Chapter 9. Text Effects and the Cascade

This chapter builds on the last, where we looked at those characteristics of text associated with font and its related style properties. Here, we'll explore a range of other characteristics, including:

• alignment

• first-line indentation

• horizontal and vertical spacing

• text "decorations" such as underline, overline, and strike-out

• shadowed, or 3-D text

The browser treats hyperlinks differently from other text, and, as such, they're subject to special appearance techniques. Lists also present a particular set of opportunities for the styling and presentation of text. We'll be looking closely at both hyperlinks and lists here.

The chapter concludes with a discussion of an important concept in CSS, namely, cascading. I've largely ignored the "C" in CSS until now, principally because its primary application is in controlling the display of textual elements on the page.

We begin by delving into the <span> element, which I've touched on briefly in previous chapters. As you'll see, this element is most useful when dealing with segments of text within larger text blocks.