be a list of zero or more semicolon-separated (;) declarations. The selector (see also the section on selectors) consists of everything up to (but not including) the first left curly brace ({). A selector always goes together with a {}-block. When a user agent can't parse the selector (i.e., it is not valid CSS 2.1), it must ignore the {}-block as well. CSS 2.1 gives a special meaning to the comma (,) in selectors. However, since it is not known if the comma may acquire other meanings in future updates of CSS, the whole statement should be ignored if there is an error anywhere in the selector, even though the rest of the selector may look reasonable in CSS 2.1. Illegal example(s): For example, since the "&" is not a valid token in a CSS 2.1 selector, a CSS 2.1 user agent must ignore the whole second line, and not set the color of H3 to red: h1, h2 {color: green } h3, h4 & h5 {color: red } h6 {color: black } Example(s): Here is a more complex example. The first two pairs of curly braces are inside a string, and do not mark the end of the selector. This is a valid CSS 2.1 rule. p[example="public class foo\ {\ private int x;\ \ foo(int x) {\ this.x = x;\ }\ \ }"] { color: red } 4.1.8 Declarations and properties A declaration is either empty or consists of a property, followed by a colon (:), followed by a value. Around each of these there may be whitespace. Because of the way selectors work, multiple declarations for the same selector may be organized into semicolon (;) separated groups. Example(s): Thus, the following rules: h1 { font-weight: bold } h1 { font-size: 12px } h1 { line-height: 14px } h1 { font-family: Helvetica } h1 { font-variant: normal } h1 { font-style: normal } are equivalent to: h1 { font-weight: bold; font-size: 12px; line-height: 14px; font-family: Helvetica; font-variant: normal; font-style: normal } A property is an identifier. Any character may occur in the value. Parentheses ("( )"), brackets ("[ ]"), braces ("{ }"), single quotes (') and double quotes (") must come in matching pairs, and semicolons not in strings must be escaped. Parentheses, brackets, and braces may be nested. Inside the quotes, characters are parsed as a string. The syntax of values is specified separately for each property, but in any case, values are built from identifiers, strings, numbers, lengths, percentages, URIs, and colors. A user agent must ignore a declaration with an invalid property name or an invalid value. Every CSS 2.1 property has its own syntactic and semantic restrictions on the values it accepts. Illegal example(s): For example, assume a CSS 2.1 parser encounters this style sheet: h1 { color: red; font-style: 12pt } /* Invalid value: 12pt */ p { color: blue; font-vendor: any; /* Invalid prop.: font-vendor */ font-variant: small-caps } em em { font-style: normal } The second declaration on the first line has an invalid value '12pt'. The second declaration on the second line contains an undefined property 'font-vendor'. The CSS 2.1 parser will ignore these declarations, effectively reducing the style sheet to: h1 { color: red; } p { color: blue; font-variant: small-caps } em em { font-style: normal } 4.1.9 Comments Comments begin with the characters "/*" and end with the characters "*/". They may occur anywhere between tokens, and their contents have no influence on the rendering. Comments may not be nested. CSS also allows the SGML comment delimiters ("") in certain places defined by the grammar, but they do not delimit CSS comments. They are permitted so that style rules appearing in an HTML source document (in the STYLE element) may be hidden from pre-HTML 3.2 user agents. See the HTML 4 specification ([HTML4]) for more information. 4.2 Rules for handling parsing errors In some cases, user agents must ignore part of an illegal style sheet. This specification defines ignore to mean that the user agent parses the illegal part (in order to find its beginning and end), but otherwise acts as if it had not been there. CSS 2.1 reserves for future updates of CSS all property:value combinations and @-keywords that do not contain an identifier beginning with dash or underscore. Implementations must ignore such combinations (other than those introduced by future updates of CSS). To ensure that new properties and new values for existing properties can be added in the future, user agents are required to obey the following rules when they encounter the following scenarios: * Unknown properties. User agents must ignore a declaration with an unknown property. For example, if the style sheet is: h1 { color: red; rotation: 70minutes } the user agent will treat this as if the style sheet had been h1 { color: red } * Illegal values. User agents must ignore a declaration with an illegal value. For example: img { float: left } /* correct