I am looking for a way to condense relatively small areas of text on a page in an effort to mimic a graphic button that was done with a non-standard font. Ideally, just the letters would get squished or made thinner, leaving the space between words more or less the same. I know there are some CSS attributes that do things like this, but they are more focused on spacing between the letters and not so much on the widths of the letters themselves. These CSS methods are also not very cross-browser friendly. The majority of the user base is using IE6, so that puts a large restriction on CSS-based methods out of the blocks.
So, is there any way to control the character width/spacing that is cross-browser friendly? I know jQuery works across browsers quite well, so could this perhaps be done with jQuery by manipulating the location of the letters and possibly their widths? These are small bits of text, 5 words at a time, or so, so speed is something that can be dealt with later.
EDIT: Ok, so, the CSS letter-spacing property, as well as the word-spacing property will allow me to control the space between letters/words. However, this makes things look squished. If this truly is the only option, then I'll have to make it work, but what I am really looking for is a way to squish the letters themselves, to make the characters thinner.
maybe
letter-spacing:-1px
will help
Short answer: I don't think there is a working cross-browser example that meets your requirements.
The CSS3 specification includes a font-stretch property, but sadly enough, CSS3 is barely (if at all) supported at this time.
Some possible ways that could emulate this behaviour that I can think of:
Use a flash-based approach like sIFR
Use a javascript / canvas based approach like Typeface.js. There's a font-stretch example included on the example page
Use condensed fonts (icky-approach, since this means you are relying on the font being available for the client), like Arial Narrow.
Use a server-side script that generates an image from text parameters
In short, there is no simple and elegant solution to this problem because text and image manipulation is generally something you'd do in a graphics editor.
If this is not possible, I'd definately recommend looking into Typeface and sIFR.
I think this sort of thing should probably be done in a graphics editor and output to a lightweight image (png or similar). I think this is the only simple and reliable way to control the visual output of the text to this extent.
Make sure you repeat the text in the alt attribute on the img tag for accessibility.
This approach has issues with localization - in that you need a version for each locale - but this is still doable.
There are also going to be issues if you wanted to keep this text in-line with some other text - e.g. in the middle of a paragraph. But if that's what is being done, it sounds like "squished up text" may not really be a good UI.
So, you want to squish it without squishing it?
Try adjusting the font-size then. Or some combination of letter-spacing, word-spacing and font-size. (All of which work just fine in IE6).
.nav {font-size: 80%;
letter-spacing: -.05em;
word-spacing: .05em; }
It sounds like a nightmare.
You can fudge the whole thing by putting each word if a floated DIV and fiddling with the width each DIV.
Are you sure you're specifying your doctypes properly? Perhaps your browsers are interpreting your CSS in quirks mode, resulting in the unpredictable behavior.
I don't think jQuery will be of much help to you if letter-spacing isn't working properly. You can't alter the positions of individual letters unless every letter is inside its own element, such as a span, which just seems messy.
EDIT: If you want to shrink the horizontal width of the characters themselves, that would theoretically be done with font-stretch: narrower, for example. But it seems the major browser don't support it properly or at all. Apparently it was in CSS2, but then dropped in CSS2.1 and is now planned for CSS3.
I'd have to question the wisdom of even trying to do this in the first place. Just replace the darn graphic with something readable; or something you can duplicate with your text.
What you want to do is change the text's font. I think your best bet is looking through a bunch of different fonts that come preinstalled for your userbase and trying for the best font+size combo.
You may be able to track down the original font with WhatTheFont
Approaching ten years later, font-stretch is still virtually unsupported. But
transform:scaleX(); will do. Here.
Related
Are there any disadvantages to using word-wrap:break-word in the following way?
body
{
word-wrap: break-word;
}
The descriptions of the values for this property are as follows:
normal: Break words only at allowed break points
break-word: Allows unbreakable words to be broken
Now, this only makes a difference in the breaking of unbreakable words (i.e. continuous strings that are longer than their containers). Otherwise, it'll make no difference for 99% of text anywhere.
So, are there any disadvantages to using this globally? It can certainly solve a lot of layout issues without (at least as far as I can see) having any adverse effects. It seems better to do this once than to have to apply it everywhere you could possibly have overflowing text that would mess up your layout.
I can't think of any disadvantages since, if you want to have some other kind of word-wrap elsewhere, you'll always be able to override this global style.
That said, if you can at all narrow down the situations in which this will be necessary, using a broad class would be preferable. There's no telling what rare but very frustrating bugs a global break-word style will cause (and in what browsers).
I can't see any advantages of making it global on a page if the page is anything other than a test page.
For me I would not want words that are unbreakable to break at all. It's easier to read when they are not broken up. However if you want to make your text fit a div without using text-align:justify; and leaving gaps in between letters or words it might be nice.
The reason why I said in other than a test page was because sometimes, when I wanted to use place holder text besides "lorum ipsum" I would type gibberish but the div would always stretch. But since I wouldn't be using that text on the live site, I probably wouldn't use it.
