11 Visual effects

11.1 Overflow and clipping

Generally, the content of a block box is confined to the content edges of the box. In certain cases, a box may overflow, meaning its content lies partly or entirely outside of the box, e.g.:

• A line cannot be broken, causing the line box to be wider than the block box.
• A block-level box is too wide for the containing block. This may happen when an element's 'width' property has a value that causes the generated block box to spill over sides of the containing block.
• An element's height exceeds an explicit height assigned to the containing block (i.e., the containing block's height is determined by the 'height' property, not by content height).
• A descendent box is positioned absolutely . It, partly outside the box.
• A descendent box has negative margins ., causing it to be positioned partly outside the box.

Whenever overflow occurs, the 'overflow' property specifies how (and whether)whether a box is clipped. The 'clip' property specifies the sizeclipped to its content box, and shape of the clipping region. Specifyingif so, whether a small clipping region may cause clipping of otherwise visible contents.scrolling mechanism is provided to access any clipped out content.

11.1.1 Overflow: the 'overflow' property

This property specifies whether the content of a block-level element is clipped when it overflows the element's box (which is acting as a containing block for the content). Values have the following meanings:

visible

This value indicates that content is not clipped, i.e., it may be rendered outside the block box.

hidden

This value indicates that the content is clipped and that no scrolling mechanism should be provided to view the content outside the clipping region; users will not have access to clipped content.

The size and shape of the clipping region is specified by the 'clip' property.scroll

This value indicates that the content is clipped and that if the user agent uses a scrolling mechanism that is visible on the screen (such as a scroll bar or a panner), that mechanism should be displayed for a box whether or not any of its content is clipped. This avoids any problem with scrollbars appearing and disappearing in a dynamic environment. When this value is specified and the target medium is 'print' or 'projection','print', overflowing content should may be printed.

auto

The behavior of the 'auto' value is user agent-dependent, but should cause a scrolling mechanism to be provided for overflowing boxes.

Even if 'overflow' is set to 'visible', content may be clipped to a UA's document window by the native operating environment.

<DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>I didn't like the play, but then I saw
it under adverse conditions - the curtain was up.
 <DIV class="attributed-to">-<CITE>- Groucho  Marx</DIV>Marx</CITE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
</DIV>

div { width : 100px; height: 100px;
      border: thin solid red;
      }

blockquote   { width : 125px; height : 100px;
      margin-top: 50px; margin-left: 50px; 
      border: thin dashed black
      }

 DIV.attributed-tocite { display: block;
       text-align : right; 
       border: none
       }

11.1.2 Clipping: the 'clip' property

A clipping region defines what portion of an element's rendered contentborder box is visible. By default, the clipping region has the same size and shape as the element's box(es).border box. However, the clipping region may be modified by the 'clip' property.

The 'clip' property applies only to elements that have a 'overflow' property with a value other than 'visible'.absolutely positioned elements. Values have the following meanings:

auto

The clipping region has the same size and location as the element's box(es).

<shape>

In CSS2,CSS 2.1, the only valid <shape> value is: rect (<top>, <right>, <bottom>, <left>) where <top> ,and <bottom> specify offsets from the top border edge of the box, and <right>, and <left> specify offsets from the respective sidesleft border edge of the box.box in left-to-right text and from the right border edge of the box in right-to-left text. Authors should separate offset values with commas. User agents must support separation with commas, but may also support separation without commas, because a previous version of this specification was ambiguous in this respect.

<top>, <right>, <bottom>, and <left> may either have a <length> value or 'auto'. Negative lengths are permitted. The value 'auto' means that a given edge of the clipping region will be the same as the edge of the element's generated box (i.e., 'auto' means the same as '0'.)'0' for <top> and <left> (in left-to-right text, <right> in right-to-left text), the same as the computed value of the height plus the sum of vertical padding and border widths for <bottom>, and the same as the computed value of the width plus the sum of the horizontal padding and border widths for <right> (in left-to-right text, <left> in right-to-left text), such that four 'auto' values result in the clipping region being fit with the border edge).

When coordinates are rounded to pixel coordinates, care should be taken that no pixels remain visible when <left> +and <right> is equal tohave the element's widthsame value (or <top> +and <bottom> equalshave the element's height),same value), and conversely that no pixels within the element's box remain hidden when these values are 0.'auto'.

The element's ancestors may also have clipping regions (in case(e.g. if their 'overflow' property is not 'visible'); what is rendered is the intersection of the various clipping regions.

If the clipping region exceeds the bounds of the UA's document window, content may be clipped to that window by the native operating environment.

p { clip: rect(5px,  10px, 10px,40px, 45px, 5px); }
p { clip: rect(5px,  -5px, 10px,55px, 45px, 5px); }

11.2 Visibility: the 'visibility' property

The 'visibility' property specifies whether the boxes generated by an element are rendered. Invisible boxes still affect layout (set the 'display' property to 'none' to suppress box generation altogether). Values have the following meanings:

visible

The generated box is visible.

hidden

The generated box is invisible (fully transparent), but still affects layout. Furthermore, descendents of the element will be visible if they have 'visibility: visible'.

collapse

Please consult the section on dynamic row and column effects in tables. If used on elements other than rows or columns, 'collapse' has the same meaning as 'hidden'.

This property may be used in conjunction with scripts to create dynamic effects.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<STYLE type="text/css">
<!--
   #container1 { position: absolute; 
                 top: 2in; left: 2in; width: 2in }
   #container2 { position: absolute; 
                 top: 2in; left: 2in; width: 2in;
                 visibility: hidden; }
-->
</STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<P>Choose a suspect:</P>
<DIV id="container1">
   <IMG alt="Al Capone" 
        width="100" height="100" 
        src="suspect1.jpg">
   <P>Name: Al Capone</P>
   <P>Residence: Chicago</P>
</DIV>

<DIV id="container2">
   <IMG alt="Lucky Luciano" 
        width="100" height="100" 
        src="suspect2.jpg">
   <P>Name: Lucky Luciano</P>
   <P>Residence: New York</P>
</DIV>

<FORM method="post" 
      action="http://www.suspect.org/process-bums">
   <P>
   <INPUT name="Capone" type="button" 
          value="Capone" 
          onclick='show("container1");hide("container2")'>
   <INPUT name="Luciano" type="button" 
          value="Luciano" 
          onclick='show("container2");hide("container1")'>
</FORM>
</BODY>
</HTML>