CSS 2.1 */ img { float: left here } /* "here" is not a value of 'float' */ img { background: "red" } /* keywords cannot be quoted */ img { border-width: 3 } /* a unit must be specified for length values */ A CSS 2.1 parser would honor the first rule and ignore the rest, as if the style sheet had been: img { float: left } img { } img { } img { } A user agent conforming to a future CSS specification may accept one or more of the other rules as well. * Malformed declarations. User agents must handle unexpected tokens encountered while parsing a declaration by reading until the end of the declaration, while observing the rules for matching pairs of (), [], {}, "", and '', and correctly handling escapes. For example, a malformed declaration may be missing a property, colon (:) or value. The following are all equivalent: p { color:green } p { color:green; color } /* malformed declaration missing ':', value */ p { color:red; color; color:green } /* same with expected recovery */ p { color:green; color: } /* malformed declaration missing value */ p { color:red; color:; color:green } /* same with expected recovery */ p { color:green; color{;color:maroon} } /* unexpected tokens { } */ p { color:red; color{;color:maroon}; color:green } /* same with recovery */ * Invalid at-keywords. User agents must ignore an invalid at-keyword together with everything following it, up to and including the next semicolon (;) or block ({...}), whichever comes first. For example, consider the following: @three-dee { @background-lighting { azimuth: 30deg; elevation: 190deg; } h1 { color: red } } h1 { color: blue } The '@three-dee' at-rule is not part of CSS 2.1. Therefore, the whole at-rule (up to, and including, the third right curly brace) is ignored. A CSS 2.1 user agent ignores it, effectively reducing the style sheet to: h1 { color: blue } Something inside an at-rule that is ignored because it is invalid, such as an invalid declaration within an @media-rule, does not make the entire at-rule invalid. * Unexpected end of style sheet. User agents must close all open constructs (for example: blocks, parentheses, brackets, rules, strings, and comments) at the end of the style sheet. For example: @media screen { p:before { content: 'Hello would be treated the same as: @media screen { p:before { content: 'Hello'; } } in a conformant UA. * Unexpected end of string. User agents must close strings upon reaching the end of a line, but then drop the construct (declaration or rule) in which the string was found. For example: p { color: green; font-family: 'Courier New Times color: red; color: green; } ...would be treated the same as: p { color: green; color: green; } ...because the second declaration (from 'font-family' to the semicolon after 'color: red') is invalid and is dropped. 4.3 Values 4.3.1 Integers and real numbers Some value types may have integer values (denoted by ) or real number values (denoted by ). Real numbers and integers are specified in decimal notation only. An consists of one or more digits "0" to "9". A can either be an , or it can be zero or more digits followed by a dot (.) followed by one or more digits. Both integers and real numbers may be preceded by a "-" or "+" to indicate the sign. Note that many properties that allow an integer or real number as a value actually restrict the value to some range, often to a non-negative value. 4.3.2 Lengths Lengths refer to horizontal or vertical measurements. The format of a length value (denoted by in this specification) is a (with or without a decimal point) immediately followed by a unit identifier (e.g., px, em, etc.). After a zero length, the unit identifier is optional. Some properties allow negative length values, but this may complicate the formatting model and there may be implementation-specific limits. If a negative length value cannot be supported, it should be converted to the nearest value that can be supported. If a negative length value is set on a property that does not allow negative length values, the declaration is ignored. There are two types of length units: relative and absolute. Relative length units specify a length relative to another length property. Style sheets that use relative units will more easily scale from one medium to another (e.g., from a computer display to a laser printer). Relative units are: * em: the 'font-size' of the relevant font * ex: the 'x-height' of the relevant font * px: pixels, relative to the viewing device Example(s): h1 { margin: 0.5em } /* em */ h1 { margin: 1ex } /* ex */ p { font-size: 12px } /* px */ The 'em' unit is equal to the computed value of the 'font-size' property of the element on which it is used. The exception is when 'em' occurs in the value of the 'font-size' property itself, in which case it refers to the font size of the