I think the only consideration would be support in IE8.
According to this, word-wrap: break-word; doesn't work in all scenarios.
This property applies to elements that have layout. An element has
layout when it is absolutely positioned, is a block element, or is an
inline element with a specified height or width.
Of course, this seems quite easily rectified, but it should be known in case you need to support IE8 and you intend to apply this to items that do not "have layout".
Interesting are the new CSS3 properties:
http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-text/#word-break
http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-text/#word-wrap
Okay that's probably not the best title, I know why we need browser resets: because browsers have different defaults set.
My question that was too long to put into a title is:
If everyone needs to use a reset stylesheet 90% of the time, why do browsers need to set default styles? We're just going to remove them anyways, right?
Because certain rules make sense by default:
Table cells have display:table-cell;
<b> makes text bold, <i> makes text italic
Paragraphs should have space in between them
Unordered lists should be displayed as bulleted lists
The problem isn't that browsers have defaults, it's that the defaults are all different.
Off the top of my head - to do something reasonable when displaying plain html, not styled sites.
Because not everyone uses a "reset stylesheet". The biggest example off the top of my head is Wikipedia, which displays content in the browser's default font.
The reset stylesheets are in my humble opinion only useful for starters who are ranting on the minor styling differences among browsers and doesn't know the default behaviours/styles from top of head so that they're forced to fill all of those styles in the CSS themselves.
If you want to see more thoughts behind this opinionated answer, check this answer.
It is because it gets you into a known state and therefore will look similar across a variety of browsers.
basically, it's a way to keep results as universal as possible by defeating any browser-based rules and omissions before your CSS is applied. http://www.css-reset.com/
See presentation on this page http://www.maxdesign.com.au/articles/css-reset/
How to get consistence rendering of paragraph text in all browsers?
See IE 7 rendering like this
alt text http://easycaptures.com/fs/uploaded/248/0266470505.jpg
and FF like this . which is ok to client
alt text http://easycaptures.com/fs/uploaded/248/8655561297.jpg
How to get same result in both browsers, i mean FF rendering in IE? my client needs "non-executive" in same line in all browsers, Is <br /> only solution of this.
Update : see all code for <p> here http://easycaptures.com/fs/uploaded/248/4505395091.jpg
I'm already using XHTML 1.1 doctype and eric meyer reset CSS
Update: 28 March
Thanks for all replies!
I tested this problem is only not coming on firefox . but coming in all other browser IE6, 7, 8, Safari(windows), Google Chrome.
Is there any possibility css only solution now?
For your specific issue, use the <nobr> tag around your text, or a span with the CSS
whitespace: no-wrap;
This will prevent non-executive from breaking across lines.
However, you should note that getting entirely consistent rendering is quite difficult between browsers and platforms.
Update
You are most likely setting both a fixed width and a padding on the left and right of the element. IE and Firefox will interpret that differently due to box model differences. If you cannot recode your page to use a fixed width and a left/right margin, then you will need to specify a different fixed width in an IE only stylesheet to compensate for the problem.
Education
Web development is about education. Much of that education is educating your client on what to expect and not to expect.
Help by explaining to your client that each browser, and OS combination handle fonts a little differently. One engine may place the letters slightly closer to each other than another.
You could put tons of work into getting this just right, but if your end user has enlarged their fonts at all, all the time and money spent on making sure one hyphenated word stays on the same line will go out the window.
Technical Thought: Both browsers appear to already be rendering the text as closely as they can, I don't think a reset.css is going to help you at all.
Resetting all styles to get rid of the differences in the browser stylesheets might be a good idea. YUI's reset.css can do this for you. then you can start from scratch to format your paragraphs, using percentages for font size , spacing etc. (see YUI CSS cheatsheet).
EDIT: Just saw your comment to cletus' answer. So: what CSS are you using for laying out your text?
This is nothing to do with margins, padding, fonts, resets or any CSS, really. It's about how browsers interpret hyphens. IE obviously decides that it can break the line on a hyphen, whereas Firefox treats it as one word.
Like McPherrinM said, you can use no-break tag: <nobr>non-executive</nobr>. Or you could simply remove the hyphen altogether.
Or you could just explain to your client how all browsers and systems render text differently and there is no way you can prevent this occurring in all situations. What is the problem with the word splitting over two lines anyway?
You might look into the use of a soft hyphen
­
This is a somewhat open-ended question, but I really want to understand this one so I don't care.
I have a two-element "table" (CSS with spans). The left column always has an icon which is 20x20 pixels. The second column has a single line of text associated with the icon.
I have gone through all sorts of ideas I could come up with to make this look exactly the same in IE6-8, Firefox 3.5 and Google Chrome, but all ideas result in the text being one or two pixels off at best.
I'm looking for a fool-proof non-<table> way to make this list look exactly the same in all browsers. I mean every single pixel.
Pixel perfect doesn't exist - you simply don't have that kind of control over the range of browsers out there, and nor is it profitable for you to attempt to make it so. Diminishing returns, thy name is IE6.
Fwiw, it also sounds likely that you would do better here to simply have a list (<ul>) with list-style-type set to none and using background images to display your 20x20 icons.
You are chasing a moving target. With so many broswers and so many versions there will most likely never be a way to make it perfect. Then even if you do get it close to perfect the next release of any of the browsers may break it again.
Here's my question: if it's really a table, why not use <table> ? It's one thing to avoid using tables for purposes of general page layout, but the table tag is still perfectly legitimate for, well, displaying tables.
If that doesn't work for you, consider a <ul> modification or similar. It's unlikely, though, that you'll ever get it truely pixel-perfect in all browsers.
Yes...
Render an image ;)
(Sorry, but if you want it really "pixle perfect", then this is most likely the easiest way)
I agree with Tony and annakata. However, usually the best result comes from something simple like this:
<span><img src="images/icon.gif" style="vertical-align:text-bottom;" />Some text</span>
Which at least looks exactly the same in webkit, ie8 and firefox. (I believe ie7 too, but I didn't test)
I'm sory for this huge edit I didn't read the question properly.
As some have already said it's very hard to achieve pixelperfection on a website as every browser render the pages differently.
With css you can use absolut and relative positioning of basically anything but its far from perfect when it comes to cross browser compatibility.
I have been experimenting with the Majestic template at freecsstemplates.org. So far so good; I really like the look (or to be more specific, my boss really likes the look).
However, I am noticing that the CSS that drives this template seems very brittle; small changes can cause really radical breakage. In particular, if I reduce the size of the header in the CSS (to eliminate some of the empty space at the top of the page), both of the outside columns suddenly disappear.
With small websites, sometimes I cry uncle and just use tables for layout. I realize this is heretical; should I be leaving the design to the professional designers? Or maybe I'm going about this the wrong way, and someone can set me straight.
I honestly think this layout has been made pretty badly. The width of the elements seems to change where they appear on the page, and they're all need to be pixel perfect for everything to be centred.
For some bizarre reason the whole page has been placed inside the div element marked 'header'... This doesn't make much semantic sense for a start.
However, it seems if you decrease the width of every element which has one, then everything does get smaller, and nothing should disappear.
I would recommend looking at some other more sensible layouts, since I don't think this is a very good way of attaining that style -- as you've said, it's brittle. Have you tried using the extension Firebug for firefox? It allows you to make on-the-fly changes to the css, and see how it affects the style, which will help you learn fast.
CSS is delicate, but still easier to deal with than a site full of table layouts. I found Dave Shea's book CSS ZenGarden to be a great help in learning CSS from a designers perspective.
Often in layered templates there are a few places where changes to CSS can be made, and it can be really confusing to follow which selectors are controlling the element you wish to manage. There are many tools out there that can help, but some that have been useful to me are:
Google Chrome and its Inspect Element option
Selector Gadget - a bookmarklet that will help you visually determine the selectors that affect an element
Firefox's Web Developer plug in
One other tip is to learn about the !important modifier - it can come in handy to force a particular property setting when there are multiple CSS selectors affecting the same element.
CSS in my experience is easy to understand in concept, but takes a long time to master.
Brittle CSS can be very brittle, but good CSS can be wonderfully flexible.
As it stands CSS can either make layouts wonderfully simple and flexible or it can make the simplest of tasks an absolute nightmare.
Purists will tell you to use CSS no matter what, a pragmatist will tell you to use what works. If using a table or non-CSS solution makes something infinitely easier to do, then use it!
Personally I try to use pure CSS as much as possible, but there have been times when I want to do nothing but swear when something glorious in FireFox looks awful in IE. This is where the hacks come in. It is these hacks and work arounds that tend to make CSS brittle in the first place.
Half the problems with CSS would go away if all the browsers did precisely what the CSS spec says they should do. Alas, this is yet to happen so we have to live with either using tables, or on occassion, brittle CSS.
The best solution is to make the design as simple as possible. If you find you have a hundred divs and lots of CSS trickery to do something straight-forward, stop. Re-think how you are approaching it and try again.
At the end of the day your website users don't really give a monkeys what your website looks like as long as they can get at the information they want with minimum effort. Successfully manage that and they will not care how photorealistic that shiny nav bar is, or how well the borders line up etc.
That's my 18pence at any rate :)
I agree most css template is hard to read, and different people may have a very different approach to the same layout strategy. Since there are too many hacks/tricks/techniques in css it is really fragile when you try to modify those existing one since almost all cases, the styles are very dependent to each other.
Css doesn't break as long as you don't break it ;) It's a language. Just like a regular one, if you don't use proper grammar people won't understand what your saying.
If a layout doesn't work or suddenly your page looks rubbish, I'll guarantee you it's your fault. Css isn't brittle, the code you wrote with it might be.
So start by learning the basics and don't just dive into some file you found online which might (in your case, does) contain very bad code.
If you end up wanting to use tables for everything may I suggest you start looking at some grid systems like http://960.gs/ and ease your pain.
Gideon