parent element. It may be used for vertical or horizontal measurement. (This unit is also sometimes called the quad-width in typographic texts.) The 'ex' unit is defined by the font's 'x-height'. The x-height is so called because it is often equal to the height of the lowercase "x". However, an 'ex' is defined even for fonts that don't contain an "x". Example(s): The rule: h1 { line-height: 1.2em } means that the line height of "h1" elements will be 20% greater than the font size of the "h1" elements. On the other hand: h1 { font-size: 1.2em } means that the font-size of "h1" elements will be 20% greater than the font size inherited by "h1" elements. When specified for the root of the document tree (e.g., "HTML" in HTML), 'em' and 'ex' refer to the property's initial value. Pixel units are relative to the resolution of the viewing device, i.e., most often a computer display. If the pixel density of the output device is very different from that of a typical computer display, the user agent should rescale pixel values. It is recommended that the reference pixel be the visual angle of one pixel on a device with a pixel density of 96dpi and a distance from the reader of an arm's length. For a nominal arm's length of 28 inches, the visual angle is therefore about 0.0213 degrees. For reading at arm's length, 1px thus corresponds to about 0.26 mm (1/96 inch). When printed on a laser printer, meant for reading at a little less than arm's length (55 cm, 21 inches), 1px is about 0.20 mm. On a 300 dots-per-inch (dpi) printer, that may be rounded up to 3 dots (0.25 mm); on a 600 dpi printer, it can be rounded to 5 dots. The two images below illustrate the effect of viewing distance on the size of a pixel and the effect of a device's resolution. In the first image, a reading distance of 71 cm (28 inch) results in a px of 0.26 mm, while a reading distance of 3.5 m (12 feet) requires a px of 1.3 mm. Showing that pixels must become larger if the viewing distance increases [D] In the second image, an area of 1px by 1px is covered by a single dot in a low-resolution device (a computer screen), while the same area is covered by 16 dots in a higher resolution device (such as a 400 dpi laser printer). Showing that more device pixels (dots) are needed to cover a 1px by 1px area on a high-resolution device than on a low-res one [D] Child elements do not inherit the relative values specified for their parent; they inherit the computed values. Example(s): In the following rules, the computed 'text-indent' value of "h1" elements will be 36px, not 45px, if "h1" is a child of the "body" element. body { font-size: 12px; text-indent: 3em; /* i.e., 36px */ } h1 { font-size: 15px } Absolute length units are only useful when the physical properties of the output medium are known. The absolute units are: * in: inches -- 1 inch is equal to 2.54 centimeters. * cm: centimeters * mm: millimeters * pt: points -- the points used by CSS 2.1 are equal to 1/72nd of an inch. * pc: picas -- 1 pica is equal to 12 points. Example(s): h1 { margin: 0.5in } /* inches */ h2 { line-height: 3cm } /* centimeters */ h3 { word-spacing: 4mm } /* millimeters */ h4 { font-size: 12pt } /* points */ h4 { font-size: 1pc } /* picas */ In cases where the used length cannot be supported, user agents must approximate it in the actual value. 4.3.3 Percentages The format of a percentage value (denoted by in this specification) is a immediately followed by '%'. Percentage values are always relative to another value, for example a length. Each property that allows percentages also defines the value to which the percentage refers. The value may be that of another property for the same element, a property for an ancestor element, or a value of the formatting context (e.g., the width of a containing block). When a percentage value is set for a property of the root element and the percentage is defined as referring to the inherited value of some property, the resultant value is the percentage times the initial value of that property. Example(s): Since child elements (generally) inherit the computed values of their parent, in the following example, the children of the P element will inherit a value of 12px for 'line-height', not the percentage value (120%): p { font-size: 10px } p { line-height: 120% } /* 120% of 'font-size' */ 4.3.4 URL + URN = URI URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) provide the address of a resource on the Web. Another way of identifying resources is called URN (Uniform Resource Name). Together they are called URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers, see [RFC3986]). This specification uses the term URI. URI values in this specification are denoted by . The functional notation used to designate URIs in property values is "url()", as in: Example(s): body { background: url("http://www.example.com/pinkish.png") } The format of a URI value is 'url(' followed by optional whitespace followed by an optional single quote (') or double quote (") character followed by the URI itself, followed by an optional single quote (') or double quote (") character followed by optional whitespace followed by ')'. The two quote characters must be the same. Example(s): An example without quotes: li { list-style: url(http://www.example.com/redball.png) disc } Some characters appearing in an unquoted URI, such as parentheses, commas, whitespace characters, single quotes (') and double quotes ("), must be escaped with a backslash: '\(', '\)', '\,'. Depending on the type of URI, it might also be possible to write the above characters as URI-escapes (where "(" = %28, ")" = %29, etc.) as described in [RFC3986]. In order to create modular style sheets that are not dependent on the absolute location of a resource, authors may use relative URIs. Relative URIs (as defined in [RFC3986]) are resolved to full URIs using a base URI. RFC 3986, section 5, defines the normative algorithm for this process. For CSS style sheets, the base URI is that of the style sheet, not that of the source document. Example(s): For example, suppose the following rule: body { background: url("yellow") } is located in a style sheet designated by the URI: http://www.example.org/style/basic.css The background of the source document's BODY will be tiled with whatever image is described by the resource designated by the URI http://www.example.org/style/yellow User agents may vary in how they handle invalid URIs or URIs that designate unavailable or inapplicable resources. 4.3.5 Counters Counters are denoted by identifiers (see the 'counter-increment' and 'counter-reset' properties). To refer to the value of a counter, the notation 'counter()' or 'counter(, )' is used. The default style is 'decimal'. To refer to a sequence of nested counters of the same name, the notation is 'counters(, )' or 'counters(, , )'. See "Nested counters and scope" in the chapter on generated content. In CSS2, the values of counters can only be referred to from the 'content' property. Note that 'none' is a possible : 'counter(x, none)' yields an empty string. Example(s): Here is a style sheet that numbers paragraphs (p) for each chapter (h1). The paragraphs are numbered with roman numerals, followed by a period and a space: p {counter-increment: par-num} h1 {counter-reset: par-num} p:before {content: counter(par-num, upper-roman) ". "} Counters that are not in the scope of any 'counter-reset', are assumed to have been reset to 0 by a 'counter-reset' on the root element. 4.3.6 Colors A is either a keyword or a numerical RGB specification. The list of keyword color names is: aqua, black, blue, fuchsia, gray, green, lime, maroon, navy, olive, orange, purple, red, silver, teal, white, and yellow. These 17 colors have the following values: maroon #800000 red #ff0000 orange #ffA500 yellow #ffff00 olive #808000 purple #800080 fuchsia #ff00ff white #ffffff lime #00ff00 green #008000 navy #000080 blue #0000ff aqua #00ffff teal #008080 black #000000 silver #c0c0c0 gray #808080 In addition to these color keywords, users may specify keywords that correspond to the colors used by certain objects in the user's environment. Please consult the section on system colors for more information. Example(s): body {color: black; background: white } h1 { color: maroon } h2 { color: olive } The RGB color model is used in numerical color specifications. These examples all specify the same color: Example(s): em { color: #f00 } /* #rgb */ em { color: #ff0000 } /* #rrggbb */ em { color: rgb(255,0,0) } em { color: rgb(100%, 0%, 0%) } The format of an RGB value in hexadecimal notation is a '#' immediately followed by either three or six hexadecimal characters. The three-digit RGB notation (#rgb) is converted into six-digit form (#rrggbb) by replicating digits, not by adding zeros. For example, #fb0 expands to #ffbb00. This ensures that white (#ffffff) can be specified with the short notation (#fff) and removes any dependencies on the color depth of the display. The format of an RGB value in the functional notation is 'rgb(' followed by a comma-separated list of three numerical values (either three integer values or three percentage values) followed by ')'. The integer value 255 corresponds to 100%, and to F or FF in the hexadecimal notation: rgb(255,255,255) = rgb(100%,100%,100%) = #FFF. Whitespace characters are allowed around the numerical values. All RGB colors are specified in the sRGB color space (see [SRGB]). User agents may vary in the fidelity with which they represent these colors, but using sRGB provides an unambiguous and objectively measurable definition of what the color should be, which can be related to international standards (see [COLORIMETRY]). Conforming user agents may limit their color-displaying efforts to performing a gamma-correction on them. sRGB specifies a display gamma of 2.2 under specified viewing conditions. User agents should adjust the colors given in CSS such that, in combination with an output device's "natural" display gamma, an effective display gamma of 2.2 is produced. See the section on gamma correction for further details. Note that only colors specified in CSS are affected; e.g., images are expected to carry their own color information. Values outside the device gamut should be clipped: the red, green, and blue values must be changed to fall within the range supported by the device. For a typical CRT monitor, whose device gamut is the same as sRGB, the four rules below are equivalent: Example(s): em { color: rgb(255,0,0) } /* integer range 0 - 255 */ em { color: rgb(300,0,0) } /* clipped to rgb(255,0,0) */ em { color: rgb(255,-10,0) } /* clipped to rgb(255,0,0) */ em { color: rgb(110%, 0%, 0%) } /* clipped to rgb(100%,0%,0%) */ Other devices, such as printers, have different gamuts than sRGB; some colors outside the 0..255 sRGB range will be representable (inside the device gamut), while other colors inside the 0..255 sRGB range will be outside the device gamut and will thus be clipped. 4.3.7 Strings Strings can either be written with double quotes or with single quotes. Double quotes cannot occur inside double quotes, unless escaped (e.g., as '\"' or as '\22'). Analogously for single quotes (e.g., "\'" or "\27"). Example(s): "this is a 'string'" "this is a \"string\"" 'this is a "string"' 'this is a \'string\'' A string cannot directly contain a newline. To include a newline in a string, use an escape representing the line feed character in ISO-10646 (U+000A), such as "\A" or "\00000a". This character represents the generic notion of "newline" in CSS. See the 'content' property for an example. It is possible to break strings over several lines, for esthetic or other reasons, but in such a case the newline itself has to be escaped with a backslash (\). For instance, the following two selectors are exactly the same: Example(s): a[title="a not s\ o very long title"] {/*...*/} a[title="a not so very long title"] {/*...*/} 4.3.8 Unsupported Values If a UA does not support a particular value, it should ignore that value when parsing style sheets, as if that value was an illegal value. For example: Example(s): h3 { display: inline; display: run-in; } A UA that supports the 'run-in' value for the 'display' property will accept the first display declaration and then "write over" that value with the second display declaration. A UA that does not support the 'run-in' value will process the first display declaration and ignore the second display declaration. 4.4 CSS style sheet representation A CSS style sheet is a sequence of characters from the Universal Character Set (see [ISO10646]). For transmission and storage, these characters must be encoded by a character encoding that supports the set of characters available in US-ASCII (e.g., UTF-8, ISO 8859-x, SHIFT JIS, etc.). For a good introduction to character sets and character encodings, please consult the HTML 4 specification ([HTML4], chapter 5), See also the XML 1.0 specification ([XML10], sections 2.2 and 4.3.3, and Appendix F). When a style sheet is embedded in another document, such as in the STYLE element or "style" attribute of HTML, the style sheet shares the character encoding of the whole document. When a style sheet resides in a separate file, user agents must observe the following priorities when determining a style sheet's character encoding (from highest priority to lowest): 1. An HTTP "charset" parameter in a "Content-Type" field (or similar parameters in other protocols) 2. BOM and/or @charset (see below) 3. or other metadata from the linking mechanism (if any) 4. charset of referring style sheet or document (if any) 5. Assume UTF-8 Authors using an @charset rule must place the rule at the very beginning of the style sheet, preceded by no characters. (If a byte order mark is appropriate for the encoding used, it may precede the @charset rule.) After "@charset", authors specify the name of a character encoding (in quotes). For example: @charset "ISO-8859-1"; @charset must be written literally, i.e., the 10 characters '@charset "' (lowercase, no backslash escapes), followed by the encoding name, followed by '";'. The name must be a charset name as described in the IANA registry. See [CHARSETS] for a complete list of charsets. Authors should use the charset names marked as "preferred MIME name" in the IANA registry. User agents must support at least the UTF-8 encoding. User agents must ignore any @charset rule not at the beginning of the style sheet. When user agents detect the character encoding using the BOM and/or the @charset rule, they should follow the following rules: * Except as specified in these rules, all @charset rules are ignored. * The encoding is detected based on the stream of bytes that begins the style sheet. The following table gives a set of possibilities for initial byte sequences (written in hexadecimal). The first row that matches the beginning of the style sheet gives the result of encoding detection based on the BOM and/or @charset rule. If no rows match, the encoding cannot be detected based on the BOM and/or @charset rule. The notation (...)* refers to repetition for which the best match is the one that repeats as few times as possible. The bytes marked "XX" are those used to determine the name of the encoding, by treating them, in the order given, as a sequence of ASCII characters. Bytes marked "YY" are similar, but need to be transcoded into ASCII as noted. User agents may ignore entries in the table if they do not support any encodings relevant to the entry. Initial Bytes Result EF BB BF 40 63 68 61 72 73 65 74 20 22 (XX)* 22 3B as specified EF BB BF UTF-8 40 63 68 61 72 73 65 74 20 22 (XX)* 22 3B as specified FE FF 00 40 00 63 00 68 00 61 00 72 00 73 00 65 00 74 00 20 00 22 (00 XX)* 00 22 00 3B as specified (with BE endianness if not specified) 00 40 00 63 00 68 00 61 00 72 00 73 00 65 00 74 00 20 00 22 (00 XX)* 00 22 00 3B as specified (with BE endianness if not specified) FF FE 40 00 63 00 68 00 61 00 72 00 73 00 65 00 74 00 20 00 22 00 (XX 00)* 22 00 3B 00 as specified (with LE endianness if not specified) 40 00 63 00 68 00 61 00 72 00 73 00 65 00 74 00 20 00 22 00 (XX 00)* 22 00 3B 00 as specified (with LE endianness if not specified) 00 00 FE FF 00 00 00 40 00 00 00 63 00 00 00 68 00 00 00 61 00 00 00 72 00 00 00 73 00 00 00 65 00 00 00 74 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 22 (00 00 00 XX)* 00 00 00 22 00 00 00 3B as specified (with BE endianness if not specified) 00 00 00 40 00 00 00 63 00 00 00 68 00 00 00 61 00 00 00 72 00 00 00 73 00 00 00 65 00 00 00 74 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 22 (00 00 00 XX)* 00 00 00 22 00 00 00 3B as specified (with BE endianness if not specified) 00 00 FF FE 00 00 40 00 00 00 63 00 00 00 68 00 00 00 61 00 00 00 72 00 00 00 73 00 00 00 65 00 00 00 74 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 22 00 (00 00 XX 00)* 00 00 22 00 00 00 3B 00 as specified (with 2143 endianness if not specified) 00 00 40 00 00 00 63 00 00 00 68 00 00 00 61 00 00 00 72 00 00 00 73 00 00 00 65 00 00 00 74 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 22 00 (00 00 XX 00)* 00 00 22 00 00 00 3B 00 as specified (with 2143 endianness if not specified) FE FF 00 00 00 40 00 00 00 63 00 00 00 68 00 00 00 61 00 00 00 72 00 00 00 73 00 00 00 65 00 00 00 74 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 22 00 00 (00 XX 00 00)* 00 22 00 00 00 3B 00 00 as specified (with 3412 endianness if not specified) 00 40 00 00 00 63 00 00 00 68 00 00 00 61 00 00 00 72 00 00 00 73 00 00 00 65 00 00 00 74 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 22 00 00 (00 XX 00 00)* 00 22 00 00 00 3B 00 00 as specified (with 3412 endianness if not specified) FF FE 00 00 40 00 00 00 63 00 00 00 68 00 00 00 61 00 00 00 72 00 00 00 73 00 00 00 65 00 00 00 74 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 22 00 00 00 (XX 00 00 00)* 22 00 00 00 3B 00 00 00 as specified (with LE endianness if not specified) 40 00 00 00 63 00 00 00 68 00 00 00 61 00 00 00 72 00 00 00 73 00 00 00 65 00 00 00 74 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 22 00 00 00 (XX 00 00 00)* 22 00 00 00 3B 00 00 00 as specified (with LE endianness if not specified) 00 00 FE FF UTF-32-BE FF FE 00 00 UTF-32-LE 00 00 FF FE UTF-32-2143 FE FF 00 00 UTF-32-3412 FE FF UTF-16-BE FF FE UTF-16-LE 7C 83 88 81 99 A2 85 A3 40 7F (YY)* 7F 5E as specified, transcoded from EBCDIC to ASCII AE 83 88 81 99 A2 85 A3 40 FC (YY)* FC 5E as specified, transcoded from IBM1026 to ASCII 00 63 68 61 72 73 65 74 20 22 (YY)* 22 3B as specified, transcoded from GSM 03.38 to ASCII analogous patterns User agents may support additional, analogous, patterns if they support encodings that are not handled by the patterns here * If the encoding is detected based on one of the entries in the table above marked "as specified", the user agent ignores the style sheet if it does not parse an appropriate @charset rule at the beginning of the stream of characters resulting from decoding in the chosen @charset. This ensures that: + @charset rules should only function if they are in the encoding of the style sheet, + byte order marks are ignored only in encodings that support a byte order mark, and + encoding names cannot contain newlines. User agents must ignore style sheets in unknown encodings. 4.4.1 Referring to characters not represented in a character encoding A style sheet may have to refer to characters that cannot be represented in the current character encoding. These characters must be written as escaped references to ISO 10646 characters. These escapes serve the same purpose as numeric character references in HTML or XML documents (see [HTML4], chapters 5 and 25). The character escape mechanism should be used when only a few characters must be represented this way. If most of a style sheet requires escaping, authors should encode it with a more appropriate encoding (e.g., if the style sheet contains a lot of Greek characters, authors might use "ISO-8859-7" or "UTF-8"). Intermediate processors using a different character encoding may translate these escaped sequences into byte sequences of that encoding. Intermediate processors must not, on the other hand, alter escape sequences that cancel the special meaning of an ASCII character. Conforming user agents must correctly map to ISO-10646 all characters in any character encodings that they recognize (or they must behave as if they did). For example, a style sheet transmitted as ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) cannot contain Greek letters directly: "kouro*s" (Greek: "kouros") has to be written as "\3BA\3BF\3C5\3C1\3BF\3C2". Note. In HTML 4, numeric character references are interpreted in "style" attribute values but not in the content of the STYLE element. Because of this asymmetry, we recommend that authors use the CSS character escape mechanism rather than numeric character references for both the "style" attribute and the STYLE element. For example, we recommend: ... rather than: ... _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ 5 Selectors Contents * 5.1 Pattern matching * 5.2 Selector syntax + 5.2.1 Grouping * 5.3 Universal selector * 5.4 Type selectors * 5.5 Descendant selectors * 5.6 Child selectors * 5.7 Adjacent sibling selectors * 5.8 Attribute selectors + 5.8.1 Matching attributes and attribute values + 5.8.2 Default attribute values in DTDs + 5.8.3 Class selectors * 5.9 ID selectors * 5.10 Pseudo-elements and pseudo-classes * 5.11 Pseudo-classes + 5.11.1 :first-child pseudo-class + 5.11.2 The link pseudo-classes: :link and :visited + 5.11.3 The dynamic pseudo-classes: :hover, :active, and :focus + 5.11.4 The language pseudo-class: :lang * 5.12 Pseudo-elements + 5.12.1 The :first-line pseudo-element + 5.12.2 The :first-letter pseudo-element + 5.12.3 The :before and :after pseudo-elements 5.1 Pattern matching In CSS, pattern matching rules determine which style rules apply to elements in the document tree. These patterns, called selectors, may range from simple element names to rich contextual patterns. If all conditions in the pattern are true for a certain element, the selector matches the element. The case-sensitivity of document language element names in selectors depends on the document language. For example, in HTML, element names are case-insensitive, but in XML they are case-sensitive. The following table summarizes CSS 2.1 selector syntax: Pattern Meaning Described in section * Matches any element. Universal selector E Matches any E element (i.e., an element of type E). Type selectors E F Matches any F element that is a descendant of an E element. Descendant selectors E > F Matches any F element that is a child of an element E. Child selectors E:first-child Matches element E when E is the first child of its parent. The :first-child pseudo-class E:link E:visited Matches element E if E is the source anchor of a hyperlink of which the target is not yet visited (:link) or already visited (:visited). The link pseudo-classes E:active E:hover E:focus Matches E during certain user actions. The dynamic pseudo-classes E:lang(c) Matches element of type E if it is in (human) language c (the document language specifies how language is determined). The :lang() pseudo-class E + F Matches any F element immediately preceded by a sibling element E. Adjacent selectors E[foo] Matches any E element with the "foo" attribute set (whatever the value). Attribute selectors E[foo="warning"] Matches any E element whose "foo" attribute value is exactly equal to "warning". Attribute selectors E[foo~="warning"] Matches any E element whose "foo" attribute value is a list of space-separated values, one of which is exactly equal to "warning". Attribute selectors E[lang|="en"] Matches any E element whose "lang" attribute has a hyphen-separated list of values beginning (from the left) with "en". Attribute selectors DIV.warning Language specific. (In HTML, the same as DIV[class~="warning"].) Class selectors E#myid Matches any E element with ID equal to "myid". ID selectors 5.2 Selector syntax A simple selector is either a type selector or universal selector followed immediately by zero or more attribute selectors, ID selectors, or pseudo-classes, in any order. The simple selector matches if all of its components match. Note: the terminology used here in CSS 2.1 is different from what is used in CSS3. For example, a "simple selector" refers to a smaller part of a selector in CSS3 than in CSS 2.1. See the CSS3 Selectors module [CSS3SEL]. A selector is a chain of one or more simple selectors separated by combinators. Combinators are: whitespace, ">", and "+". Whitespace may appear between a combinator and the simple selectors around it. The elements of the document tree that match a selector are called subjects of the selector. A selector consisting of a single simple selector matches any element satisfying its requirements. Prepending a simple selector and combinator to a chain imposes additional matching constraints, so the subjects of a selector are always a subset of the elements matching the last simple selector. One pseudo-element may be appended to the last simple selector in a chain, in which case the style information applies to a subpart of each subject. 5.2.1 Grouping When several selectors share the same declarations, they may be grouped into a comma-separated list. Example(s): In this example, we condense three rules with identical declarations into one. Thus, h1 { font-family: sans-serif } h2 { font-family: sans-serif } h3 { font-family: sans-serif } is equivalent to: h1, h2, h3 { font-family: sans-serif } CSS offers other "shorthand" mechanisms as well, including multiple declarations and shorthand properties. 5.3 Universal selector The universal selector, written "*", matches the name of any element type. It matches any single element in the document tree. If the universal selector is not the only component of a simple selector, the "*" may be omitted. For example: * *[lang=fr] and [lang=fr] are equivalent. * *.warning and .warning are equivalent. * *#myid and #myid are equivalent. 5.4 Type selectors A type selector matches the name of a document language element type. A type selector matches every instance of the element type in the document tree. Example(s): The following rule matches all H1 elements in the document tree: h1 { font-family: sans-serif } 5.5 Descendant selectors At times, authors may want selectors to match an element that is the descendant of another element in the document tree (e.g., "Match those EM elements that are contained by an H1 element"). Descendant selectors express such a relationship in a pattern. A descendant selector is made up of two or more selectors separated by whitespace. A descendant selector of the form "A B" matches when an element B is an arbitrary descendant of some ancestor element A. Example(s): For example, consider the following rules: h1 { color: red } em { color: red } Although the intention of these rules is to add emphasis to text by changing its color, the effect will be lost in a case such as:

This headline is very important

We address this case by supplementing the previous rules with a rule that sets the text color to blue whenever an EM occurs anywhere within an H1: h1 { color: red } em { color: red } h1 em { color: blue } The third rule will match the EM in the following fragment:

This headline is very important

Example(s): The following selector: div * p matches a P element that is a grandchild or later descendant of a DIV element. Note the whitespace on either side of the "*" is not part of the universal selector; the whitespace is a combinator indicating that the DIV must be the ancestor of some element, and that that element must be an ancestor of the P. Example(s): The selector in the following rule, which combines descendant and attribute selectors, matches any element that (1) has the "href" attribute set and (2) is inside a P that is itself inside a DIV: div p *[href] 5.6 Child selectors A child selector matches when an element is the child of some element. A child selector is made up of two or more selectors separated by ">". Example(s): The following rule sets the style of all P elements that are children of BODY: body > P { line-height: 1.3 } Example(s): The following example combines descendant selectors and child selectors: div ol>li p It matches a P element that is a descendant of an LI; the LI element must be the child of an OL element; the OL element must be a descendant of a DIV. Notice that the optional whitespace around the ">" combinator has been left out. For information on selecting the first child of an element, please see the section on the :first-child pseudo-class below. 5.7 Adjacent sibling selectors Adjacent sibling selectors have the following syntax: E1 + E2, where E2 is the subject of the